Victoria Wood CBE (19 May 1953 – 20 April 2016) was an English comedian, actress, lyricist, singer, composer, pianist, screenwriter, producer and director.

Wood wrote and starred in dozens of sketches, plays, musicals, films and sitcoms over several decades and her live comedy act was interspersed with her own compositions which she performed at the piano.

Much of her humour was grounded in everyday life and included references to activities, attitudes and products that are considered to exemplify Britain.

[3][4] Her frequent long-term collaborators included Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, and Anne Reid.

Shortly afterwards she wrote a third play for Granada, Happy Since I Met You, again with Walters alongside Duncan Preston as the male lead.

In October 1983 Wood performed her first solo stand-up show, Lucky Bag, in a five-week run at the King's Head Theatre in Islington.

Lucky Bag went on a short UK tour in November and December 1984 and was also released as a live album recorded at the Edinburgh Festival in 1983.

Acorn Antiques is remembered for characters such as "Mrs Overall" (played by Walters), the deliberately bad camera angles and wobbling sets, and Celia Imrie's sarcastic tone as "Miss Babs".

It tells the story of Freda (a woman eager for sex) and Barry (an introverted man terrified of intimate relations), and makes clever use of allusions to a multitude of risqué activities while avoiding all taboo words.

[3][22] In 1991, she appeared on the Comic Relief single performing "The Smile Song", the flipside to "The Stonk" (a record by ITV comedians Gareth Hale and Norman Pace with charity supergroup The Stonkers).

The 104-date tour broke box office records, including 15 sell out shows at London's Royal Albert Hall, and played to residencies in Sheffield, Birmingham, Plymouth, Bristol, Nottingham, Manchester, Leicester, Liverpool, Bournemouth, Oxford, Southampton, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Leeds and Hull.

[3][28] The television film Pat and Margaret (1994), starring Wood and Julie Walters as long-lost sisters with very different lifestyles, continued her return to stand-alone plays with a poignant undercurrent to the comedy.

Wood set out on a 68-date tour of the UK in May 1996, which played at venues in Leicester, Sheffield, Ipswich, Blackpool, Wolverhampton, Bradford, Newcastle, Bournemouth, Brighton, Nottingham, Oxford, Southend, Manchester and Cambridge.

[3] Her first sitcom dinnerladies (1998), continued her now established milieu of mostly female, mostly middle-aged characters depicted vividly and amusingly, but with a counterpoint of sadder themes.

[35][36] Wood wrote the one-off ITV serious drama Housewife, 49 (2006), an adaptation of the diaries of Nella Last, and played the eponymous role of an introverted middle-aged character who discovers new confidence and friendships in Lancashire during the Second World War.

[37] The film also starred Stephanie Cole and David Threlfall as well as, in a small role, Sue Wallace with whom Wood had worked before and studied alongside at Birmingham.

Wood returned to stand-up comedy, with a special performance for the celebratory show Happy Birthday BAFTA on 28 October 2007, alongside other household names.

[43] In December 2007, when a guest on the radio programme Desert Island Discs, Wood said she was about to make her first foray into film, writing a script described as a contemporary comedy about a middle-aged person.

In 2009, Wood provided the voice of God for Liberace, Live From Heaven by Julian Woolford at London's Leicester Square Theatre.

[45] For the 2011 Manchester International Festival, Wood wrote, composed and directed That Day We Sang,[46] a musical set in 1969 with flashbacks to 1929.

It tells the story of a middle-aged couple who find love after meeting on a TV programme about a choir they both sang in 40 years previously.

Although the characters are imaginary, the choir sang with the Hallé Youth Orchestra[47] in Manchester's Free Trade Hall on a record that sold more than a million copies.

Apart from the pieces on the 1929 recording (Purcell's "Nymphs and Shepherds" and the Evening Benediction from Hansel and Gretel) the score for the musical was written by Wood.

[57][58] On 26 December 2014, a television movie adaptation of That Day We Sang, directed by Wood, starring Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, was shown on BBC Two.

[59] In early 2015, Wood took part in a celebrity version of The Great British Bake Off for Comic Relief and was crowned Star Baker in her episode.

She was the highest-ranked woman on the list, above French and Saunders (who paid tribute to her in their Lord of the Rings spoof, where a map of Middle-Earth shows a forest called 'Victoria Wood'), Joan Rivers and Joyce Grenfell.

Wood's character eventually stands up to him and helps the WRVS (Women's Royal Voluntary Service) in their preparations for British soldiers.

Wood attended Quaker meetings[80] with her husband and was a vegetarian, once remarking, "I'm all for killing animals and turning them into handbags; I just don't want to have to eat them.

The main series, titled Our Friend Victoria, aired on BBC One between 11 April and 9 May and concluded later in the year with a Christmas special on 23 December 2017.

The seven episodes were presented by Julie Walters, Richard E. Grant, Michael Ball, Maxine Peake, The League of Gentlemen, Daniel Rigby and Anne Reid.