Victoria Wood

by Neil Brandwood

  Because it had been nine years since her last television series, the press were naturally excited about dinnerladies and Victoria and the cast were the cover stars of most magazines and supplements. A nicely timed Best of British documentary about Victoria was screened on 11 November 1998, the day before the first episode of dinnerladies, raising Victoria’s profile even higher (unlike later subjects Lenny Henry and Cliff Richard, no Wood relatives appeared in Victoria’s programme). The level of expectation on Victoria would have been unfair if she had not set such exacting standards herself and she was prepared to take full responsibility. ‘If it doesn’t go down well it’s only down to me,’ she said. ‘I can’t say the producer did it wrong or the cast weren’t up to it. Everything’s gone as well as it could go.’

  The first episode was broadcast at 9.30 p.m. on BBC1 and received a mixed reaction. After viewing it the Mirror’s Tony Purnell confidently predicted a hit series, and the Observer’s Kathryn Flett praised ‘writing that is not a million miles from brilliant’. However, the Daily Mail’s Jaci Stephen criticised the playground humour of bodily functions for being ‘as tedious as it is unfunny’, and the Mail on Sunday’s Brian Viner felt it ‘had the air of a sketch that wasn’t sure when to stop’. In the Independent Serena Mackesy elaborated on such a point and wrote: ‘Had it been in sketch format it would have been pretty good, as a sitcom, it left one staring at the screen in blank amazement … it’s as if the plot had been surgically removed … a mystifying mess’. The Daily Telegraph’s James Walton criticised the ‘resolutely old fashioned’ show for having insufficiently differentiated characters and a weak performance by Victoria. ‘dinnerladies,’ he stated, ‘unlike the best sitcoms, is not a show to make you think.’ The Times’s Paul Hoggart got it about right when he wrote: ‘There were a few dud lines, but since Wood’s script packed more inventive, original and funny gags into one episode than most British sitcoms manage in a whole series it seems churlish to complain.’

  Part of the problem was The Royle Family. The groundbreaking situation comedy by Caroline Aherne – who had been inspired to turn to a career in comedy after seeing the television version of Talent – and Craig Cash, had preceded dinnerladies, and its unique realism changed the concept of situation comedy entirely.

  The public were obviously disappointed with Victoria’s new creation. A total of 12.24 million watched the first show, which made it BBC1’s fourth most popular show and the twelfth most watched programme in the country. However, by the second week the figure had fallen to 10.59 million and the remaining episodes got an average of 9.45 million. dinnerladies was not even nominated in the Most Popular Comedy category at the 1999 National Television Awards, and although Victoria was nominated for Most Popular Comedy Performer for the show, she lost.

  Perhaps fortunately, dinnerladies was shown too late to be nominated for the 1998 British Comedy Awards, where The Royle Family was named Best New Comedy. Victoria was, however, invited to the ceremony to present Thora Hird with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Her trademark dourness was evident (‘Quite a thrill [to be here] cos I only usually go out of a Tuesday’), but there was also a glimpse of genuine sentiment. It would be going too far to say that Victoria regarded Hird as a substitute mother figure, but at the ceremony Victoria was almost overcome with emotion. It was reciprocated by Hird, who referred to her in her acceptance speech as ‘Our love’, ‘Clever Clogs’ and ‘the cleverest woman in Britain re entertainment’.

  15

  VICTORIA COMMENCED WRITING the second series of dinnerladies in January 1999. The mixed reception to the first series made a second inevitable as Victoria’s professional and personal pride would not allow her to end a project on a lacklustre note. ‘I don’t normally do anything twice. But I felt for this to give it its best benefit I had to do more,’ she explained. ‘The first six were like an experiment. You don’t know what you’ve done till you’ve had it out on the television.’

  The scraps of paper on the floor she once relied on to plan a series had been replaced by magnetic wall charts to navigate the new, more intricate storylines. These gave an added cohesiveness to the new series, making it more of a comedy drama than a collection of self-contained programmes. As with the writing of the first series, Victoria seriously considered abandoning the show half-way through. The loneliness was getting to her and she began doubting her comedic abilities. But as always, when things were difficult she seemed to deliberately make them harder, a habit that therapy had not cured. Consequently she decided to write ten rather than the usual six episodes, which, with rewrites, meant she wrote seventy half-hour scripts.

