Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood

by Jasper Rees

  While Victoria wrote her own script, that spring she simultaneously acted as script editor for Peter Bowker, who began working through drafts of Morecambe and Wise, as the drama was initially titled. (It was later provisionally changed to When Eric Met Ernie.) They had long since agreed that the origin story of Morecambe and Wise did not have a dark side such as was explored in recent BBC biopics of Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd. The worst thing that happened to them, apart from the Blitz, was their poor treatment by the patrician nabobs at the BBC who foisted bad scripts upon them. Running Wild, their variety show recorded at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 1954, was an infamous flop. ‘Definition of the Week,’ wrote one critic. ‘TV set: the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise.’5 Victoria’s notes were concisely focused on structure and comedy. ‘Come out of the line earlier, that’s funnier,’ she’d say. While resisting the urge to volunteer her own dialogue, she also offered a line or two gleaned from her early experience of grim hotels on tour. ‘Don’t piss in the sink’ was one of hers.

  Peter Bowker followed his hunch that the kernel of the story lay in Eric’s relationship with Sadie Bartholomew, the driven mother who shoved him into talent contests and soon took young Ernie under her wing too – precisely the kind of enabling parent who had been absent from Victoria’s childhood. ‘I always knew that Vic was going to play Sadie,’ he says, ‘so you start to write to her rhythm.’ Thus, in her dialogue with Eric, his Sadie started to sound a lot like Victoria: ‘You make people laugh, you’re a lovely dancer and you can hold a tune … but more than that – and I mean this as the mother that carried you and bore you and raised you – you aren’t any good at anything else.’

  The drafts were overseen by a newly hired director. Jonny Campbell came on the recommendation of Piers Wenger, for whom he had shot a couple of episodes of Doctor Who; also on his CV was the first series of Phoenix Nights. His first encounter with Victoria was at Broadcasting House. ‘She was a daunting presence,’ he says. ‘What was important in that meeting was the subtext: are we going to have a laugh on this journey?’ It was to his advantage that, like Bowker, he was from Stockport. For the first time Victoria chose to collaborate with a much younger director. (He happened to be the partner of the drama’s other executive producer Beth Willis.) One of his early interventions was to suggest the story required not two Erics and two Ernies, but three. He also threw himself into his own research and unearthed a quotation from Eric Morecambe that more or less summed up the plot: ‘I’m grateful to my mother now. She pushed me into showbusiness and kept me there until she knew I was safely in Ernie’s hands; he’s been doing the pushing ever since.’ Victoria was thrilled. ‘Thanks for the quote,’ she said. ‘Am having it embroidered on to a set of table napkins for Doreen.’6

  Having visited both the widows to conduct archival research, as a courtesy Victoria shared the final draft with them. Doreen Wise, who nursed a grievance that the nation loved Eric more than Ernie, was the tougher nut to crack, so she was invited to Claridge’s to be cajoled and charmed. ‘Well, it’s another fairy tale,’ she said of the script, ‘but it’s a fairy tale I can live with.’ To celebrate Victoria ordered champagne which, in the new culture that prevailed at the BBC, had to be itemised as an expense. ‘The Daily Mail will implode,’ she told Peter Bowker, ‘because on the one hand it’s Claridge’s; on the other it’s Ernie Wise’s widow, so they won’t know which way to jump.’

  In April she was dragged away from her writing desk to prepare for a charity night in Hendon organised by Maureen Lipman. Victoria enlisted Harriet Thorpe to do ‘Coffee Palaver’, the sketch that had not made the cut for Mid Life Christmas. She was wary of becoming an old turn to be wheeled out past her prime. In one week that spring she caught demoralising live performances by Julie Andrews and Debbie Reynolds, and treated the spectacle as a warning. ‘In twenty years’ time,’ she wrote to Nigel Lilley, who had booked the tickets, ‘please don’t let us be on the stage of some small half empty theatre with an audience of old gay men – you on the piano/bontempi and me in a red sequinned trouser suit … I want to quit while I’m ahead.’7 Nigel and his Spanish partner Luis were to become Victoria’s regular theatregoing companions – his habit was to book three tickets and only then tell her what they were going to see. ‘Every couple of weeks we’d go and see a show,’ he says, ‘and then go and have a good bitch about it. It was a way of getting her out the house. When she was writing she would just not leave the house.’

