Pam Ayres: My Wolverhampton Grand show’s not just for old folk
Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster, and entertainer for more than 40 years. She is one of the few authors who has had books in the Sunday Times bestseller charts in almost every decade since the 1970s. She is the author of several best-selling poetry collections, including The Works, With These Hands, Surgically Enhanced and You Made Me Late Again!.
And many of her poems are in school textbooks around the world including the UK, USA, China, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, South Africa, Ireland and Singapore.
In 2016, once again, the most borrowed poetry book in UK Libraries was Pam’s most recent book, You Made Me Late Again.
And this year she’s back on the road with a new tour that reaches Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre tomorrow.
Pam is one of the most popular female comedians performing in UK theatres. Her autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, was the UK’s bestselling female autobiography of 2011, and her 2013 book of poetry, You Made Me Late Again, went straight into the Sunday Times bestseller lists.
She has appeared three times for HM The Queen – at the Silver Jubilee Royal Variety Performance in 1977, at a Royal Gala Charity Reception at St James Palace in 1996, when Pam, as the only entertainer, performed part of her solo stage show, and finally at Sandringham Women’s Institute in 2004, when the Queen attended in her capacity as President of the Sandringham WI.
Subsequently, she was honoured to be awarded the MBE in Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2004.
She is presently performing in more than 30 theatre and festival shows and is delighted to be back.
“I hope it will be fun. I’m on stage for two hours and I’ll be using poems and stories and anecdotes and jokes. You have to vary it as much as you possibly can. I’ll use old and new poems – things like I Wish I’d Looked After My Teeth.
“I’ll use sad pieces too. We moved house after 28 years, which just about broke my heart, and I realise that’s a commonly shared feeling. There’s also a piece about when children go to uni and the great gulf that leaves in your life.
“It’s new and old. I always try and move it on all the time. I don’t go round doing the same thing. I keep a very careful record of what I’ve said in a particular theatre. I try to write new material all the time and I’ve had a good writing period last winter.”
There’s no surefire way to write a brilliant new poem. Pam has to wait until the muse strikes and surf those creative ways.
“The process is waiting and praying for a good idea. That’s the crux of it. It’s to get a good idea that will strike a chord with lots of other people. Those things aren’t that easy to find. I’ve been writing about long distance flying recently, that’s come together quite well. It’s looking for a good idea, then I work on it in the mornings. I go in each morning and work on the ideas I’ve got. I try to approach the subject from all sorts of different angles. A lot of my time is spent groping for good ideas. When I find one, I’m delighted. I try and do something good with it. You have to find something people will identify with.”
Pam’s a predominantly older audience but social media has allowed her to connect with a new generation. She is on Twitter and is constantly surprised about the new young people who come along.
“I do little political tweets and a bit of sniping from the sidelines, that’s brought in quite an interesting new audience. It’s not a show aimed at the old. I get three generations.”
She is proud that performance poetry is now mainstream and feels a sense of kinship with new stars.
“I look now at the number of performance poets that there are and I do feel that it’s partly down to me. Because I don’t know of anybody except Cyril Fletcher who was doing his odd odes, sitting in an armchair and doing a bit of verse, who opened up the doors to it.
“There was no one going around with funny poems, using those as the main thrust of the evening. Phil Jupitus said to me ‘you are the reason I’m a performance poet’. I didn’t set out to be a performance poet. I wrote those things and If I’d been musical I’d have made them into funny songs. But I couldn’t do that and everybody fell about laughing when I spoke them and that was good enough. I do feel a lot of people came after me, which is flattering.”
Touring is bliss and she finds herself playing in Gibraltar, Althorp and Dubai, among other places. “You finish in all these amazing spots that you’d never in 100 years go to unless you did it for a living.
“I don’t like the travel because the roads are busier but I love talking to an audience is great. I’m not as scared as I was at the beginning. If you are successful on a talent show these days you are thrown to enormous audiences before you’re ready. Well, I’m not new but I still love it.”
