Victoria Wood

"Where are you in the menstrual cycle? Taurus."

"[Asked if she ever had childhood holidays in Blackpool] No. What do you take me for? We used to go to Vienna."

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

"Sometimes I think that being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the pill."

"[Song]] Not bleakly, Not meekly Beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly Let's do it, let's do it tonight!"

"I was just thinking as Alan [Bennett] and I walked up the steps, how nice it would have been if one of us had come up in a stairlift."

"[On a difficult relationship with her mother, Helen] If she'd only gone out to work, we would all have been a lot happier. Being in the house drove her mad. She hated housework, cooking. She'd go into the garden and chop down trees. She was full of energy and batting against the walls with it. And this gave me a real sense that you had to have your own life. It's ridiculous to stay at home with your children if it drives you nuts. Children would much rather see a happy, smiley person come back."

"[Asked if being interviewed is a form of torture for her] No, people always think I hate doing interviews. I don't. I wouldn't do them if I didn't like them. I have to say that at the start of every interview."

"[On remaining unattached after a divorce] Well, I think there's not much of a chance for me finding somebody of my age. Gentlemen of my age are dropping down 30 years to find girlfriends. [Informed: "That's not always the case."] You're right. I need to get out of the house."

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

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

"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’ve been driving that Peugeot for years."

"When you're in the middle of having a baby, it's a bit like watching two very inefficient removal men, trying to get a very large sofa through a very small doorway. Only in this case you can't say, "Oh sod it, bring it through the French windows"."

"I don’t say 'who'. I do say 'whom'. I never use the toilet, just the smallest room. I don't say gay. I still say queer. I think that Mussolini had the right idea."

"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."