Victoria Wood does Family Planning
One of British television's greatest comediennes delivers a masterclass in surreal jollification
The wonderful Victoria Wood.
What is there to say about one of the funniest British comedic writers and performers that has not already been said?
Because her writing was so warm and tinged with British surrealism, as demonstrated in this marvellous clip of her joshing about with the equally wonderful Julie Walters, Wood’s ability to reflect the best and worst of the British back onto themselves was sometimes missed.
Apart from her effortless ability to toy with cadence (something which she struggled with long and hard, as she would reveal in later interviews), Wood was also a canny critic of the British class system and how the upper-working and lower-middle classes bumped against each other, with sometimes hilarious consequences.
Wood was able to hone in on a very British obsession with sex and the politics of marriage, wrapping up both in a charming and disarming whimsy that almost, but never quite, managed to camouflage what she was alluding to.
She was saucy, was Victoria Wood, and her fans loved her for it.
She was also very funny.
Not amusing or jocular, but laugh out loud, thrillingly funny.
Just over seven years after her death, Wood is today sorely missed, and the world is a colder, harder place without her spirited humour to lighten the current war-torn and battle-scarred mood.