“I do find it very satisfying to make people laugh,” Pam Ayres tells me. “I can’t think of a nicer job.”

The poet, songwriter and presenter has been making people laugh for decades now with her poems and songs, turning a keenly humorous eye on the everyday stuff of life. Ayres became a household name when she won the television talent show, Opportunity Knocks, in 1975. But her career in comedy began when she was posted to Singapore as a young women in the Women’s RAF and joined the theatre club where she was based. 

“Every Friday night they used to have a club night and somebody got up and did something funny,” she says. Ayres wanted to take part but couldn’t find anything she wanted to perform, so she began writing her own material. “I’d always loved writing and always loved performing,” she says. “When I got to Singapore I brought the two things together and started to write funny poems as a joke. I was astounded how people took to them.”

Back at home in Oxfordshire, Ayres was working for the Civil Service when she entered and won Opportunity Knocks with her poem “Pam Ayres and the Embarrassing Experience with the Parrot”. Her appearance on the talent show led to guest appearances on TV and radio shows - and a starring role in an advert for cream cheese. To friends and family, she had “made it”, but her overnight success left her feeling a little lost.

Expectation

“There was a tremendous sense of expectation but I didn’t know what was coming and from what direction,” she says. “Everybody kept saying, you’re made, you’re made. It was a really weird time.” Gradually though, the work started to come in. “There was a kind of turning point when I realised I was filling theatres. I’d written books that were selling in huge numbers. At first it seemed unbelievable.”

Ayres is still filling theatres - not only here but overseas too. This month she is touring New Zealand and Australia. Her schedule looks punishing, I comment. But she dismisses this tour as “easy” compared to ones she has done in the past. “Why should I complain?” she says. “I worked in the civil service from the age of 15 to 27. Those jobs were awful, they were boring. Now I’ve got this wonderful job I love. I still get joy in doing it. Already theatres in Australia are filling up. It’s amazing that it happened and that it’s continuing.” 

Hard graft

Ayres has also recently finished writing her autobiography, a process she describes as “really hard graft” compared to writing poems. “That was a departure because it involved the creation of a colossal volume,” she says. “Usually I’m concentrating on a very small thing. I’m constructing it a syllable at a time.” Now she’s back to working on her poetry.

Her regime sounds disciplined - she says she goes to her office every morning and tries to write something, even if she ends up discarding much of it. “I find the process keeps the channels open. I don’t sit around in a glade waiting for inspiration to strike,” she laughs. I can’t imagine that a glade would provide Ayres with much material anyway, as so much of her work depends on the wry observation of day to- day life. Although she never mentions her sons in her work without their express permission she admits that she considers her husband, the theatre producer Dudley Russell, to be “fair game”. Poems such as “They Should Have Asked My Husband” send him up mercilessly, but Ayres is quick to point out that she mocks herself just as readily. And, as she says, she’s not really sending her husband up - she’s sending up husbands in general.

“With any good comedy you have to draw it off somebody and I use my husband quite a lot, or myself.” She explains. “I feel I’ve achieved my goal if someone comes up and says, that’s just like me. I feel I’ve struck a chord with that person and it’s made them laugh.”

Pam Ayres’ autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, is now available to buy

from all good bookshops and online retailers. Ebury Press RRP £20.00.