Victoria Wood: The childhood misery that turned me into a funny girl

The 54-year-old said life became a misery when she joined Bury Grammar School For Girls at the age of 11 – and immediately found herself out of her depth.

"I was always top of the class, and when I went to grammar school I could not deal with everyone being as clever," she said.

On Radio 4's Desert Island Discs today she reveals: "I went under. I was a mess, a bit of a misfit. I didn't have any friends, let alone try to be funny.

Scroll down for more

"I didn't do any work, didn't have clean clothes and didn't wash. If I didn't have any money I'd steal from people, and if I hadn't done my homework I'd steal someone else's.

"I was envious of all the groups: the horsey group, the girls who went out with boys, the clever ones. Looking back, I feel really sorry for that little girl."

She also tells host Kirsty Young of her childhood battle with eating disorders: "I used to make my own food and ate on my own in my room.

"I'd eat from the minute I got out of school until I went to bed. I was an obsessive eater. I used food as a drug, a distraction. I was on slimming pills at 12."

Scroll down for more

However, her childhood turmoil did help Ms Wood develop her comedy skills. "I did a lot of observing," she says.

"The good thing about being isolated is you get a good look at what goes on.

"I was reading, writing and working at the piano all the time. I was doing a lot of other things that helped me to perform."

It was only when she joined Rochdale Youth Theatre, at 15, that she was finally able to shake off her crippling insecurities.

"It was like the sun came out," she says. "I was in the right place and knew what I was doing. When people have despised you for having the wrong socks and name tapes on your shirt, being somewhere where your personality is of value is fantastic."

Ms Wood – who shot to fame after winning the ITV talent show New Faces in 1973 – also spoke of the breakdown of her seemingly rock-solid marriage to magician Geoffrey Durham in October 2002, after 22 years.

"He was a huge source of strength in every way," she said. "I don't know if I would have done what I did without him."

She says of the split: "I felt like a cartoon character that had stepped off a cliff, your legs are moving and there's nothing underneath.

"I found therapy comforting. At least you know you're not boring someone – and if you are, they're getting £75 for it."

Her choice of music for her fictional desert island includes Birdland by Weather Report, Mr Scruff's Get A Move On and Tom Waits's Misery Is The River Of The World because it "makes me laugh even though it is so gloomy".

Her luxury would be a bumper book of Sudoku – with every other page left blank for her to write on.