What might Victoria Wood have made of today’s sex and gender debates?

[TheNoWord]

Ten years ago we lost one of the funniest and smartest women, a true genius, a woman who really understood the reality of women’s lives, and wrote about it as both comedy and drama.

I find myself wondering what she would have made of the current gender madness?

"The perception of Wood as a ‘national treasure’, and her congenial onstage persona, often belied the darker aspects of her work. That this so often went unnoticed made it all the more potent"

Andrew Doyle has written a tribute:

https://www.andrewdoyle.org/p/the-genius-of-victoria-wood

Let's not get blue dear
At least we see each other's point of view dear
I like big hunky men
And so do you, dear
Things would never have worked.

What a lovely tribute - and what a loss to the world she was.

Pop on some sling backs & call me Deirdre?

I think she would have been able to poke fun at the whole ideology in her unique way. I miss her

I was gutted when she died. I met her once ‘in the wild’ - she was lovely.

The 'Swim the Channel' sketch was heartbreaking.

I suspect she'd have steered well clear of it in her work and in interviews, not being a comedian who tended to comment directly on cultural flashpoints, but I like to think that she would have known exactly what was what.

There was a cross dressing escaped prisoner in an episode of dinnerladies. I always thought Bren was based on her own personality - she was very accepting of all sorts of people but certainly knew what was what.

My favourite Victoria Wood line: "you can pin up a photocopy of a poem in a bus shelter and call it a university these days." I like to think she'd have had some fun with lefty woke bros and handmaidens.

God, I miss Victoria Wood..... 💔

“ I don’t say gay I still say queer and I think that Mussolini had the right idea. “
The Pam song.

Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne died in the same year.
Both had such a wonderfully comic take on everyday, quite mundane, life.
That was a sad year.

Such a loss loved her.

She was a genuis, huge fan, but she was a luvvie at the end of the day and like them all, they all have gone along with it. Such a disappointment for me in terms of people I admire

I blame Tony Blair 🤣

I think she was so bright sometimes not everyone ‘got’ all of her humour.
Yes, they laughed at Barry and Freda.
I think she would have dealt with the pace of change admirably, but of course by the end of her life she wasn’t doing as much writing.
Dinnerladies was genius and showed how very different people could rub along together with very little in common - whether it was Twinkle and her drugs man only coming on a certain day and Daily Mail Dolly’s cruising.
Of course, not all of it has ‘aged’ brilliantly but I don’t give a toss, a toss to give I do not have….
Like Caroline Aherne, both woman had a gift at observation. I still watch The Royle Family and howl. It wouldn’t be ‘allowed’ today mainly due to Jim calling our Anthony a ‘little gay boy’ but I can remember humour like that at the time, and it’s just the way families often were.
I used to watch it with my parents and my mum couldn’t sit through it, mainly because the house was filthy. I agreed, but now I see a family who adores each other, just very happy in each others company. They were rich, without money.
As for Victoria nobody in my lifetime will ever write anything as funny as, ‘Where’s my Clint?’
Petula Gordeno was a wonderful comic creation, she was so like mum’s mum it was like her visiting us. She always had a ‘Reg from the petrol station’ in tow, always skint, always glam, my mum was nothing like her.

I worked in a “northern factory” when dinnerladies was broadcast. It had a coffee shop that did until the canteen opened and all morning there was a queue of people ordering “Three rounds of white and one of brown, two jams and a tea cake with an extra butter” for their office. VW knew her people.

Stan (“female women”) and Tony (“back in the land of no-speakee lady talk”) certainly knew who the women were.

Can you tell I ❤️ dinnerladies?

Me cone’s out, me dander’s up!!!!

My favourite line was one she wrote for the character of the woman newsreader. " Now, I'll hand you over to my male colleage, who will read the autocue far more expensively"

I watched a programme about Victoria Wood (details gone from memory) with long clips of interviews with her. In one, talking about her teenage years, she said how much she disliked being a girl and wished she could be a boy - but ‘I’m fine with it now’. I think she would have recognised the unhappiness that led so many teenage girls into the trans delusion; and I hope she would have seen it for what it was. But so many people, smart and funny people were captured. Maybe it’s good that I don’t know whether she would have been one of them. She was so brilliant, but sadly it’s not just the mediocre who were taken in.

She fought for her success in a male dominated field. I think she’d recognise the unfairness of women’s awards being won by men. But she wouldn’t care how people presented.

I love Dinner Ladies and rely on it to cheer me up at difficult times. Nevertheless, I’m increasingly surprised at some of the crude, unwitty, sexual jokes in the episodes. I’m sure Victoria Wood would have moved with the times, but it’s not possible to be sure what her views would have been. I just wish she hadn’t died.

Omg I love you for posting this! I have thought this many a time. I loved her so much. I’d like to think she would have had no truck with it. Watching her stand ups made me feel less alone when I was going through awful postnatal depression and relationship breakdown. ‘Welcome to the world of sacherelle…’. Very missed.

I loved her films as well. Housewife 49 was a particular gem.

I saw her on stage three times. She had such a wonderful cross- generational appeal and was never rude about anyone (maybe diabetics😀).

Pat and Margaret was also a gem.