9 d. ago Becoming Victoria Wood review – intimate and hilarious portrait of the trailblazing standup

Featuring Wood, her famous sidekicks Julie Waters and Celia Imrie and other female standups, this documentary is tender, moving and an absolute hootThere is a moment at the start of this documentary about the comedian Victoria Wood when you realise what she was up against at the beginning of her career: a snippet from the archives of Melvyn Bragg hailing her as Britain’s first female standup comedian. That wasn’t entirely the case, but it seems unthinkable now that it took until the 1980s for women to break through in any numbers. In 1985, when season one of Wood’s sketch show As Seen on TV aired on BBC2, there were sniffs of doubt that a woman could front a comedy programme, let alone a northern woman. How wrong they were. Clips from the show, featuring Wood, Julie Waters and Celia Imrie, are a hoot: high on a tipsy energy, the performers are all on the edge of collapsing into giggles.For those who grew up with Wood as a national treasure, Becoming Victoria Wood will be a revelatio...

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last month PATRICK MARMION reviews Into the Woods at the Bridge Theatre, London: Subversive, enchanting, Sondheim's fairytale is a real hoot

PATRICK MARMION: The Brothers Grimm will be dancing with glee on top of their Berlin graves.

Society