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Live Reporting

Neil Smith and Chris Long

All times stated are UK

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  1. A sad farewell

    Neil Smith

    Entertainment reporter

    That's all we have time for, on a live page that has been understandably taken over by the sad news of Victoria Wood's death.

    It's only fitting, though, that we should give her the last word, with a song she might almost have written for this very occasion.

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  2. Victoria Wood's big break due to make-up lady's 'nagging'

    Paul Stewart Laing, who gave Victoria Wood her big break with a place on TV talent show New Faces in, says it was all thanks to one of the programme's make-up ladies:

    Quote Message: She used to nag all the time, 'you've got to see this girl, she's so funny'. Her sister was at Birmingham University with Victoria and she thought she ought to have a chance on a talent show.
    Quote Message: So eventually after a lot of nagging, I'm glad that we did, she came onto New Faces and she won it... she obviously went on to bigger things.
  3. Rhod Gilbert: Victoria Wood had 'funny bones'

    Comedian Rhod Gilbert has added his voice to the tributes being paid to Victoria Wood.

    He told BBC Radio Wales:

    Quote Message: She was one of the greats... stand-up, sketch writer, musician. Her various characters and costumes - she was physically so funny, her eyes, her face, her comic timing, everything.
    Quote Message: She captured the mundane side of everyday life perfectly. She had that thing... she walks through a door at the back of a sketch and you're laughing already. She's the very definition of funny bones.
  4. Lord Bragg: Victoria Wood was a 'great, original talent'

    Lord Bragg, who presented the arts programme The South Bank Show - which featured Victoria Wood more than once - said she was "an inspiration for so many women stand-ups".

    Quote Message: She was the first to take it on and go all round the country and she was the first to crack this idea that a woman could do everything right across the spread.
    Quote Message: She admired Joyce Grenfell, who was marvellous, but she could do Dickensian things like create these wonderful characters at Acorn Antiques and so on.
    Quote Message: I think she was a great, original talent and I was rather choked up when I heard the news.
  5. Victoria Wood's theatrical successes

    Victoria Wood was not just a TV star; she also wrote extensively for the theatre, starting with her first play Talent, which premiered at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre Studio in 1978.

    It was adapted for TV a year later, with Wood and Julie Walters starring. Twelve months on, her second play Good Fun opened at the same theatre. 

    Wood went on to write a musical, Acorn Antiques, which had a sold-out run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in 2005. 

    A documentary about the making of the show was broadcast the same year before the show toured the UK in 2006 and 2007.

    In 2009 she revisited her first effort when she directed a new version of Talent at the Old Laundry in Windermere, which then transferred to the Menier Chocolate Factory in London.

  6. Victoria Wood on Today

    Here's a clip of Victoria Wood from 2011, telling Radio 4's Today programme about how she had always felt drawn to the north of England and her thoughts on the so-called North-South divide.

    Video content

    Video caption: Comedian Victoria Wood has died of cancer at 62
  7. Bridesmaids director 'very sad' to hear of Wood's death

    A tweet from Paul Feig, the American director of Bridesmaids, Spy and the upcoming Ghostbusters remake, shows that Wood's comic genius was not just celebrated by British audiences.

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  8. Wood 'understood the way Northern people spoke'

    Poet Ian McMillan, a friend of Victoria Wood's, has praised her use of language.

    Quote Message: She understood the way that Northern people spoke and she understood our syntax and she understood the way that Northern place names and Northern Christian or surnames could become funny.
    Quote Message: She could actually make a kind of poetry out of the way that we talked, and it was poignant, and it was funny, and it was clever.
  9. Victoria Wood in her own words

    Here are some memorable quotes from Victoria Wood about one of her favourite subjects - sex.

    Quote Message: In my day we didn't have sex education, we just picked up what we could off the television... and as far as I was concerned, if Pinky and Perky didn't do it, I didn't want to know about it.
    Quote Message: I once went to one of those parties where everyone throws their car keys into the middle of the room. I don't know who got my moped, but I drove that Peugeot for years.
    Quote Message: I once found myself in bed with a man who was a real do-it-yourself enthusiast. He ripped off all his clothes and said 'What would you like me to do?' I said, 'Well, really I'd like you to fix my overflow and re-point my brickwork.'
    Quote Message: My boyfriend had a sex manual but he was dyslexic. I was lying there and he was looking for my vinegar.

    See Wood's biography page on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) for more.

  10. Sir Lenny 'devastated' by Victoria Wood's death

    Sir Lenny Henry has joined those sharing their thoughts on the death of Victoria Wood.

    Quote Message: I am devastated - this is very, very sad news. Victoria will be sorely missed.
    Quote Message: Always funny, she worked incredibly hard. A killer stand-up and a fantastic songwriter. My condolences to all her family.
  11. Victoria Wood in pictures

    The About the BBC blog has gathered together a photo gallery of some of their favourite shots from Victoria Wood's career.

    Julie Walters and Victoria Wood in 'Pat and Margaret'
    Victoria Woods as Bren in Dinnerladies (1999)
    Victoria Wood in Victoria Wood's Sketch Show Story (2001)

    You can see more of the photos here.

  12. 'Another great taken from us'

    The tributes keep coming in for Victoria Wood, whose death at the age of 62 has been such a huge shock to so many of us this Wednesday afternoon.

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