  ‘I painted myself into a corner because I said from the start that I wanted to write it on my own,’ she admitted. ‘I thought if I write a sitcom at least I’ll go into a room where there’s other people but actually it would have been easier to have contacted the social services and get taken to a day centre,’ she later commented. ‘I just wished I had one other person that knew everything I was doing that I could talk to about it,’ she said.

  A trip up North in February gave Victoria a welcome break from her self-imposed isolation when she attended the Bolton Octagon’s stage adaptation of Pat and Margaret. Christine Moore, who played Pat, would be rewarded for her performance with a small part in dinnerladies 2. Sue Cleaver, who had played Maureen in a 1996 run of Talent at the Octagon, was also rewarded with the more high profile role of Glen. After dinnerladies 2 she became a Coronation Street regular.

  That March’s Comic Relief provided Victoria with another distraction from the writing. An offer to revisit Africa was politely turned down and she instead involved herself with projects she felt more comfortable with. One of these was agreeing to be the guest editor of the special issue Radio Times. Victoria approached the task with her usual thoroughness and the magazine’s editor Sue Robinson may not have been altogether joking when she said Victoria had ‘terrified’ staff into doing what they were told. She replaced columnists John Peel, Polly Toynbee and Alan Hanson with, respectively, Dawn French, Richard Curtis and Nick Hancock, and for the My Kind of Day feature she recruited Esther Mujawayo, a Rwandan widow. Victoria, in her role as editor, graced the front cover, power dressed and wearing an expression of paranoid smugness (‘which I think covers most media jobs’).

  Inside she contributed a humorously scathing review of The Archers for the Soaps page, and also wrote a piece about On Digital and a letter to the medical page, which allowed her to mention bunions, peep-toe sandals and tartan slippers. In her Editor’s Letter she discussed the scandal of recruiting actors to play talk show guests and pondered how much more interesting it would be if the likes of Judi Dench and ‘the woman who plays the receptionist in Peak Practice’ had been used instead.

  It was Victoria’s idea to interview Gordon Brown for the Questionnaire. Her questions were a mixture of the pertinent (‘Don’t you think that cancelling Third World debts would at least save a lot of paperwork?’) to the mischievous (‘With the recent spate of resignations, do you worry that you may buy incorrect garden furniture and have to resign?’).

  In the guise of ‘Andrea Duncan’ she interviewed Julie Walters in the clumsy style that borrowed from her 1990 creation, ‘Ooh Hello!’s Debora Klepper. We learn that Julie is a gin-swilling nymphomaniac, whose seven husbands have included Bobby Crush and Larry Adler. Hated by film crews and famously infertile after a netballing accident, she has adopted the Harlem Globetrotters (‘I had always been very admiring of Mia Farrow and the way she had adopted children at the least opportunity, some even differently abled, and with varying skin tones and eye shapes’).

  Apart from her editorial duties Victoria wrote and starred in a parody of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates. The thirteen-minute skit was crammed with cameos by Julie Walters, Duncan Preston, Judith Chalmers, Bobby Crush, Matthew Kelly, Celia Imrie, Shobna Gulati and Gary Wilmot.

  Victoria, as Wetty Hainthropp, captured the mannerisms and delivery of Patricia Routledge perfectly. Onc
e again she had turned to television itself for her inspiration and the programme was a brilliant satire of formulaic programming. Sending up the reliance on stereotype, Wetty gives directions: ‘It’s a terraced house, that’s right, in the North. There’ll be a brass band playing. You can’t miss it.’

  The improbability of the plot with its bizarre coincidences involved Alan Titchmarsh’s evil twin brother, Adam, kidnapping Delia Smith and Rolf Harris, stealing Matthew Kelly’s greasepaint and practising his maths so he could take over from Carol Vorderman. He was ready to kidnap any celebrity who threatened his chance of a successful television career but, as Wetty pointed out, he made the ‘classic mistake’ of stealing fishfingers from the bag of the very woman he tried to kill.

