Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood (2012)

Victoria Wood CBE (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director.

Quotes

1978–1989

• Where are you in the menstrual cycle?
  Taurus.
  • From Wood's contribution to the revue Sex (1978), as cited in "The unseen Victoria Wood", The Spectator (13 November 2021)

• [Asked if she ever had childhood holidays in Blackpool] No. What do you take me for? We used to go to Vienna.
  • From an interview, as cited in "Growing out of Acorn", The Observer (12 November 1989), p. 36

Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985–1987)

• We'd like to apologise to our viewers in the North - it must be awful for you.
  • From a link by the continuity announcer (played by Susie Blake), as cited in "Victoria Wood - As Seen on TV (1985-86)", BFI Screenonline (2003-14)

• Sometimes I think that being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the pill.
  • Mrs Overall (Julie Walters) in "Acorn Antiques", as cited in "Victoria Wood: In her own words", BBC News (20 April 2016)

• [Song]]
  Not bleakly,
  Not meekly
  Beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly
  Let's do it, let's do it tonight!
  • "The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let's Do It)" (1987), as published in Lucky Bag: The Victoria Wood Song Book, London: Methuen, 1992 (second edition).
  • Note: The regular series ended in 1986. A special was broadcast in 1987.

2003–2011

• I was just thinking as Alan [Bennett] and I walked up the steps, how nice it would have been if one of us had come up in a stairlift.
  • At the memorial service for Dame Thora Hird in Westminster Abbey (15 September 2003), as cited in "Dame Thora Hird Family and friends celebrate life of enduring star of stage and screen", The Herald (16 September 2003).
  • In later life, Dame Thora was known for advertising Churchill's stairlifts on television and in the press.

• [On a difficult relationship with her mother, Helen] If she'd only gone out to work, we would all have been a lot happier. Being in the house drove her mad. She hated housework, cooking. She'd go into the garden and chop down trees. She was full of energy and batting against the walls with it. And this gave me a real sense that you had to have your own life. It's ridiculous to stay at home with your children if it drives you nuts. Children would much rather see a happy, smiley person come back.
  • From an interview with Harriet Lane, as cited in "Victoria's secrets", The Observer (9 January 2005)

• [Asked if being interviewed is a form of torture for her] No, people always think I hate doing interviews. I don't. I wouldn't do them if I didn't like them. I have to say that at the start of every interview.
• [On remaining unattached after a divorce] Well, I think there's not much of a chance for me finding somebody of my age. Gentlemen of my age are dropping down 30 years to find girlfriends. [Informed: "That's not always the case."] You're right. I need to get out of the house.
  • Interviewed by Chrissy Iley, as cited in "Victoria Wood interview: 'I fear being my mother'", The Telegraph (12 June 2011; 20 April 2016 reprint)

Undated

• The Italians have got opera, the Spanish have got flamenco dancing. What have we got? Weight Watchers.
  • "30 of Victoria Wood’s funniest jokes and one-liners", iNews (20 April 2018)

• People think I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly.
  • "30 of Victoria Wood’s funniest jokes and one-liners", iNews (20 April 2018)

• I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don’t know who got my moped but I’ve been driving that Peugeot for years.
  • "30 of Victoria Wood’s funniest jokes and one-liners", iNews (20 April 2018)

• When you're in the middle of having a baby, it's a bit like watching two very inefficient removal men, trying to get a very large sofa through a very small doorway. Only in this case you can't say, "Oh sod it, bring it through the French windows".
  • As cited in "Victoria Wood: In her own words", BBC News (20 April 2016)

Song lyrics

• I don’t say 'who'. I do say 'whom'.
  I never use the toilet, just the smallest room.
  I don't say gay. I still say queer.
  I think that Mussolini had the right idea.
  • "Pam", as cited in "Victoria Wood obituary", The Guardian (20 April 2016)

About Victoria Wood

• I was researching Mrs Brown’s Boys and found that, with music hall, Laurel and Hardy, Les Dawson, Dick Emery and so on, more men had played working-class women in British comedy than women. [...] That's up until Victoria Wood. She almost single-handedly changed that. She and Billy Connolly essentially prepared the way for alternative comedy and the rise of the stand-up — bridging the gap between the working men's clubs and the comedy clubs. Before her, funny women were from a rarefied sphere like Joyce Grenfell. Wood spoke the way real people spoke and she was hugely successful. She made it possible for Tracey Ullman, even Peter Kay, to think a career was possible.
  • Shane Allen, as cited in "Victoria Wood: a blunt, bawdy trailblazer inside the cuddly dinner lady", The Times (24 April 2016)
  • Shane Allen is the former head of BBC Comedy.

External links

Authority control: WorldCat search