We were awful.. we never stopped laughing
COMIC Victoria Wood was cripplingly shy and struggled to form relationships after a troubled childhood.
But in adult life there was at least one person with whom she developed a strong and lasting bond.
Actress Julie Walters became not only a close pal, but a muse – their talents meshed to help propel them to the top.
In part two of our series of extracts from Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, by Jasper Rees, he describes the start of their friendship. It led to collaborations including 1982’s TV sketch series Wood and Walters, cementing them as one of showbusiness’s great duos. Teenage Victoria’s first meeting with fledgling actress Julie Walters certainly made an impression.
Applying for a drama course at Manchester Polytechnic, a debilitating attack of nerves caused her to vomit: “We’d do a bit of an audition and then I’d have to go away and throw up and then I’d come back again...”
Her recovery coincided with the presence of an English and drama student who was showing everyone around and reminiscing about her time as a nurse wheeling a commode around the ward.
She was a small young woman with “lots and lots of shoulder-length brown hair but very, very thick with a great big fringe and lots of eye make-up, very small eyes and lots of blue liner underneath. And just keeping the whole room completely entertained walking around the room. I didn’t know her name, but I used to wonder.”
This was Victoria Wood’s first encounter with Julie Walters. Her application was unsuccessful. Their next meeting, almost a decade later, was at The Bush, a tiny boxlike theatre above a pub in west London, which was planning a topical revue for the summer of 1978, In at the Death.
A relatively unknown Victoria was persuaded to join. Nervous, she almost decided against it but her view changed when she heard one of the actresses telling stories about nursing.
Her name was Julie Walters, and Victoria dredged up a memory of her audition: “Vic said, ‘ We’ve met before’, and I said, ‘No, we
haven’t. What do you mean? When?’ She said, ‘I auditioned.’ Then I remembered in my first year I was used as an usher, which I loved. An image of this little girl flashed up. ‘Oh my God, I do remember you being sick in a bucket.’” Julie’s presence made it easier for Victoria to join: “I thought, oh well, maybe if she’s going to be in this it actually could be quite fun to be in.” They were soon peeling off from the cast to lunch on liver boil and peas at the Cafe Rest in Goldhawk Road. Once, they got stuck down a cul-desac in Victoria’s Mini van, necessitating a three-point turn in which she dented a wall. “Don’t listen to me,” her new friend advised her. “I don’t know what I’m saying half the time.” Instead Victoria listened as she had never listened to anyone before. “We made one another laugh straight away,” says Julie. “It was cruel taking the piss out of other people. Awful we were but it made us really laugh.”
It was for that show Victoria first wrote material for them. The sketch she tentatively presented was titled Sex and was set in a northern library.
Julie was to play a naive librarian dumped by a man called Brett after a one-night stand. Victoria was a housewife who is scathing about sex and the absurdity of male genitalia: How’s he expected to take you to the brink of ecstasy with something that looks like a school dinner without the custard? Victoria came to consider the sketch, and specifically this set-up and pay-off, as a life-changing revelation: “It was after four years of trying to be funny and being nearly funny, which is awful, I was funny. And then I knew how you wrote a joke.” She likened the discovery to striking a gong.
Integral to this new sensation was an instinctive knowledge that she had found someone she could be funny with: “When we stood on stage doing that sketch – and we both loved doing it – it gave me such a boost.”
Victoria was so mesmerised, she immediately wrote Talent, a play, about an aspiring singer, inspired by Julie.
In 1979 she was invited to adapt it for TV, with she and Julie starring, and together they made an impact at the studio. One day the boom operator, overheard them on their radio mics in the ladies chatting about the clitoris and men with big long poles.
“They were pretending they didn’t know the sound boys were listening in on it,” says Baz Taylor, the director. “It went round like wildfire that these girls were real rebels. They took Granada by storm. Nobody had seen anything like them in operation before.”
Work had to stop at 10 o’clock, owing to union rules, and they would start drinking. One night they both ended up falling asleep in Victoria’s room when a fire alarm sounded. “It went on for ages,” said Victoria. “We were right at the top of the hotel and ran down, a bit dazed, and out into the street, to find it was broad daylight and they were testing the fire bells.”
Julie was in her pyjamas: “Oh my God, we used to get p We woke on the floor [of the Midland bar] one time, someone hoovering around us.”
Extracted by Emily Retter from Let’s Do It by Jasper Rees, Trapeze, hardback £20, also available in ebook, £9.99. Text © Jasper Rees 2020.
After four years of being nearly funny, which is awful, I knew how you wrote a joke VICTORIA WOOD RECALLS HER PRIDE IN A COMEDY SKETCH