Pam Ayres

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2018

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Pam Ayres is a poet and broadcaster. Pam was born in the Vale of the White Horse and retains her characteristic Berkshire burr. She is the youngest of six children, and grew up in the company of her four brothers and a sister in a small council house. Although she was interested in writing from an early age, she failed her 11-plus exam and left school at 15 to join the Civil Service and later the Women's Royal Air Force, where she found opportunities to appear in amateur dramatics. She began to perform her comic verse in local folk clubs in the early 1970s and her first break came when she secured a spot on BBC Radio Oxford. In 1975, she won the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks and by the following year she had given up her day job. Pam has sold more than three million copies of her books, and has been called "the people's poet", thanks to her ability to write verse which resonates with a wide audience. Her best-loved poems include Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth, which was voted one of the UK's top ten comic verses in a BBC poll. Striking a very different note, her poem Woodland Burial has become a popular reading at funerals. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.0	Hello, I'm Kristi Young.
0:05.0	Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item
0:12.0	that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
0:16.0	For rights reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast.
0:22.0	You can find over 2,000 more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Discs website.
0:31.0	Music
0:48.0	My castaway today is the writer Pam Ayers.
0:52.0	She is an unusual poet.
0:55.0	She sells a lot of books and she smiles as she declaims witty, charming, wily verse on everything from drystone walling to dodgy vending machines,
1:05.0	capturing the daily confusions, niceties and frustrations of what it means to be English.
1:12.0	She became a big star in the 1970s, winning the votes and hearts of millions of viewers with her distinctive delivery and cheeky grin.
1:21.0	She has found that newfound nationwide fame and the giddy whizz of showbiz must surely have come as something of a shock.
1:29.0	Up until then, she'd spent her time in the civil service and the RAF.
1:34.0	She says, I'm not saying that what I do is easy, it's very hard.
1:38.0	It's just, I never felt like a poet proper because my goals are different.
1:42.0	I don't want to provoke thought or be profound.
1:46.0	I just want to make my audience feel at home and give them a laugh.
1:50.0	Pam Ayers, do you agree with what you said?
1:53.0	Sort of, yeah.
1:55.0	Certainly I never set out to be a poet.
1:58.0	I didn't really listen to poetry.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.