  While she continued with Hatto-related field trips, six months on from their first meeting Victoria received a visit at home from Alex Poots, who wanted to follow up on his quest to commission a play from her for the Manchester International Festival. Still bruised from recent battles with the BBC, she lacked faith that any producer would leave her to her own devices. ‘You wouldn’t let me do what I want,’ she told him warily. It took a third meeting, and offers to introduce her to artists who had had a happy time at the festival, to tempt her into saying yes.

  The idea she proposed was inspired by an episode of This Week, a Thames TV documentary she remembered watching in her Birmingham bedsit in 1975, which told of the million-selling 78rpm made in 1929 of Purcell’s ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’. Under the baton of Sir Hamilton Harty it was recorded in the city’s Free Trade Hall by the Hallé Orchestra and the 250-strong Manchester Children’s Choir. Victoria anticipated that a play requiring a vast choir of children would be unattractive to the festival. What convinced her of Poots’s good faith was the discovery that MIF had a department whose role was to reach out to the community: ‘At that point she realised we were serious and she might have an opportunity to do something she couldn’t in the commercial sector. The choir got her over the line.’

  Armed with the commission, Victoria duly rewatched the programme and was dismayed to find that her recollection was almost wholly inaccurate. ‘Lordy what a disappointment,’ she confessed. ‘I’d made up a whole documentary out of my head.’8 But she did have one kernel to work with. A manual labourer was asked what singing meant to him. ‘It’s been an expression of joy,’ he replied. ‘It’s a really wonderful thing to be able to sing.’

  As she thought further about what this production might be, Victoria was already certain she wanted to direct it, though less sure about how to proceed with the musical element. ‘It would involve them starting up new children’s choirs,’ she told Nigel Lilley in June. ‘I find that rather a great thought tho not sure if I can write anything for them to sing … will have to talk to you about it.’9 A few weeks later she was no closer: ‘Music is a bit thin on the ground with me at present.’10 There was a timely reminder of her fecundity as a songwriter with the first ever am-dram production of Acorn Antiques: The Musical!, which she attended in Leighton Buzzard. ‘A really good effort,’ she enthused, ‘and so nice to hear the music!’11

  In early summer Victoria submitted a first draft of her Joyce Hatto script as Henry sat his A levels. Just as he was leaving school, his mother concluded her two-year off-and-on hunt for a rural bolthole. Initially she worried about getting somewhere in the Lakes – ‘It’s so far away and I don’t think the kids would ever come there,’ she told Sammy Murray, whom she had enlisted to help search – but via an estate agent she found a place on the shore of Esthwaite Water.12 By happy coincidence it was called Swiss Cottage, the same name as the café Pat buys for her long-lost sister Margaret. Having asked the Glossops and Piers Wenger to inspect it for their thoughts, she made an offer.

  In the midst of all this, at the invitation of the Manchester-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG), Victoria flew to Laos to make a short film for BBC Lifeline. She first heard from the explosive ordnance removal charity when asked to donate to an auction of celebrity footwear – it was no trouble to hand over an uncomfortable pair of Prada shoes bought for the BAFTAs. When MAG secured a prestigious fundraising slot on the BBC they emailed Lucy Ansbro asking if Victoria would consider fronting a film about the lingering devastation ca
used by US cluster bombs dropped during the Vietnam War. Victoria replied directly with a series of questions, which were duly answered. ‘Well I suppose I’d better do it then,’ she said. The charity arranged for her to spend four days in Xieng Khouang province in the north of the country. A rickety plane delivered her, a producer, a cameraman and the MAG representative to their billet – a set of wooden hilltop chalets with spectacular views of tropical forest. In the corner of the dining room there was a piano. ‘Do you play?’ the producer asked Victoria. There were long drives in intense heat. One morning at breakfast she reported she’d been pooed on by a gecko, she was bitten by a leech which had to be burned off, and on a visit to a scrap metal dealer the local MAG guide spotted a live cluster bomb and instructed the group to back away. Victoria visited a boy recently hospitalised by a cluster-bomb explosion and spent time on a farm where an all-female team were clearing unexploded cluster bombs dropped on one farmer’s land. The detonation was deafening.

