Vicky Pollard

Little Britain Character Victoria "Vicky" Pollard
First appearance	Pilot episode
Created by	David Walliams and Matt Lucas
Portrayed by	Matt Lucas
Information
Aliases	Beth Lewis
Gender	Female
Occupation	Phone Sex Worker Babysitter
Family	Shelley Pollard (mother) Ken (father) Katie Pollard (sister) Ricky Pollard (brother)
Children	12 and counting
Relatives	Cousin (unnamed) Uncle Pete Aunt Kath

Vicky Pollard is a fictional character from the British comedy TV series Little Britain, which aired on BBC.

Vicky Pollard (portrayed by Matt Lucas) is a stereotypical chav. She is a teenage mother and juvenile delinquent and is known for her inarticulate and incredibly fast speech and incessant gossip. She hails from the fictional location of Darkley Noone, but it is known she is from Bristol, often making references to suburbs of the city and surrounding areas (such as Bath and Weston-super-Mare).

Personality

Vicky is an obnoxious, sullen and bone idle teenage girl who talks incomprehensibly fast in a strong West Country accent. She is a representation of teenage delinquents and chavs.

When questioned about some aspect of her behaviour, or when accused of doing wrong (which, in her case, is often), Vicky will usually reply defensively with one of her several catchphrases, including:

• "No but yeah but no but yeah but no but...",

• "Oh my God! I SO can't believe you just said that!"
• "Shut up! I ain't even done nuffin' or nuffin'!"
• "Don't go giving me evils!"

Vicky will defend herself by trailing off on a long rant in which she relates gossip about people who have nothing to do with the predicament she is in, although, when questioned, she claims to be "getting there". Her incredibly fast speech and irrelevant gossip often annoy or confuse (or both) the person she is answering to.

Appearance

Vicky Pollard is often regarded as the ultimate television chav, although the character was created by Matt Lucas and David Walliams before the term came into common usage.

She is often seen wearing a pink Kappa tracksuit and leggings, with her hair scraped into a Croydon facelift, as well as wearing excessive amounts of cheap jewellery and big hoop-earrings. Despite her hideous appearance, Vicky often refers to herself as being "well fit" (meaning attractive in British slang). It is also well known that Vicky is a heavy smoker - being caught smoking in a swimming pool and on a bus, and on one episode of Little Britain USA caught smoking in the showers by the coach at Boot Camp. Vicky also drinks heavily, but denied smoking and drinking whilst pregnant ("Apart from smoking two packs of fags a day and ten pints of Snakebites a night!").

Vicky's mother, Shelley (portrayed by Dawn French in one episode of Little Britain Abroad) is shown to be almost identical to her daughter in terms of dress. Her mother wears exactly the same outfit but with a purple Kappa jacket with her sister wearing blue. She is also known to have a grandmother or aunt who wears red.

Personal history

Vicky was born in 1989 in Bristol, or "Brizzle" as it is locally known. Most of her sketches are set in the fictional locality of Darkley Noone. In a series three episode she pronounced herself as "Well the Cotham J-Lo". The Little Britain Live programme reveals that she left school at 11 with six ASBOs to her name. As of series three she has had at least 12 children, some of whom appear dressed identically to her. In series one she admitted to a social worker that she had exchanged one of her children for a Westlife CD, which she revealed that she regretted when the social worker expressed concern, saying "I know, they're rubbish".

She also has a mother - Shelley Pollard (appearing in an episode of Little Britain Abroad and portrayed by Dawn French) - who is almost identical to Vicky in terms of dress sense and personality. She has a sister, Katie Pollard (played by Kate Moss, appearing on Little Britain Live) and an estranged father named Ken whom she re-met on an episode of ' 'Trisha' '.

The official series two tie-in script book featured a Jobseeker's Allowance benefit claim form partially filled in by Vicky, listing her previous occupations as a "retale sistant" (Retail Assistant), chicken slaughterer (at which she lasted less than two hours due to her burning down the "dead chicken factory") and erotic dancer at Spearmint Rhino, which lasted no longer than 24 seconds as she was regarded as "too much of a slag".

