People think I hate sex. I don’t. I just don’t like things that stop you seeing the television properly. - Victoria Woodhull

I was researching Mrs Brown’s Boys and found that, with music hall, Laurel and Hardy, Les Dawson, Dick Emery and so on, more men had played working-class women in British comedy than women. [...] That's up until Victoria Wood. She almost single-handedly changed that. She and Billy Connolly essentially prepared the way for alternative comedy and the rise of the stand-up — bridging the gap between the working men's clubs and the comedy clubs. Before her, funny women were from a rarefied sphere like Joyce Grenfell. Wood spoke the way real people spoke and she was hugely successful. She made it possible for Tracey Ullman, even Peter Kay, to think a career was possible.

The Italians have got opera, the Spanish have got flamenco dancing. What have we got? Weight Watchers.

We'd like to apologise to our viewers in the North - it must be awful for you.