From lonely girl to comic genius

filling up time as much as anything.” Salvation came at the age of 15 when Wood joined a youth theatre company in Rochdale. She went on to study drama at Birmingham University and won a heat of the New Faces TV talent show in 1974.

She worked in theatres across the UK, produced songs and plays and wrote and starred in TV’s Wood And Walters with her lifelong friend Julie Walters. But it was several years before she found her voice as Britain’s first female stand- up comedian.

She was a perfectionist with a talent for making ordinary life funny and surreal in sketches such as Acorn Antiques and shows including Dinnerladies and she often stayed up all night writing. In 1993, she sold out the Royal Albert Hall for 16 consecutive nights, holding “nearly 6,000 people in the palm of her hand” at every show.

Rees’s biography is a must- read for Wood fans. It includes her marriage break- up, her final illness and the story of how she came to write The Ballad Of Barry And Freda.

Often known as Let’s Do It, this much- loved song about a frisky wife trying to get her husband into bed brought the house down whenever Wood performed it, particularly the line “come and melt the buttons on my flame- proof nightie” and “beat me on the bottom with a

HIT WIT: With Julie Walters, left, sister Rosalind, top, and as a child

Woman’s Weekly”. Wood d h had d always intended to write her own memoir but her death at the age of 62 in 2016 put paid to that.

But her children, Grace and Henry Durham, authorised Rees to write their mother’s biography and granted him access to her audio diary, letters, manuscripts and photo albums. Rees also interviewed her ex- husband, the magician Geoffrey Durham, and close friends including Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston and Dawn French.

Wood loathed being called a “national treasure” but that’s what she was. This meticulously researched account of her life shows what a loss she is to us all.