Victoria Wood let women be petty, brilliant, deluded and glorious, all at once

Ria Lina picks her Perfect Playlist of comedy favourites

TV and radio regular Ria Lina – who’s performing her new stand-up show Riabellion at the Edinburgh Fringe – picks her favourite ever comedy moments.

Michelle Wolf: Joke Show

Michelle Wolf is the worst thing that ever happened to my notebook.

Every time I think I’ve had an original idea, I watch Michelle and there it is - beautifully formed, more eloquently phrased, and already aired to 10 million people. It’s maddening. I keep watching her hoping she’ll slip up. She hasn’t yet.

She doesn’t just write well, she weaponises logic. She says the thing I wanted to say, but better, funnier, and with a face that says ‘I’m not mad, I’m just deeply correct’ making my face when I do comedy look like I’m saying: ‘I’m just giving this a go till my TikTok channel pays off.’

She’s the comedian I study when I want to write like a sniper instead of a poet. It’s not just comedy, it’s structural engineering with punchlines.

Spoiler Alert: She does the most wonderful routine about why men don't have periods and I almost quit comedy when I saw it.

Yes Minister / Yes Prime Minister

Rewatching Yes Minister is like watching The Simpsons if they did a British, political version where everyone is grey instead of yellow because it seems to have predicted everything from Brexit to Boris to the decline of the civil service.

These series aren’t satire any more - they’re prophecy. If Nostradamus wore a three-piece suit and specialised in departmental buck-passing, this is what he would have written.

What’s scary is not that it’s still relevant - it’s that itenever stopped being true. The scripts are so precise, you could rerun them word for word in 2025, just swap out the fax machines for WhatsApp, the civil servants for unelected special advisors with a God complex. Sir Humphrey walked so Dominic Cummings could run (his blog).

Spoiler Alert: I think Jim Hacker was the inspiration for Keir Starmer. Both are equally impotent in office, desperate to be seen as sensible, but are too sycophantic to the media/focus groups/opposition to appear as anything other than a windchime in the rain: constantly twisting in the wind of public opinion and more than a little bit wet.

Robin Williams: An Evening at the Met (1987)

This special raised me. I didn’t know what half the references meant, but I knew it was genius. I don’t know why Ronald Regan had to be a tortured robot but it was hilarious. He was kinetic chaos you could trust - a thousand different voices, including his own personified penis (there was no watershed in my parents’ DVD player). His brain moved faster than the room, and he made it look easy, well, apart from all the sweating.

Watching it as a kid, it was the first time I saw someone combine intelligence and whimsical animation (best way I can think to describe it). He didn’t dumb anything down - he just went at 100mph and dragged you along with him (wheeee!). I didn’t know you were allowed to be that smart and that silly at the same time, he was like a roller-coaster for the brain. As soon as it was over I would run back around the front and stand in line again, by which I mean, I pressed play again on the remote.

Spoiler Alert: He was the first person I heard advocating for a female president ‘because there would never be any wars, just every 28 days, some intense negotiations’ – still the best reason I’ve heard so far.

Victoria Wood

Victoria Wood was a national treasure before we knew how to protect those properly. She was a woman in comedy before ‘woman in comedy’ became a marketing category. What she did, the sketches with the meta commentary, the multi-dimensional monologue characters and stand-up, and the songs!

Oh, the songs. I don’t think anyone has written comparably since. Or as many verses. Victoria was so much more than we even allow our telly comedians to do today, lucky bitch, AND she did everything brilliantly, so it’s really had to argue against her, so don’t even try.

She also did something I still aspire to: talked about women’s things before it was acceptable chat, and she wrote for women like they were real people. Multiple women. With different personalities. Who didn’t all revolve around one man or one menopause. She let women be petty, brilliant, deluded and glorious, all at once.

I remember wanting to grow up and be in Dinnerladies, but I’ll settle for being in anything with Julie Walters before one of us goes.

Spoiler Alert: If you think you’re a fan and you don’t recognise the phrase "his scrotum isn’t used to strangers", you aren’t a true fan.

The First Wives Club / Big Business

This double bill proves that women can not only front a movie, but do it while no longer menstruating, something Hollywood still isn’t totally convinced by. The scripts were unapologetically feminist, sharp as stilettos, and full of lines that still slap 30 years later. ‘Don’t get mad - get everything’ deserves its own Bafta.

And Bette Midler? A comedic powerhouse. Whether she’s singing in a white suit or storming a boardroom in shoulder pads the size of a Ford Fiesta, she proves that funny women don’t fade - they just don’t wait for permission. These films taught me that women aren’t hard to write well - you just have to stop giving all the best lines to the men.

Spoiler Alert: This could make you addicted to Bette Middler if you weren’t already. Google her now, you’ll see what I mean. She sings, she acts, and she cuts people down with a look - if you aren’t familiar with her work, google: Otto Titsling. I say no more.

Bill Burr: Live at Red Rocks (Drop Dead Years)

Bill Burr’s latest special might be his best yet - which is infuriating, because I was really hoping he’d start to mellow with age. Instead, he’s out there punching the air with the sort of clarity and rage I’m hoping is gifted to me under my pillow by the menopause fairy.

He’s raw, he’s flawed, he’s quite real and open about things that happened to him as a child that I never expected a man like him to vocalise.

He doesn’t just do jokes. He deconstructs his own mental processes live, in front of you, while still making you laugh. That’s rare.

Most comics are performing the illusion of honesty. Burr actually seems to surprise himself mid-rant. I watch him partly for inspiration, partly for the joy of seeing a man spiral publicly with such articulate precision. He spoke a lot of truth in this special, and if you don’t relate to it, then you’re clearly already dead.

Spoiler Alert: His routine about trying to punch a man holding a baby won the comic in me over so strongly, that the woman in me was able to sit through his flashes of misogyny (which I haven’t always been able to). And sitting through the entire thing, hearing him self-realise about his marriage and try to evolve, was totally worth it. I don’t know why his wife stayed, but she’s lucky (now) that he did.