Victoria Wood was a writer, actor, director, singer, composer and stand-up comedian. She first appeared on national television in 1974 in the talent show New Faces and her debut stage play Talent was televised in 1979. In the 1980s her sketch show Wood and Walters was followed by Victoria Wood As Seen on TV and An Audience with Victoria Wood. She became the preeminent stand-up comedian of the age, selling out the Royal Albert Hall forty times while, in the nineties, creating the TV film Pat and Margaret and the sitcom dinnerladies. In 2005 she turned her much-loved soap parody Acorn Antiques into a West End musical, then wrote and starred in the wartime drama Housewife, 49. In 2014 she filmed her stage musical That Day We Sang for television. Given an OBE in 1997, she was made a CBE in 2008. Among countless other awards, her work won eight BAFTAs. Since her death in 2016 at only 62, her work has continued to pulse through the British bloodstream.

Jasper Rees is an arts journalist and author who has written for the Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and theartsdesk.com, which he co-founded. Previous books include I Found My Horn and Bred of Heaven, both of which were abridged for Radio 4's Book of the Week, and a biography of Florence Foster Jenkins. His most recent book was Let's Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood, which was written with the full cooperation of her family, friends and colleagues including Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Duncan Preston, Dawn French, Anne Reid and Michael Ball.