  Filming the skit allowed Victoria to fulfil a personal ambition. After almost 20 years of referring to them in her act, she finally appeared on screen on the cobbles of Weatherfield with Coronation Street’s Ken and Deirdre.

  Another welcome break from writing dinnerladies 2 came in April when Victoria flew to the 39th Golden Rose Festival of Montreux. The dinnerladies episode, ‘Party’, was awarded the International Press Prize, beating 99 other programmes submitted by 26 countries. The French were particularly impressed with it but, more significantly, it was the first real time Victoria’s work had been tested on the international stage. That it triumphed showed Victoria that she could appeal to overseas audiences, something that many British comedians, however celebrated in this country, often failed at. She returned to London and writing with a new vigour.

  In the early days of Victoria’s career, when her insecurity was at its height and she was still quite naive, she tended to let herself be buffeted along by the press. Greater success and confidence led to her adopting a more businesslike and controlled approach. Interviews were only usually given if she had something to promote and she often dictated the areas to be discussed. Her rather cool personality did not exactly endear her to reporters, but they appreciated her professionalism. She was careful to obey the rules, never flaunting herself for the paparazzi, never getting drunk and definitely no messy adulterous affairs. She was therefore justified in expecting a degree of respect from the press and started to believe she was almost untouchable.

  In the mid-1990s she said: ‘I’ve had a soft ride … I used to worry that they’d [the press] just get their knives out for no reason, but now I don’t think that’s very realistic. Why would they pick me out as a target?’ The answer came on Sunday, 5 September 1999, when Victoria learned she was no exception to any other celebrity.

  She was working through the night on a dinnerladies 2 script when a News of the World reporter arrived on her doorstep in the early hours. Through the intercom he informed her that the Sunday People was running a front page story about Geoffrey’s eating disorder. Neither Victoria nor Geoffrey were prepared to give a comment, and they spent an anxious few hours waiting for the newsagent to open.

  VICTORIA WOOD’S SECRET AGONY screamed the headline, Hubby fears death from food addiction.

  The story revealed that Geoffrey had joined a local group of Overeaters Anonymous, an organisation that, but for the personal link, Victoria might have got some mileage out of in her act. Meetings involved group confessionals and it was these that reporter Rachel Bletchly had sat in on incognito.

  We were told that ‘tormented’ Geoffrey had joined the group ‘in a desperate bid to end his nightmare’. His terrifying food addiction meant he could literally eat himself to death, and Geoffrey reportedly said: ‘I am a food addict and compulsive overeater and if I ever overeat as a way of life again, I will be dead. I have got to beat this.’

  The paper claimed that Geoffrey, who at one point had ballooned to 28 stones, had suffered dangerous breathing problems and fully expected to have a heart attack or fall asleep at the wheel of his car.

  He said: ‘I started overeating when I was three because I felt ashamed and humiliated. For the next 47 years, I never believed that I was going to live a year longer than I was already. But I am 50 now and not dead yet. I am frightened. All sorts of things scare me. But here I am in recovery, feeling great, with so many opportunities open to me. It is up to me to make the most of it.’

  Victoria, who sometimes attended sessions to give support to Geoffrey, was convinced that the paper was trying to get some filth on her, the true star of the couple. If that was the case then Bletchly was disappointed as all Geoffrey had to say on his domestic life was: ‘The things that are important to me are that I am the father of two children, I am married to a lovely woman and I believe in God.’

  It was ironic that the subject of food and weight which had so dogged Victoria should return to bite her, even though she had overcome her own difficulties. To have a Sunday tabloid fill its first three pages with intimate details about personal matters would have been bad enough for any celebrity, but for Victoria, who believed she was in control and organised and somehow excluded from the hunt, it was devastating. She adopted an it’s-only-tomorrow’s-chip-paper attitude to the story but was deeply upset. There was no immediate public response, and a little later all Victoria would remark was: ‘He’s dealing with it on a daily basis, and I’m supporting him. We are both well and, apart from that, it’s nobody else’s business.’

