Victoria Wood set the tone of light-hearted celebration at yesterday's memorial service for Dame Thora Hird.

As she and playwright Alan Bennett went up to give a reading, she joked: ''I was just thinking as Alan and I walked up the steps, how nice it would have been if one of us had come up in a stairlift,'' in a reference to Dame Thora's famous television advert.

The service at Westminster Abbey was attended by a congregation of more than 2000. Sir David Frost, Melvyn Bragg, Roy Hudd, Angela Rippon, Nicholas Parsons, and Last Of The Summer Wine co-star Kathy Staff were there, as was BBC director-general Greg Dyke, who gave a reading shortly before his scheduled appearance at the Hutton inquiry yesterday afternoon.

Other famous faces included Michael Howard, the shadow home secretary, and Claire Rayner, who attended in a wheelchair after a recent bout of ill-health.

TV stars and politicians were joined by hundreds of other people, many of them representatives of the 30 charities the actress supported throughout her life.

Dame Thora died in March at the age of 91. She was known for her sense of humour and her friends were determined that laughter play a large part in the service.

Bennett, who wrote the Talking Heads monologue for which Dame Thora won two of her three Baftas, remembered her as: ''This droll-faced northern girl, who in the course of

a long and happy life took

her place among the best that we have.''

Dame Thora was familiar to millions from her TV, theatre, and radio roles.

She made her acting debut on stage in her home town of Morecambe aged just eight weeks and went on to become one of Britain's finest character actresses. The indomitable performer continued to film Last Of The Summer Wine until shortly before her death.

Co-star Kathy Staff, who played Nora Batty in the show, said: ''Thora would be really thrilled with the service. It is a very happy occasion. She was a marvellous person with a

fantastic sense of humour and she always saw the funny side of things.''

Nicholas Parsons said: ''I can't be sad today because she had such a wonderful, long

life. She was one of the sweetest, liveliest, and most down-

to-earth people I have ever met. She had no airs or graces whatsoever.''

And Victoria Wood said:

''It's a happy day, isn't it? She loved life and was celebrated during it. She was a good laugh, a very good actress, and a good person.''

Wood read from the preface to Dame Thora's autobiography, Nothing Like A Dame, in which the actress wrote: ''There's nothing I like better than having a good laugh, apart from making other people laugh with me.''

Dame Thora was best known for her comedy roles but Alan Bennett also paid

tribute to her abilities as a serious actress. ''Until she was quite late on in life the parts she played were generally comic and so were underrated, and it was only in late

middle age when she began to play the occasional serious role that her talent was properly acknowledged,'' he said. ''There are not many artists who reach a peak in their seventies and eighties, but Thora did. She lived long enough to be taken seriously.''

A devout Christian, Dame Thora presented the BBC religious show Praise Be! for

nearly two decades.

Members of the Salvation Army, of which she was a life-long supporter, provided some of the music during the service.

The Dean of Westminster, the Very Rev Dr Wesley Carr, said: ''Westminster Abbey is a national institution for other national institutions. And few would argue that Thora was not one such.''

The service was attended by Dame Thora's daughter, the actress Janette Scott Rodemaekers, and her grandchildren, Daisy and James Torme. Mrs Scott Rodemaekers recalled ''a magnificent actress and a wonderful mother.

''Thora's motto in her later years was, 'Don't stop doing things because you're growing old; you grow old because you stop doing things,' and how she lived up to that,'' she said.

Dame Thora's husband of

58 years, Jimmy Scott - whom she referred to as Scotty - died in 1994.

The BBC will commemorate her life tomorrow when it unveils its Star Terrace at Television Centre, London. She will be remembered in one of 23 plaques paying tribute to some of the BBC's best-known faces.