However, in Series Three Vicky does find employment as a phone-sex worker, and discovers that the person she is having a phone conversation with is actually her uncle. In this series she also finds work as a babysitter, which she does not succeed at as she uses the house for a large house party. The sketch ends with the parents arriving to find their home in a wreck.

Despite the fact that Vicky often seems to get into trouble at the end of her sketches, including appearances in court and arrests for shoplifting, she always seems to have avoided any serious penalties by her next appearance, although she did have a spell in borstal, and Boot Camp when she appeared on Little Britain USA.

In Series Three, Vicky also claimed that she couldn't read or write because she was "like totally dexlixlec" (dyslexic).

Shelley Pollard

Shelley is Vicky's mother. Shelley has three known children Vicky, Katie and Ricky Pollard. She fell pregnant with a baby boy at 14 and named him Richard (Ricky). At age 16 she met a man named Ken and fell pregnant with his child Victoria (Vicky). It is unknown who the father of her third child Katie it is possible he is Ken but it still remains unknown.

Shelley turned up in Thailand when Vicky was in court for smuggling drugs.

Role in series

Vicky has appeared in all but one Little Britain episode to date (including the pilot and the Comic Relief special). She did not appear in episode four of series three.

In Series One, Vicky has a counterpart played by David Walliams, called Jackie Hayes, whom Vicky encountered at borstal in an incident where she supposedly bit her. Jackie is strikingly similar to Vicky in terms of attitude, dress and speech, except she wears blue instead of pink. When the governess at Borstal questions both girls about the biting incident, they get into a heated argument trying simultaneously to explain their side of the story by relating gossip about completely unrelated events. The governess, fed up with the pair of them, tells both girls to "piss off".

Unlike the other characters, Vicky had a fairly uneventful role in the last episode of the third series. A sketch simply showed her going to a newsagent and trying to claim money with a fake lottery ticket.

She appeared in the Christmas Special "Little Britain Abroad", in which she was imprisoned in a Thai prison for smuggling heroin. Dawn French guest-starred as Vicky's mother, Shelley Pollard, who shared her daughter's inarticulate speech patterns. Vicky was sentenced to 10 years in jail (her mother received 20 for wasting the Judge's time), which, for once, left her at a loss for words.

She also appears in Little Britain USA where she is sent to boot camp after burning down Disney World. She interrupts the Coach during Roll Call to spread more gossip. The Coach, however, deals with Vicky somewhat differently than her British counterparts - she patiently waits for Vicky to finish before claiming not to have a clue what she has just said or telling her off. Vicky does very naughty things at the camp, such as smoking in the bathroom where she mentions someone drawing on the wall of a big fat woman with a penis and writing the Coach's name on it, then her hair catches fire, much to the shock of the coach. Next she attempted to escape, only to be caught on barbed wire and hangs upside-down. Her sentence is extended by six months, which she claims she doesn't care about until being informed her sentence ended the next day. In the last sketch Vicky ends up in hospital, having lost the power of speech due to falling off the chapel roof. In this sketch a computer talks for her and the coach is shown to be very caring of Vicky.

In 2010 Vicky Pollard returned when she was featured in a TV advert for Nationwide Building Society. David Walliams also appeared alongside Lucas in the commercial, playing Vicky's friend Rochelle. In the advert the two girls mistake the building society for a fast food joint, and when asked by a bank worker whether she would like to set up an account, she replies "Yeah... with ketchup on the side". Upon leaving the bank, a bemused Vicky comments "they don't even do chicken nuggets!"

Controversy

Some feel that the character of Vicky is an upper and middle class attack on the British poor and working class. A 2006 survey by YouGov suggested 70% of TV industry professionals believed that Vicky Pollard was an accurate reflection of white working class youth. The critics point out that the creators went to independent schools implying that they have no first hand experience of working class life. Why is 'chav' still controversial?

Inspiration

Lucas revealed on the South Bank Show that they had the idea for Vicky after seeing Berkshire teenagers Nikki Carpenter and Stacey Bennett in Brighton seafront on the front page of the listings magazine Time Out in 2001. The mumbling diatribe tickled Lucas so much that he used it as a template to create the inarticulate Vicky Pollard.

External links

• WalliamsandLucas.com
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