Victoria Wood’s collaborations with Julie Walters over the years spawned many a rich reward. Wood’s wit produced great ideas for characters, and Walters’ instinctive comic timing and gift for nuanced physical comedy brilliantly brought those characters to life. The series of sketches around Acorn Antiques, for example, provided the ideal showcase for Walters to ham it up as the glorious character that was Mrs Overall, or more accurately, the gloriously inept actress that played the character in this send-up of low-budget, shoddily performed, daytime soap opera.

The showcase I have selected for this blog, however, is the sketch, Waitress (popularly known as Two Soups), in which Walters plays an elderly, deaf, shaky, and painfully slow waitress, serving a couple who are only too aware one of them has a train to catch and simply want a quick meal. This simple premise, replete with possibilities for that typically British comedy of frustration, is enough for Walters to take the ball and run faster and further with it than probably even Victoria Wood imagined at first.

Witness Walters’ shuffling gait, wobbly head and fixed smile – this is physical comedy of the first order, and we’re laughing before she opens her mouth. With her bad memory and dangerously maladroit handling of the crockery, this unfit-for-purpose waitress should have hung up her apron strings years ago, but for now let’s thank the forbearance of her employer as we enjoy this infuriating but hilarious performance. Needless to say, the couple’s plans for a quick meal are thwarted.