EMMA DUNN talks to a poet who just likes to have fun POETIC favourite Pam Ayres will be performing her latest work at the Wyvern Theatre next week.

The entertainer’s show, which comes to Swindon on January 16, includes work from her latest publication, You Made Me Late Again!, which she will be signing copies of after the show.

From wishing your husband was more dashing to becoming a gran for the first time, Pam’s poems are observant, witty and poignant in equal measure.

From exploding wardrobes, to knowing you must eat more fruit, to the dog being afraid of the toaster, the poems are beautifully crafted, and her subjects the everyday and the universal.

Pam, who says she doesn’t feel she is a poet but just ‘has fun with words’, has been a writer, broadcaster and entertainer for more than 35 years.

It was November 1975 when she made her first TV appearance on the TV talent show, Opportunity Knocks, the Britain’s Got Talent of its day, and this proved to be the start of an incredible career for a unique entertainer.

Since then, she has sold millions of books, CDs, and DVDs, and she is still a regular on TV and radio, on programmes such as Just A Minute, Ayres On The Air, QI, Countdown, and The One Show.

But although she always wanted to be a writer, she wasn’t encouraged to write poetry as she was growing up.

“There was no poetry in our house apart from ‘The boy stood on the burning deck’,” she said.

“Poetry was scoffed at – it was twaddle. Everyone was out earning a living. We all had food and we all had shoes but we didn’t have much – it was just after the war. I went to school and did well and they were proud of me, but everybody left school and got a job, which is what I did.”

The youngest of a family of six children, Pam was born just over the Wiltshire/Oxfordshire border in Stanford-in-the-Vale, during the long cold winter of 1947.

After leaving school Pam joined the civil service as a clerical assistant, a job in which she soon lost interest, and which prompted her to join the Women’s Royal Air Force.

It was while Pam was in the WRAF that she developed her love of singing and acting.

The show, which starts at 7.30pm, is sold out. For more information visit www.pamayres.com.