Victoria Wood

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2007

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Victoria Wood. For decades she has been one of our best-loved writers and performers. The television series she's made - including Acorn Antiques, Dinnerladies and Housewife 49 - have won her a devoted following as well as stacks of awards.

But, in a moving and open interview, she describes how, as a teenager, she felt she was a misfit - she had few friends, she struggled with her weight and at school she used to steal other people's homework. She joined a youth theatre and it was, she says, the saving of her. She found like-minded people and a sense that she had something to offer.

She is very careful about how much of her own life she puts into her work. She doesn't mind saying she cuts her pubic hair with nail-scissors, but rarely discusses her children on the stage. Now she is embarking on her next project. She says she is too anxious to talk about it, except to say it will look at the life of a middle-aged woman whose marriage has foundered.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: What a Fool Believes by The Doobie Brothers Book: A big book by Charles Dickens Luxury: A bumper book of Sudoku with blank pages & pens.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,
0:24.7	history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.
0:27.8	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:35.3	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:38.4	The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My castaway this week is Victoria Wood, writer, actress, composer and stand-up comedian.
1:03.8	She says, comedy is about whether people like you or not.
1:07.3	If that is indeed the case, then she is positively adored, with 25 years of sell-out
1:11.9	tours, smash-hit stage shows and successful sitcoms to her credit. But more recently, her career
1:17.3	has changed direction. She wrote and starred in an award-winning drama about a Lancashire
1:21.8	housewife during World War II, a poignant story of domestic disharmony, isolation and a desire for freedom.
1:28.9	Although it was far from autobiographical, it held strong resonances with her own background.
1:34.0	Can we start then with Housewife 49? Can we start back to front?
1:37.6	The two BAFTAs in one night, quite a coup.
1:40.7	Quite heavy.
1:43.2	Why did you decide to take on something that was so different from
1:45.9	what you were very well known for? Well, I didn't do it specifically to be different. I was very
1:50.0	attracted to the diary of Nella Last, which was published in the early 80s after she died.
1:56.9	And when I was asked to do something for Granada, I thought, oh, maybe this would make a good drama, I thought.
2:03.5	And Nella asked the character, can you explain a little bit more about her?
2:06.5	Well, she was a middle-aged housewife. She was 49. At the start of the war, she had what was obviously, or seemingly, obviously, difficult marriage, that they were a little bit estranged.
2:16.4	Her husband was very buttoned up.
	...

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