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  3. Phillip Tipton on Victoria Wood and the Civic Imagination

Phillip Tipton on Victoria Wood and the Civic Imagination

Posted by: sthurston
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  • News and Events
Tags: English at Salford
April 28, 2025

“I will not have chutney on my periodicals!”

As part of the Manchester Festival of Libraries, Phillip Tipton will be giving a talk at Bury Library on 5th June on Victoria Wood’s work and its relationship to civic life and popular culture. There will be screening of the short playlet ‘The Library’, followed by Phillip’s talk – see his full abstract below.

Please follow this link for more information: Victoria Wood in the Library – Manchester City of Literature

Victoria Wood and The Civic Imagination: The Library (1989)

“I will not have chutney on my periodicals!”

Although much of Victoria Wood’s work, such as As Seen on TV, Acorn Antiques, dinnerladies, and her legendary stand-up performances are well-known and widely-lauded, there are other works that have escaped critical and popular acclaim. Victoria Wood Presents was a series of half-hour single playlets – broadcast in primetime on BBC 1 in the closing weeks of 1989 – in which Victoria plays a version of herself coming up against a variety of unpromising situations. In ‘The Library’ we see local libraries represented as vital community hubs; places of order and refuge which are used as a springboard for self-improvement. In this talk I discuss the centrality of local and civic life in the comedy of Victoria Wood and the broader lessons it has for the understanding of popular culture in contemporary society.

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