Victoria Wood: Always in our hearts
A look back at the life of a national treasure
Victoria was born on 19 May 1953, the youngest of four children, to parents Stanley, a gifted musician, and Helen. The family – including her brother Christopher and sisters Penelope and Rosalind – lived in Bury, Lancashire. Victoria was named in tribute to her mother’s love of the Victorian era.
Victoria said of her mum: ‘She always claimed very proudly to have no sense of humour. But she could be quite witty, and she was very observant. She was always coming back and telling us what she’d seen, so she had a good eye.’
When Victoria was five, the family moved to a large, rundown house outside town. The nearest bus stop was a half-hour walk down a rough farm track. ‘Nobody came to tea at all,’ Victoria recalled. ‘We had to bribe people to come and visit.’
Young Victoria grew up loving entertaining her older siblings. She went on to learn the piano and later joined a youth theatre in Rochdale. Rebellious and a rule-breaker, she began making up comic verses based on her observations of life.
Talking about herself as a teenager, she said: ‘I wasn’t very prepossessing to look at. I was fat. I had spots. I had glasses. We only used to wash our hair once a week, so by Thursday afternoon it was like chip-pan fat. But if I’d been thin as a teenager and gone out with boys, I wouldn’t have had anything to write about.’
Her television debut
Victoria went on to study drama and theatre arts at Birmingham and, in 1974, her big break came with the new ITV talent show, New Faces. She didn’t win, but her performance got her an agent – and her telly career began, as she became the resident pianist for That’s Life!, presented by Esther Rantzen, singing topical comedy songs.
Meeting Julie Walters
Julie Walters recalls meeting Victoria in a theatre show in London in 1978.
‘We made one another laugh straight away,’ says Julie. For Victoria, it was a partnership where she’d found someone she could be funny with. ‘When we stood on stage doing a sketch, it
‘If I’d been thin and gone out with boys, I’d have nothing to write about’
gave me such a boost,’ she said. ‘Ah, now I know – now I know what I’m doing.’ They went on to star together in TV hits such as Wood & Walters, Victoria Wood:
As Seen On TV and dinnerladies. They went their separate ways for a while when Julie found starring roles in movies. ‘Being a comedian takes a long time,’ Victoria explained. ‘Julie was doing things like Educating Rita and being nominated for Oscars, and I was playing Southport Theatre to 250 people. People would say, “Aren’t you jealous?” Well, yeah, I was, but I was dedicated to learning that job.’
Finding love
Victoria met Geoffrey Durham when she was 23. Four years older than her, he had a magic act, calling himself The Great Soprendo. As far as Victoria was concerned, it was ‘a fantastic stroke of luck – I couldn’t have met a better person for me.’ The couple moved to Morecambe. In this period, her occasional live shows were not a success due to her crippling shyness. ‘I just sat there with my back to the audience, mumbled my way through 12 songs without any patter, and they were bored stiff after three minutes,’ Victoria recalled. She and Geoffrey married in 1980, but split in 2002 after 26 years.
Becoming a mother
The night Victoria went into labour with her daughter Grace, she and Geoffrey watched synchronised swimming from the Olympics in Seoul – ‘better than the epidural’. Victoria’s joy at becoming a mum was instant. ‘She bathed in the glory of it,’ says Geoffrey. Now, 32, Grace is a mezzo-soprano opera singer. Their son Henry, born four years later, is a songwriter.
Career highlights
In 1993, she sold out the Royal Albert Hall for 15 nights – a record for a solo performer. Serious roles for TV included the lead in her own drama
Housewife, 49 and as Eric Morecambe’s mother in the BBC drama
Eric & Ernie. She was awarded a CBE aged 55.
Body image
After a lifetime battling with her weight, she said in 2004’s Victoria Wood’s Big Fat
Documentary: ‘You have to be able to face yourself in the mirror. If you think you’re all right, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. If life gives you a belly, go dancing.’
Her final illness
Always a private person, Victoria died in 2016, aged 62, at her home in Highgate, London, after a short battle with cancer. One of her last visitors in hospital was Julie Walters, who found Victoria in a state of determined denial. ‘Vic said, “I just need to get the pain managed and then I’m going to write something,”’ recalls Julie.
‘It was her way of dealing with it.’
• Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography Of Victoria Wood (Orion, £20) by Jasper Rees is out now