Victoria Wood (I)

Video: Behind the scenes of Morecambe and Wise TV drama

Morecambe and Wise are to return to our screens in a TV drama about how the comedians became famous.

Eric and Ernie stars the likes of Victoria Wood and Vic Reeves.

The BBC's David Sillito went behind the scenes to meet some of the cast.

Only something special could nudge Victoria Wood out of stand-up exile, and this gig in aid of the British Heart Foundation is certainly a very good reason indeed. It may be a decade since she's performed as a stand-up, but you'd never guess, and she's as sharp as ever. For the other ladies on the bill, who include Jo Brand, Julia Davis, Katy Brand,
Isy Suttie, and Roisin Conaty, she's still quite an inspiration.

Roisin Conaty Interview

One of the acts in Victoria Wood's Angina Monologues, Roisin Conaty won the Foster's Comedy Award for Best Newcomer this year in Edinburgh. She spoke to us about what it's like to work with Victoria...

It's a girls' night out at London's Theatre Royal as Victoria Wood is joined on stage by some very funny ladies in aid of The British Heart Foundation.

While raising awareness about heart disease in women (see, the show's title makes sense now), the Queen of Comedy and her cohorts will tickle our funny bones with stand-up, sketches and music.

The line-up includes Nighty Night's Julia Davis; Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine from BBC Four's Getting On; Jessica Hynes of Spaced fame; rising star Andi Oshi; and the two Brands, Jo and Katy. Not Russell Brand's new pop star wife - the other one. The one with the Big Ass.

A premature maternal loss featured in The Giddy Kipper - Victoria Wood's contribution to Little Crackers, Sky's season of short festive dramas, which she'd introduced by saying, "It is - in a lot of ways - my childhood." In fact, Wood's mother didn't die when she was a child, so this account of a solitary little girl excluded from the Sunday school treat by a vindictive teacher can't have been directly autobiographical. It included a lovely moment of fantasy, when winter dark transformed into daylight and the central character found herself briefly reunited with her mother. Touching enough anytime, but particularly poignant if you'd seen Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story.

Running nightly this week are this year's seasonal shorts little crackers from Sky One, which annually tries to make up for the dearth of decent original drama and comedy from January-November by gorging us with a festive selection box featuring some of the best-known names in the business.

This time they've got the likes of Victoria Wood, Catherine Tate, Stephen Fry, Kathy Burke, Julian Barratt, Jo Brand, Bill Bailey - oh, the list goes on, basically anyone who's ever appeared on a panel game is either appearing in, writing or directing one of these 12-minute films, mostly based on autobiographical stories about their childhoods.

And like a selection box, there are a few yucky praline noisette ones. David Baddiel's film is as annoying as he is, though it does feature a good impersonation of Record Breakers star Norris McWhirter by Alastair McGowan, who must have been delighted to get a chance to do an impression he probably last did as a child. Chris O'Dowd has a dull grumpy Santa story and Dawn French oddly casts herself as the late Queen Mother.

But there are some nice strawberry cream ones too: Victoria Wood's is a sweet, nostalgic tale, Julian Barratt's teenaged heavy metallers are quirky and Kathy Burke's memory of meeting Joe Strummer is endearing. Anyway, they're all over so quickly that even the ho-hum ones are watchable enough - shame though that for Sky, decent original programmes come barely more than once a year.

Christmas may have peaked too soon because Little Crackers (Sky1), a set of short films loosely based on the theme of childhood and featuring top comedy writer/performers, got off to a, er, cracking start with a brace of offerings from Victoria Wood and The IT Crowd's Chris O'Dowd.

Wood's Lancastrian meander down a dark memory lane was touching and familiar, O'Dowd brought a cheeky lump to the throat with a tale about a lad who always wanted Subbuteo yet got lumbered with a hand-me-down Barbie (with moustache).

As an idea for a Christmas series, it's right on the stocking. Kathy Burke channelling X-Ray Spex and The Clash is still to come and tonight's offering from Catherine Tate, featuring a shock-headed ginger of painful shyness who wees herself at frequent intervals is laugh-out-loud funny.

You have been warned.

Victoria Wood directs this loosely autobiographical story about a Lancashire girl whose dismal Christmas is transformed upon visiting a merry neighbour. Hers is the first of a dozen bite-sized films written by and starring the cream of British comedy - Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand - shown in double bills. Next up tonight is Chris O'Dowd's impish tale about the time he ambushed that white-bearded, milk- and mince pie-pinching trickster in red. Nine-year-old Chris is as lippy a rapscallion as you might expect, while O'Dowd takes the role of disgruntled supermarket Santa and Sharon Horgan is terrific as harassed Mum.

The cream of the British comedy crop come together for this series of brand new comedy shorts for Sky1 HD. Following a season of dramatic 10 Minute Tales last Christmas, this December it's Comedy's turn to shine in an anthology of short films, written by and featuring 12 of the nation's biggest and most loved comic stars. With the likes of Stephen Fry, Catherine Tate, Julia Davis and Bill Bailey flexing their creative muscles they're the perfect bite-sized morsel of entertainment for you and your family this Christmas. Tonight it's the turn of Victoria Wood and Chris O'Dowd who get the season underway.

A nightly season of short autobiographical films featuring some of Britain's best comic talent opens tonight with stories by Victoria Wood and Chris O'Dowd. Dawn French, Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Kathy Burke, Jo Brand and Catherine Tate are among those writing, narrating and starring in these seasonal dramatisations of their lives, often with stories recalled from their childhood. It's a bit hit-and-miss. Wood's is on first, though hers is the only story not to feature a younger version of herself. The IT Crowd's O'Dowd follows with an amusing story of why as a boy he thought Santa was a "big weirdo".