You Made Me Late Again!

Pam Ayres, our much-loved comedienne and broadcaster, has entertained us for almost 40 years since winning Opportunity Knocks in 1975. Her series on BBC Radio 4 is Ayres on the Air, and she has also appeared as a guest on Just A Minute, Loose Ends and Saturday Live. She is one of the UK’s top-selling comediennes with her theatre shows.Pam’s poetry collections include The Works, With These Hands and Surgically Enhanced, and The Necessary Aptitude is her memoir of growing up in Berkshire during the post-war years. Pam has appeared three times for HM Queen Elizabeth, and was awarded the MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2004. Pam and her husband have lived in Gloucestershire for over 25 years, where they have a smallholding with cattle, sheep, bees, chickens and guinea fowl.www.pamayres.com@PamAyres

When I say that Pam Ayres ought to be the Oxford Professor of Poetry, even the Poet Laureate, I am not being facetious ... Ayres uses simple verse forms - comic ballads or folk song idioms - to make poignant observations about tiresome husbands, gossiping wives, false teeth or battery hens. I find her work sweet and sour, gentle and sad, and often very moving in its wistful way