  Back home after a twenty-six-hour journey, Victoria was soon taking Grace and Henry on a trip to Iceland to look at whales and geysers, then she joined the search for six actors to play Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. Word was spread through dance groups and drama clubs in the north, and she made a call for young talent via the Yorkshire Post. But the most reliable source was via Billy Elliot, whose casting director Jessica Ronane oversaw a rolling trawl for young singers and dancers. For long days in London, Manchester and Leeds, well over a hundred actors were seen. ‘Vic brought out the best in the children,’ says Sammy Murray, who was to oversee the dance scenes. ‘She put them at ease in a motherly way. Even the ones that couldn’t say their name because they were so shy, she would give the same time as anyone else.’ As part of her casting duties Victoria stood up to read scenes with them. ‘I must say my reading of Eric is luminous and touching and my interpretation of Ernie a triumph,’ she told Jane Wymark. ‘My reading of my own part however is sub Carry on Northern with unsubtle touches of late Peggy Mount.’13

  It was only once the quartet of child actors to play Eric and Ernie had been cast that the hunt for the adult actors could begin. There were plenty of halfway decent Erics. Then a gangly, awkward actor walked in lugging a heavy rucksack. Daniel Rigby had been pulling pints in a Baker Street pub, had just vacated his digs in Hackney and was on his way to perform stand-up at the Edinburgh Festival. ‘You just knew,’ says Jonny Campbell. ‘It was like Eric was in the room. He organically fused Eric’s personality and material to the point where it was just mesmerising to watch him. Vic was very, very positive. As soon as he left with his knapsack it was “Let’s book him.”’ He came back from Edinburgh to read with prospective Ernies: the best chemical reaction was with Bryan Dick, who had a far longer CV and could dance. As for the rest of the cast, Victoria pushed for Jim Moir, one half of Reeves and Mortimer, to play Eric’s quiet, long-suffering father George Bartholomew and Ted Robbins to be cast as the children’s impresario Jack Hylton.

  By late August, with a press release imminent, no actual title had yet been settled on. ‘I like Eric and Ernie because that’s what it’s about – they were 2 little boys called Eric and Ernie,’ she argued to her director, signing herself ‘Vic (ex dumb blonde)’.14 She got her way. While she threw herself into such producing tasks, Victoria had not done any serious acting in four years and confided to Charlotte Scott that she was ‘not that interested in playing this part – the bit of filming I like is the being outdoors and the hustle and bustle – the putting the costume part on I find a bit tedious … but of course I will give it my best shot’.15 The company met in King’s Cross to read through the script and rehearse, then decamped to Morecambe for a September shoot. Thanks to last-minute problems with the train Victoria decided to drive up three of the younger cast members herself, arriving late at night before a very early start.

  She felt odd about returning to Morecambe for the first time in a quarter of a century. Staying at the 1930s art-deco Midland Hotel, formerly a symbol of the town’s decline but now refurbished, she got up early every morning when it was still dark to walk along the prom. When it was lighter she rambled round the town on what she called a ‘memory walk’. One day Jonny Campbell was out with her when they were approached by a woman who introduced herself as a former pupil of Helen Wood. ‘Your mum was lovely,’ she said. ‘The way Vic reacted said it all …’

  Throughout the shoot Victoria took up where she’d left off on Housewife, 49. While playing her role of wife and mother, as executive producer she also kept an eye on the bigger picture, nitpicking about period design details when she felt something had been missed. Some of this was captured by a crew there to film a behind-the-scenes documentary which brought more money into the budget. She wasn’t entirely in charge. To protect her wig on set, Chrissie Baker made her wear a hairnet with a hairdryer contraption affixed to it at all times. ‘Chrissie would come down on her like a ton of bricks if she wasn’t wearing it,’ says Beth Willis. ‘But she was keen to get back out there, sucking it all up, taking it all in.’ When not producing Victoria gave a detailed performance as a big-hearted and proactive mother who makes it her life’s work to see her son fulfil his potential. In her most moving scene the camera held on her face as Eric and Ernie, flush with hope for the future, put Sadie on the train and send her back to the exile of home.

