Acorn Antiques started on the “Victoria Wood – As seen on TV” show in 1985. The main inspiration behind the sketch was the cheap and not so cheerful ‘Crossroads’ (a sleepy soap opera, which ran on ITV) as well as the old radio soap, ‘Waggoner’s Walk’. Acorn Antiques became famous for its blatantly unrealistic story lines and shoddy sets (a dig aimed at TV soaps like ‘Eastenders’ and ‘Coronation Street’).

The sketch followed the day to day lives of four sales assistants at an antiques store in the fictional town of ‘Manchesterford’. ‘Miss Babs’, played by Celia Imrie, was the lovelorn owner of the shop, who would start off the sketch with an outlandish plotline, which never actually materialises!

Miss Babs is waited hand on foot by the shop’s maid ‘Mrs. Overall’ – an elderly old woman who always carries a tea tray and is played by Julie Walters. Miss Babs is always so distracted by her own affairs that she forgets to ask about whatever crisis is occurring in Mrs. Overall’s life:

Miss Babs – “Gosh! I AM awful. Here I am blabbering away about my own troubles and I forgot to ask you about your husband’s car crash.”*

Mrs. Overall (anxious) – “Oh he’s dead Miss Babs. Yes, in fact I was going to ask you if I could have a couple of hours off on Thursday for the funeral.”*

Miss Babs – “Of course (facetiously). Just pop back at 5 for the hovering.”*

Miss Berta (played by Victoria Woods) is the one character that attracts all the crazy plot lines, not that she lets her troubles get to her in any way. She begins the series coming out of a hospital only to discover that her father, who is said to have been murdered, has been seen in the local post office. She later discovers that she is the daughter of Mrs. Overall and the mother of an unknown child.

The other characters in the sketch are Trixie (a tarty young female, who later finds out she is Miss Babs’ daughter), Derek the handyman, who turns out to be Miss Berta’s twin and Clifford, who tries to woo Babs, but only to have his advances rejected.

Acorn Antiques continued to satirise to less than convincing production values of TV dramas, with Crossroads coming consistently under fire. The ‘cabaret keyboard’ sound of the theme tune and the wobbly credits were directly influenced by the soap.

To reference Crossroads even more, they also performed Acorn Antiques as if it was filming live, where the deplorable mistakes and miscues made the sketch famous. There were real awkward moments at the end of the sketch – showing the actors standing around with nothing to do while the cameras kept rolling!

In 2005, Victoria Wood turned Acorn Antiques into a full musical, which had a massive sell-out run on the West End. The stage performance included some of the original actors and actresses such as Julie Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston as Mr. Clifford. Celia Imrie’s performance won her the ‘Olivier’ award for ‘Best Performance in a Supporting Role’.

* quoted from Victoria Wood – As seen on TV/ Acorn Antiques