When she was asked recently for her all-time favourite Christmas TV moment, Victoria Wood chose the celebrated Morecambe and Wise sketch featuring Andre Previn. ‘It was so well written’, she said. ‘And a rare example of a celebrity playing himself successfully’.
Both the choice and the reason for it, reveal much about the comedienne herself. Victoria Wood has been playing the role of Victoria Wood the celebrity since the early-Eighties when, after many a false dawn, her television career finally pulled out of the siding in which it had stalled in the mid-Seventies. From the BBC series Wood & Walters onward, she began to secure a place in the nation’s heart and psyche - or at least her brand of comic writing found a home and settled down. The triumphs and the trophies followed swiftly. The most recent being yet another statuette from The British Comedy Awards, this month. Perhaps the greater accolade is that…