Recurring Sketches
As well as numerous stand-alone sketches and songs, the show also had many recurring items. Each show would open with Wood performing a stand-up comedy monologue, often using material she had already honed on her stage tours. Within the half-hours that followed, there were usually several fairly regular sketch items mixed in.
Linking many of the sketches was Susie Blake as a snobbish and arrogant television continuity announcer. Notable lines spoken by Blake include "We'd like to apologise to viewers in the North. It must be awful for them".
Patricia Routledge starred as Kitty, a self-righteous middle-aged spinster from Cheadle, who featured in a weekly monologue. To show the character's forthrightness, Wood had originally written Kitty's opening introduction as "Hello, I'm Kitty. I've had a boob off and I can't stomach whelks"; the "boob off" line was later changed to "I've given gallons of blood". The Kitty character shared similarities with a character in one of Wood's earlier sketch shows, Wood and Walters, Dotty (then played by Julie Walters).
Margery & Joan featured Wood (as Joan) and Walters (as Margery) parodying banal daytime television magazine shows.
Gail and Carl was a regular sketch in series one featuring Andrew Livingston and Victoria Wood as a young, naive northern couple. For example, Carl, in response to being asked where babies come from, replies, "You want to get a pamphlet. We've got one at home about lagging."
The He Didn't? sketches that featured in the second series starred Wood as Kelly Marie Tunstall, a delinquent teenager standing at a bus stop telling her friend (Mary Jo Randle) ever more fanciful stories."So he walks over, right, an' 'e 'ad tattoos on 'is arms - anchor 'ere, microwave 'ere." "He didn't!" "He did." Each responds to the other after a ludicrous anecdote with the words "He didn't?" "He did!"
Read more about this topic: Victoria Wood As Seen On TV
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