Victoria Wood (I)

Craig Hill talks about his comedy hero Victoria Wood

'It's all about delivery, tight writing and use of language.'

The newest thing in comedy sketch shows - and doesn't that very phrase feel antediluvian? - is Watson & Oliver, well known to Edinburgh Fringe audiences. They're an appealing duo. Ingrid Oliver has a thrillingly low voice - Fiona Bruce meets Victoria Coren - she's a dead ringer for Myleene Klass (who is duly ridiculed), and she can really act. Lorna Watson is blond, brittle and has to work harder for laughs. Their opening gambit was a direly old-fashioned bit of sub-Morecambe & Wise before-the-show backchat, but, once they settled down, their sketches were inventive and unusual. In a spoof of a TV Jane Austen serial, the mob-capped duo tittered like six-year-olds about pin cushions to a pair of bored Mr Darcys, then switched abruptly to double entendre. ("Our dance cards - we eagerly await the filling of our slots by two special gentlemen.") A Victoria Wood-style pastiche of 1950s ladies' kitchen conversation - all pinnies and hair-rollers - was surreally punctuated by Watson's response-appropriate eyebrows. A greasy-spoon café became a symphony of shouts and orders in which everyone called everyone else "darling" - "Cup o'tea, darlin'?" "Keep the change, my darlin'" - until someone silenced the room by saying "Love". In what is clearly meant to be the show's signature sketch, the girls do their impression of Prince William and Kate tucked up in bed, unable to find anything to talk about except their wedding day. But couldn't they have found a better punchline subject than Pippa Middleton's over-prodded rump?

The best sketch imagined two Playboy bunnies squeaking competitively about how pink their living quarters were, how appealing their fake boobs, how delightful their lives, until they were summoned to cuddle up to the saurian Hefner. Between retchings, they competed as to which had a better excuse not to fulfil this noisome duty. It was a gift of a subject to these two funny, appealing women, and they seized it with unladylike glee. I look forward to seeing a lot more of them.

BBC screens Joyce Hatto biopic penned by Victoria Wood

British pianist had dozens of recordings by other artists passed off as her own by husband William Barrington-Coupe.

There aren't enough female comics on TV

This is a critical year for BBC comedy, when it will finally seek to address previous failings in giving a television platform to the funniest women in Britain. The track record is poor. It's now 35 years since Victoria Wood made her breakthrough on That's Life.

Video: Billy Connolly voted most influential UK comic

Billy Connolly has been voted the most influential British comedian of all time.

The Big Yin beat the likes of Morecambe and Wise, Les Dawson and Victoria Wood to top the poll.

It was voted for by the public and comedians.

It puts Billy Connolly on a par with his friend Robin Williams, who was named most internationally influential comedian.

Victoria Wood and Stephen Fry star in The Borrowers

Victoria Wood and Stephen Fry are among the stars bringing The Borrowers delightfully back to life - this time with added gizmos.

Victoria Wood gets lifetime achievement award

Victoria Wood and Emily Watson honoured as outstanding women in the film and TV industry.

I recently wrote to television to ask it, in polite yet vigorous terms, to cease making whimsical comedy-dramas set in idealised northern towns which promulgate the tired view that Britain is populated entirely by loveable eccentrics and pantomime villains. Did it listen? Did it 'eck as like.

Or perhaps Sugartown was already in the can by the time my urgent missive arrived, and that seeing as the BBC don't appear to have much faith in it - shunting it out almost apologetically at the unedifying slot of 10:25pm on a Sunday - this will be the last programme of its type we shall ever see, paving way for a new golden dawn where populist drama isn't a euphemism for "bland, cosy, unambitious nothingness starring a man in a bobble hat".

One can but hopelessly dream.

Set in a fictional seaside town financially supported by the local rock factory (hence the title), and populated by the likes of Sue Johnston doing her daffy yet dependable older woman act, it is pitched somewhere between Victoria Wood and an Ealing comedy, but without the wit or spark of either.

You know how it goes: unscrupulous entrepreneur threatens to close the factory, forcing the plucky locals to fight back in a variety of unamusing ways. That their principle method of rebellion is the feel-good factor of dance should also come as no surprise to you.

What may startle you slightly, however, is the villain's stewardship of a mini Playboy club, which is of course precisely the sort of establishment you'd find in a nowhere town where nearly every resident is an OAP. Yes, I know it's not a Ken Loach film, but you can only suspend your disbelief so much.

Featuring a mayor who arrives to work on a bicycle wearing full ceremonial attire - presumably as a concession to those who wish to believe that Trumpton was a documentary - and a character seemingly intended to illustrate the lighter side of bipolar disorder, Sugartown succeeds neither as comedy nor drama.

Pastel-coloured in sugary shades of CBBC, it should be studiously avoided if you're lactose intolerant or simply intolerant of vacuous entertainment.

I recently wrote to television to ask it, in polite yet vigorous terms, to cease making whimsical comedy-dramas set in idealised northern towns which promulgate the tired view that Britain is populated entirely by loveable eccentrics and pantomime villains. Did it listen? Did it 'eck as like.

Or perhaps Sugartown was already in the can by the time my urgent missive arrived, and that seeing as the BBC don't appear to have much faith in it - shunting it out almost apologetically at the unedifying slot of 10:25pm on a Sunday - this will be the last programme of its type we shall ever see, paving way for a new golden dawn where populist drama isn't a euphemism for "bland, cosy, unambitious nothingness starring a man in a
bobble hat".

One can but hopelessly dream.

Set in a fictional seaside town financially supported by the local rock factory (hence the title), and populated by the likes of Sue Johnston doing her daffy yet dependable older woman act, it is pitched somewhere between Victoria Wood and an Ealing comedy, but without the wit or spark of either.

You know how it goes: unscrupulous entrepreneur threatens to close the factory, forcing the plucky locals to fight back in a variety of unamusing ways. That their principle method of rebellion is the feel-good factor of dance should also come as no surprise to you.

What may startle you slightly, however, is the villain's stewardship of a mini Playboy club, which is of course precisely the sort of establishment you'd find in a nowhere town where nearly every resident is an OAP. Yes, I know it's not a Ken Loach film, but you can only suspend your disbelief so much.

Featuring a mayor who arrives to work on a bicycle wearing full ceremonial attire - presumably as a concession to those who wish to believe that Trumpton was a documentary - and a character seemingly intended to illustrate the lighter side of bipolar disorder, Sugartown succeeds neither as comedy nor drama.

Pastel-coloured in sugary shades of CBBC, it should be studiously avoided if you're lactose intolerant or simply intolerant of vacuous entertainment.