  Much of the filming took place in charismatic old theatres, requiring shots of laughing extras in the stalls. Ted Robbins reverted to his day job as a warm-up man to entertain them: ‘I stood up and did twenty minutes of stuff that I knew Vic loved. A lot of comics are very mean-spirited, and they can’t bear to see someone else getting laughs. She was stood at the side, and she would throw her head back and roar with laughter.’ For the culminating scene of the drama, in which Morecambe and Wise find their feet as a double act, Victoria as Sadie had to come in late and shuffle along a row. It was filmed at the Stockport Plaza and the stalls were stuffed with locally sourced volunteers from the families and friends of Peter Bowker and Jonny Campbell. Victoria sat down next to Piers Wenger, looking profoundly ill at ease in Fifties mufti, while beside him Beth Willis chuckled obligingly.

  At the very end of the shoot the explosive interview with the Guardian appeared. Victoria gave it to publicise her work in Laos, but the headline told another story: ‘I feel at the BBC I’m not trusted, not valued, not needed.’ She criticised the vast salaries for individual stars which meant cheese-paring when it came to costumes and wigs and complained that ‘there are great hierarchies and you can’t have a personal relationship. So it’s just defeating because it becomes faceless.’16 ‘It was pretty blunt,’ says Piers Wenger, ‘but then again she had felt very wounded by that experience. I had a conversation with Lucy [Ansbro] saying “It’s a bit awkward.” But it was fine really.’ Geoff Posner and Jon Plowman both wrote to high-five her for saying the unsayable, while a higher-up at ITV cannily invited her to abandon the BBC and come back to them. The irony was that Piers, then head of drama at BBC Wales, had become her most trusted friend, while his colleague Beth Willis with her partner Jonny Campbell were being adopted into her inner circle. ‘She just decided that we were going to be her friends,’ says Beth, ‘which is what she did with people, and then was incredibly loyal to them.’ (In the interview her trip to Laos went undiscussed and, when it was aired, her MAG appeal brought in a surprisingly low yield of only £6,000 in donations.)

  Another bond was formed on set with Daniel Rigby. ‘It took a long time for the sheen of her status to make you stop being so overwhelmed,’ he says. ‘By the end of the shoot we knew that we got on. Once she really made me laugh: we were walking to set and there was cable everywhere and the lady says, “Watch yourself on the cables,” and she proceeds to pretend to trip over every single one of them. It was really daft and for her surprisingly slapstick.’ After the shoot was over, Victoria made him an offer. ‘I’m sure you have lots of places to stay,’ she wrote in a congratulatory card, ‘but I do have a spare roo
m in my (empty) house and it would be lovely to see you … Or there’s the shed.’17 It was not an entirely selfless gesture. During the shoot Victoria took a day off to drive Henry to Leeds for the start of his course, while Grace was to spend the academic year in Verona. She was fearful of becoming ‘Miss Havisham in big empty house’, as she explained to Lesley Fitton. ‘He is broke and I wanted to help him out, he’s a stand up comic so I had a fellow feeling for him. He’s very shy and only makes toast.’18

  A surrogate version of the mother–son relationship they had played on film slowly developed in Highgate as Victoria’s shy lodger quietly slunk to and from the kitchen trying not to disturb his landlady. ‘What was really remarkable was hearing her discipline through other rooms,’ he says. ‘She’d be up at dawn and would exercise, spend the morning in the study. In the afternoon, if she’d done enough work, she would treat herself to a bit of telly – that’s how she put it.’ The television they watched together was mainly recorded episodes of MasterChef – Victoria delighted in cracking jokes at the expense of its presenter Gregg Wallace. Her invitation to stay till Christmas was soon extended to the summer.

  Aside from post-production on Eric & Ernie, and then press duties, Victoria had plenty to keep herself busy. The Manchester International Festival pressed her for a title and a synopsis for next year’s show. While in emails she kept referring to it as ‘Nymphs’, she alighted on That Day We Sang. Although she had not yet written a word, she sent very particular instructions about the image she had in her mind for the marketing: a photograph of a boy in the 1920s running along an alleyway in working-class Manchester. It was announced at the start of October. A week later she took possession of Swiss Cottage and pondered improvements. ‘Though the house needs quite a bit doing to it,’ she told Rosalind, ‘the view was so lovely it made up for it all.’ She anticipated a long haul for the builders, ‘but I’m really busy so they can just get on with it hopefully’.19