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Britain Mourns Victoria Wood

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Lucy Mangan's article on Victoria Wood for tomorrow's Guardian newspaper can be read here.

For British comedy fans, this is as big a shock as the death of Bowie for music fans. Her influence and outreach went long and deep. Still with a heavy work schedule, we waited for her next project and were never disappointed.

She was my favourite comedy performer as a youngster and while I gravitated to cooler, supposedly edgier acts as a teenager and a twenty-something, I would always come back to Victoria Wood.

As sharp as Tom Lehrer, as well capturing as Alan Bennett, as perfect in structure and line as Tom Stoppard, she never stopped and never lost her edge. The TV and radio have been playing clips all day. Something I would normally be delighted by.

A few people have talked about how she influenced young women to be comedians, showing a career path in comedy, in entertainment, in writing, where she often stood alone.

Well, she was as much an influence on me to write. And in retrospect one of the reasons why I didn't understand that women weren't meant to be funny. Because there was Victoria, being the funniest.

For me, her finest point was All The Trimmings, a Christmas special in the year 2000 that dissected the media and predicted its future in the twenty-first century with devastating precision even more than Charlie Brooker does. He had Cameron and the pig, but Victoria Wood had Ann Widdecombe On Ice. Strictly Come Dancing was only ten years away.

I can talk and talk and talk. But right now I am just very, very angry. I don't appear to be alone.

The truth is we don't get any time. All time is extra time

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Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
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