Rumours of Victoria Wood's retirement from live performance have clearly been exaggerated. Since Queen Victoria announced her abdication, she has appeared at the Royal Albert Hall and numerous benefits. But who's complaining? Wood is a storyteller par excellence.
Television has revealed her skills as a writer but she is really in her element on stage. Many have tried to emulate her but so far a natural successor to that consummate mix of the personal and the apolitical has yet to emerge. The only indigenous stand-up in the same league is Billy Connolly.
Give Wood any subject and she could probably incorporate it into her set. At the Royal Albert Hall the first half of her show was almost entirely devoted to anecdotes about her operation for fibroids ? at first she didn't even know it was an illness, she thought it was a breakfast cereal. Wood will be doing a short set at this Sunday's fundraiser for London's first children's hospice, Richard House, to make room for a supporting cast which includes versatile actress Imelda Staunton and rising young magician Danny Buckler. Victoria Wood & Friends, Sun 7 Jul, Adelphi Theatre, Strand, WC2 (0870 890 0140).