  Rehearsals of dinnerladies 2 began in the late summer of 1999. Just as Victoria had had to change some of Celia Imrie’s lines in Pat and Margaret when the actress fell pregnant, she had to alter some of Maxine Peake’s fat-dependent lines for the series when she turned up for rehearsals. Peake, who had taken Victoria’s advice to heart, had joined a slimming club. By the time rehearsals began she had lost nearly five stones. Another change was the replacement of Andrew Livingston by Adrian Hood as Norman the breadman.

  Filming of dinnerladies 2 began in the autumn of 1999 in Studio 8 of BBC TV Centre and the last episode was recorded on 11 December. Before each session Geoff Posner gave a preamble to the studio audience – which consisted of such disparate groups as the Gloucester WI and Kent Police – before introducing Victoria. Standing on a wooden box in Bren’s costume and wig she treated them to five minutes of old stand-up and filled them in on the series’ plot developments.

  The second series of dinnerladies was shown from 25 November 1999 to 27 January 2000, each episode averaging an audience of around 13.02 million, making it the eleventh most popular television show of 2000. The figure might have been even higher if it had been easier to keep track of the programme and its schedule. Confusingly, some weeks it was repeated on a Saturday evening while on other weeks it was not. Consecutive episodes were shown on 23 and 24 December and one episode was simply put back a week to make way for the football. Viewers who were unable to navigate such odd scheduling ended up confused if they missed an episode because the strands of plot ran through the whole series.

  dinnerladies 2 had much greater depth than the first series, with many of the major characters having to adapt to some kind of fundamental change: Bren’s mother dies; Anita has a baby; Stan’s father dies; Jean’s husband leaves her and she undergoes a mini-nervous breakdown; Bren and Tony have to decide on their future.

  Victoria’s plotting was highly intricate. Casual references in one episode would have much greater significance in later shows. In episode three for instance, we learn the recovering Jean fills her days watching the daytime television quiz Totally Trivial and in episode nine she confesses she entered on Bren’s behalf and Bren’s appearance on the show is a pivotal moment. In episode six Bren tells Anita that she would have liked a baby, which encourages Anita to leave her own baby for Bren in episode seven. In episode five Tony invites Bren to his friend’s pub in Scotland and in episode ten that is where they plan to start a new life together.

  But the plotting was not confined to dinnerladies 2. In the first series there were hints that all was not going well with the factory through talk of a merger with a Japanese company, the closure of one of the sheds and a lost contract. Consequently the announcem
ent that the canteen is to close in episode ten of series two is believable, as opposed to being a convenient plot device. But perhaps the best example of Victoria’s long range view can be seen in the resolution of Tony and Bren’s financial worries. In episode one, series one, Petula asks Bren to dispose of a mobile phone. In episode ten of series two we learn it belonged to a criminal, since murdered, and his loot goes to Bren and Tony.

  Each episode was given a specific date, which was sometimes relevant to the script (the last day to conceive a millennium baby, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and 29 February in a Leap Year). The series’ time frame spanned from March 1999 to February 2000 meaning that episode six was actually broadcast on the same date that the programme was set. The decision to date each episode was partly influenced by Dad’s Army, one of Victoria’s favourite situation comedies. She observed that the show had timeless appeal because it was already set in the past and so could not date. Consequently, if there were any future repeats of dinnerladies the date captions protect it from criticism because it is effectively a time capsule.

  Victoria ensured Brenda attracted audience sympathy through her humble ways. But Victoria allowed Bren to undergo the same transformation she herself had gone through. The once easygoing Bren blasts Philippa for treating them as if they do not matter and she stands up for herself when the social worker puts pressure on her to provide a home for Petula. The parallels between Petula and Helen Wood continued; at one point Petula says: ‘I had a baby once before but I never really got involved.’

  For close on 20 years New Age beliefs and the whole healthfood movement had been a source of irritation for Victoria, who addressed the subjects in plays, sketches, film and stand-up. This reached its apogee in episode eight of dinnerladies 2 when Kay Adshead (an actress used by Victoria on numerous previous occasions) was introduced into the canteen. As the New Age Christine she seemed to be a distillation of everything Victoria hated and was very nearly lynched by all the major characters.