Known for her quirky songs and TV work, Lancashire-born Wood has been a comedy stalwart for decades, her career taking off in the eighties with Victoria Wood As Seen on TV, starring Wood's long-time collaborator Julie Walters and spawning ever-quotable lines such as, “Is it on the trolley?”

One of her most-famed songs, The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let's Do It), came from the show, as did the hugely popular sketch Acorn Antiques – a spoof of low-budget soaps such as Crossroads and later turned into a musical – while the nineties saw her winning awards for the sitcom she wrote and starred in, Dinnerladies.

In 2009, she said of the urge to pursue a career in comedy: “I think it’s perfectly valid to go out and get laughs. I think it’s a lovely thing to do actually, it’s a lovely life-affirming job: you go out and you make people laugh. I think that’s great. Who wouldn’t want to do that? As long as you do it well, I don’t think there’s any problem.”

Much-loved comedian Victoria Wood dies aged 62 following a “short, but brave battle with cancer”