AGONY OF ONE How Victoria learned to laugh past a childhood of neglect
Star recalls ill-fitting school team kit he wore as a boy
VICTORIA Wood’s wit and warmth made her one of the country’s best-loved comedians and a true national treasure – but behind the laughter lay the trauma of a tough childhood.
Here, an exclusive extract from Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, by Jasper Rees, tells how the comedian, who died of cancer aged 62 in 2016, was shaped by her early life.
Victoria Wood had an adoring female audience long before she drew her first breath. “The baby’s kicking,” her expectant mother would say. “Come and put your hand on my tummy.” Victoria’s sisters Penelope, seven, and Rosalind, two-and-three-quarters, would feel their unborn sibling beating out a rhythm with her feet. Their brother Christopher, who was 12, may have been less engrossed by another arrival.
After Helen Wood gave birth in a nursing home in Prestwich on the northerly outskirts of Manchester, Stanley Wood’s diary entry recorded the birth of “Victoria Wood, 7lbs 12ozs born @ 8pm”.
The proud father pronounced her “a lovely baby in every way”.
Sadly, this attention was not to last. Fiercely private, Victoria rarely spoke of what appears to have become neglect in her later childhood. But beneath her outgoing stage persona, their actions had created deep-seated feelings of abandonment, leaving her crippled with shyness and battling with selfloathing for much of her adult life.
It was in 1958, when Victoria was five, that family life began to disintegrate. The Wood family moved from their suburban home in Bury to Birtle Edge House, an isolated former children’s home overlooking the Rossendale Valley.
The isolation was exactly what appealed to Helen. “My mother couldn’t be doing with neighbours and gossip and suburban life,” said Victoria. “Nobody came to tea at all.”
Helen decided to return to education to get the qualifications she had missed out on, having had to leaveave school young, and she became consumedmed in her own life. Victoria later reflected that she “loved having babies but didn’t like childrenn very much”. Stanley, an insurance urance salesman and part-timee writer and musician, struggledd to connect with his children. en.
The family started to lead cellular lives – “like ke battery hens”, Victoria said. When they did meet they would do so on a provisional basis, standing in a group to talk and josh, but never sitting. Stanley’s habit was to natter in doorways,y, as if always keeping open the option of a gegetaway. “My father was lovely in a way,”w Victoria would say, “but not easy to talk to. He didn’t hurt one, one he just didn’t connect.” Victoria was once asked if the family had rows. She said: “Didn’t talk ta enough to have rows!” Helen, H a keen dressmaker, struggled stru to keep her daughters ter looking neat and clean. She Sh was summoned for a chat ch with the headmaster
about the girls’ appearance. “We were both very dirty and obviously looked neglected,” says Rosalind.
This was a product of Helen’s struggles with depression, during bouts of which she would give up on cooking and washing.ashing. “Sometimes you’dyoud go throughghh the sitting room and she’d be sitting inn a slump,” says Penelope.
Annene Sweeney was one of the few schoolhoool friends to visit Victoria at thee house and found it “ramblingliing and neglected” but “thrillinglylinngly bohemian”. Most unusually,allly, “there didn’t seem to be anybodydyy there saying, ‘Do this, do that’. VVictoria never used to talk about hherer parents at all.”
Victoriatoria catered for herselflff and, says Anne, ended up “eat ingngg quitequite badly”.”.. Then Helen left.leeft.
Victoria’stooria’s friend, actress Julie Walters, said the comic’s 1994 TV film Pat and Margaret was inspired by her mum. “She said her mum left when she was about 11,” she said. “When she left, Victoria went into chaos. She felt abandoned and couldnt couldn’t function very well.well”well.” When Victoria was 12, Helen took her to
the GP and asked for a pills to suppress both their appetites. Penelope says: “Mum wasn’t very nice to Vicky really. I think she found it hard that she was so scruffy and lazy and sleeping and reading all the timetime. I think Vicky mightt have been hard going for Mum.” The fact Victoria’s sisterssisteer were tall and slim made it hardeharderer for her. “I felt they were betterbettte at everything,” she said. “I thought if you were thinn you were happy, if yyouo had a boyfriend you’dyouu’d be happy, if you had a different family and liveliveded in a nice, clean semi, youyou’du’d be happy.” Dieting becamebeec a leitmotif off Victoria’s comedycome for 30 years.ea She sangssa about it as a gloomy student in Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Fat, and it was a preoccupation in the early sketches she wrote for herself and Julie.
“This is a boutique, not the elephant house,” says Julie as a sales assistant in 1981’s Wood and Walters, aiming a sub-machine gun at Victoria.
Her trick was to mention her weight before anyone else did. In As Seen on TV in 1985 she said: “You could dial my measurements and get through to the Midland Bank, Bulawayo.”
As her career progressed, she began to fight back. A section in her 1993 stand-up show angrily confronted the slimming industry. Through Dolly and Jean in Dinnerladies in the late 90s she poked fun at women bickering about weight. Finally, in her last stand-up tour At It Again in 2001, she publicly admitted to an eating disorder.
She said: “If you’ve got an eating disorder, eating replaces almost any need you have. It covers up your feelings. It puts up a barrier between you and people because people are scary but food’s not scary...”
She confronted her demons in her hard-hitting 2004 documentary, Victoria Wood’s Big Fat Documentary.
She ended with the rallying cry: “If life deals you a pile of manure, they say you should grow roses. So I say, if life gives you a belly, go dancing.” Extracted by Emily Retter from Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood by Jasper Rees, published by Trapeze, £ 20. Also available in ebook and audiobook. Text copyright © Jasper Rees 2020.
With brand new set of strips to pull on. They won’t be running about with a top at their knees. It’s a fabulous initiative and I’m sure they’ll look the part.” In a career that took him to Norwich, Blackburn, Chelsea,
Celtic, Birmingham and Aston Villa, Sutton has quite a back catalogue when it comes to strips from his former clubs.
There is one, however, that has special pride of place in his house.
“I didn’t think I would ever be particularly sentimental about strips but, as I have got older, I probably have felt a little bit differently,” he said.
“The one I have framed and hanging up is from a Champions League game against Barcelona at Celtic Park. Henrik Larsson had only just left Celtic a few months earlier and, of course, he came off the bench and scored against us.
“I scored as well that night but it hardly mattered. We lost 3-1 and Henrik could not stand to celebrate his goal in front of the Celtic support. It was a strange night.
“I think everyone knows what I think of Henrik and how much I loved playing alongside him. He was a really special talent and a good friend. The strip from that one is signed and framed.”
There are photos from his Celtic days with his five boys in Hoops strips celebrating the Scottish Premiership crown that boast pride of place.
“They loved all that when I was at Celtic,” he said. “They’d get to go on the pitch at the end of the season when the trophy was presented and they’d have a bit of a party to themselves at Celtic Park.
“They are nice to look back on now and we have some really special memories of that time.
“I have a soft spot for all the clubs I played for. I liked all the kits I wore in my playing days, although there is one pretty horrific one from my Norwich days back in the early 90s that just looks like a splodge. Not the best one I wore!”