In 2005 PAM AYRES celebrates 30 years as a professional entertainer, as it was November 1975 when PAM AYRES made the first of her appearances on the ITV talent show, Opportunity Knocks, and this proved to be the start of an incredible career for a unique entertainer. There is no other contemporary entertainer whose career was established by writing and performing comic verse.

PAM AYRES always wanted to be a writer. At school she shone brilliantly at English and Art, but was pretty useless at everything else. The youngest of a family of six children, PAM AYRES was born in Stanford-in-the-Vale, Berkshire, 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, and slowly the wild idea emerged that she would like to be an “entertainer”.

On leaving the WRAF Pam set out to achieve her ambition. By this time her poems and verses had become a hobby, to be written and performed for the local folk club in Oxfordshire, to where she had returned to live and work as a secretary. In 1974, a friend arranged for her to go to the local radio station, BBC Radio Oxford, to read one of her poems. Pam’s first broadcast for Radio Oxford, in 1974, was selected for BBC Radio 4’s Pick of the Week, and subsequently repeated on the 1974 Pick of the Year, by which time Radio Oxford had asked Pam to return and recite some more of her poems.

In 1975, after much prodding from friends, Pam decided to audition for television’s Opportunity Knocks. Since then PAM AYRES has appeared on virtually every major TV show in the UK, has had her own TV series, and filmed Christmas TV Specials in Hong Kong and Canada. Other highlights include BBCTV televising one of Pam’s solo stage shows, and appearing in the Silver Jubilee Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. In October 1996, Pam performed part of her stage show at a Royal Gala Charity Reception at St. James’ Palace, attended by HM The Queen.

PAM AYRES has published six books of poems. Sales of these have exceeded two million worldwide. Her latest book, With These Hands, a collection of poems, monologues, and sketches, was published in paperback in 1998 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, following its hardback publication in 1997, when it spent several weeks in the Sunday Times best-sellers chart. Pam has also written many books for children, of which six have been published in the USA, two have been translated for European countries, and one into Japanese. Pam’s book The Works, published by BBC Books in 1992, has now achieved sales of over 100,000.

PAM AYRES has recorded seven record albums, and has silver, gold, and platinum records from sales in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Pam has four CD recordings currently available – three on BBC Audio, and the fourth is Pam’s latest live show recording, THEY SHOULD HAVE ASKED MY HUSBAND, which was released last in 2004 by Hodder Headline.

From March 1996 until June 1999 Pam presented a two-hour music and chat show every Sunday afternoon for BBC Radio 2. In 2000 and 2001 she presented two series of Pam Ayres’ Open Road, also on BBC Radio2, in which Pam visited various parts of the country from Skye in the North to Devon in the South meeting people with interesting stories to tell about their lives and the area where they live. Pam is a regular contributor to BBC Radio4, on such programmes as Just A Minute, Say The Word, and That Reminds Me, and her own series Ayres On The Air was broadcast on Radio4 in July 2004, and repeated early in 2005. There will be a second series of Ayres On The Air in 2006.

Pam performs her solo show in theatres throughout the UK, doing about 50 concerts a year. She has taken her one-woman show to Ireland, the Middle East, Hong Kong, France, Kenya, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. In 2003 Pam returned to Australia for her tenth concert tour since she first toured Australia in 1978, and 2004 saw her return to New Zealand for an extensive concert tour there. One of Pam’s poems, "I Wish I’d Looked After me Teeth", was recently voted into the Top Ten of a BBC poll to find the Nation’s “100 Favourite Comic Poems”; Pam was one of the few writers in the Top Ten who is still alive! In the UK Arts Council’s report on poetry, Rhyme and Reason (pub.Oct 2000), Pam was identified as the fifth best-selling poet during the previous years 1998 & 1999, following Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, and Sylvia Plath.

PAM AYRES is married to concert agent & theatre producer Dudley Russell, and they have two sons, William and James, aged 23 and 21. The family lives in the Cotswolds, where they keep rare breeds of cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, and guinea fowl, and where Pam is a keen (and knowledgeable) gardener and beekeeper.

PAM AYRES was awarded the MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2004.