Biography

Pam Ayres is currently in the middle of a hectic schedule for 2006, which includes:

• An extensive schedule of 50 UK Theatre shows throughout the country, including her first appearance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.
• She broadcast on BBC Radio 4 of the second series of Pam’s radio comedy series, Ayres On The Air. The BBC has commissioned a third series for 2007.
• The release of Pam’s new DVD “In Her Own Words”, on March 6th. The DVD is a recording of Pam’s latest live show, recorded at Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre last September. The DVD has also been released by ABC in Australia.
• September 18th will see the publication, by Hodder & Stoughton, of Pam’s latest book, Pam Ayres – Surgically Enhanced.
• November 2006 will see the UK release of a new live CD recording, which will be recorded in September. Pam’s most recent live CD recording, They Should Have Asked My Husband, released in 2004, was Hodder Audiobooks’ best selling audiobook of 2005.

2005 saw Pam celebrate her 30th Anniversary as an entertainer, as it was November 1975 when Pam 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.

Recently Pam featured in a poll to find Britain’s 20 Funniest Women, and one of Pam’s poems, “I Wish I’d Looked After me Teeth”, was also voted into the Top Ten of a BBC poll to find the Nation’s “100 Favourite Comic Poems”, in which 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, together with some 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.