Who Are You Calling Vermin?

Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster and entertainer for over 40 years. She is the author of several bestselling poetry books, including The Works, Surgically Enhanced, You Made Me Late Again! and The Last Hedgehog. Pam’s autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, was a bestseller when it was published in 2011. 
 
 
On radio she is a regular on Just A Minute, has made six series of her own Ayres On The Air and has appeared twice on the legendary Desert Island Discs. 
 
 
Pam performs her solo stage show throughout the UK and lives in the Cotswolds, where she is an enthusiastic gardener for wildlife.

'Maybe the polluters will purify our streams. 
Purify our waterways? In your bloomin' dreams! 
All will be rewilded, all will be renewed, 
The country will look lovely, 
But we won't have any food. 
Our stocks will be sustainable, 
The French will be our friends, 
We shall live in harmony, until the bitter end.' 
 
Hidden beyond the bluebell woods and babbling brooks, there is great unrest in our countryside. In this lyrical satire, Pam Ayres highlights the undercurrents simmering beyond the patchwork of fields. We meet the angry fishermen who can't afford to live in their own villages, the indignant farmers who get the blame for everything and the old man grieving for the unspoilt village of his youth. The animals have their say too, from the persecuted grey squirrel who didn't want to leave America anyway, the barn owl mourning his now-converted ancient barn, and the humble maligned mole, all of whom come together and demand to know: Who Are You Calling Vermin?

Pam Ayres on Animals

Pam Ayres (Author) 
 Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster and entertainer for over 40 years. She is the author of several bestselling poetry books, including The Works, Surgically Enhanced, You Made Me Late Again! and The Last Hedgehog. Pam's autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, was a bestseller when it was published in 2011. 
 
 
On radio she is a regular on Just A Minute, has made six series of her own Ayres On The Air and has appeared twice on the legendary Desert Island Discs. 
 
 
Pam performs her solo stage show throughout the UK and lives in the Cotswolds, where she is an enthusiastic gardener for wildlife.

A beautiful collection from much-loved poet Pam Ayres, compiling her best verse dedicated to animals, illustrated by Ellie Snowdon. Now a Sunday Times bestseller. 
 
'Oh WHY must you bark at the postman? 
 Why must you batter my ears? 
 I know it seems rum 
 But the postman has come 
 Every morning for SEVENTEEN YEARS.' 
 
 From her very first encounter with a friendly golden Labrador at just three years old, Pam Ayres has been enchanted by animals. Now, for the first time, in this beautiful new illustrated work, she has gathered together her life's work of poems, new and old, dedicated to her love of them. 
 
This definitive collection brings to life the charming characters and voices of all creatures great and small through Pam's poetry over the last five decades. From delightful tales of our British wildlife in 'I'm a Starling Me Darling' and the difficulties of keeping farm animals in 'Fleeced', to her hilarious observations of our pets in 'Ode to a Jack Russell' and poignant reflections on the end of their lives in 'Tippy Tappy Feet', Pam Ayres on Animals is a celebration of animals everywhere.

With These Hands

Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster, and entertainer for over 40 years. She is the author of several best-selling poetry books, including The Works, Surgically Enhanced, You Made Me Late Again!, and The Last Hedgehog. Pam’s autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, was a best seller when it was published in 2011. 
 
 
On radio she is a regular on Just A Minute, has made six series of her own Ayres On The Air, and has appeared twice on the legendary Desert Island Discs. 
 
 
Pam performs her solo stage show throughout the UK, and lives in the Cotswolds, where she is an enthusiastic gardener for wildlife.

'Pam Ayres is absolutely essential to British humour' Mail on Sunday 
 
'A national treasure' Daily Express 
 
Delighting her fans for more than four decades with her mischievous wit and wry observations, this is a classic collection of poems and monologues from Pam Ayres, which takes us back to where it all began. From the nostalgia of her 1950's childhood, conjuring up images of hand-knitted swimming costumes and suet puddings, through Pam's four years in the WRAF where she discovered the joy of performing, to poignant reflections on motherhood and watching her children grow up. With These Hands provides a profound and hilarious insight into the joys and tribulations of daily life, as recorded by the nation's favourite poet.

Up in the Attic

The first new collection since 2013  from the nation’s favourite poet, Pam Ayres

Pam Ayres is absolutely essential to British humour, reminding us all to be tickled by the small joys and ridiculousness of everyday life.

My prescription for Christmas jollity would be Pam’s book passed around by the family

Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster, and entertainer for over 40 years. She is the author of several best-selling poetry books, including The Works, Surgically Enhanced, You Made Me Late Again!, and The Last Hedgehog. Pam’s autobiography, The Necessary Aptitude, was a best seller when it was published in 2011. 
 
 
On radio she is a regular on Just A Minute, has made six series of her own Ayres On The Air, and has appeared twice on the legendary Desert Island Discs. 
 
 
Pam performs her solo stage show throughout the UK, and lives in the Cotswolds, where she is an enthusiastic gardener for wildlife.

Sunday Times Bestseller 
 
The brand new collection of verse from the nation’s favourite poet, Pam Ayres. 
 
With the same magic that has enchanted her fans for more than four decades, Pam’s new collection is by turns hilarious, reflective and profound. From the dubious joy of being an exhausted, panic-stricken hostess in ‘The Dinner Party’ or feelings of unease about pub tableware in ‘Don’t Put My Dinner on the Slate!’, to a poignant reflection of war in 'Down the Line'and the bittersweet nostalgia of ‘Up in the Attic’, this new collection will tickle and move readers in equal measure.

My New Collection

You Made Me Late Again!

The wonderful new collection of poems, anecdotes and short verses from the inimitable Pam Ayres.

When I say that Pam Ayres ought to be the Oxford Professor of Poetry, even the Poet Laureate, I am not being facetious ... Ayres uses simple verse forms - comic ballads or folk song idioms - to make poignant observations about tiresome husbands, gossiping wives, false teeth or battery hens. 
I find her work sweet and sour, gentle and sad, and often very moving in its wistful way

Her wistful, funny and perceptive verse captures both the joy and unfairness of life

Her humour, which verges on the black at times, is contagious and so original

A national treasure. There are clear comparisons between Pam and Sir John Betjeman

Pam Ayres writes as rhapsodically about the Wonderbra as Wordsworth did about daffodils

Pam Ayres, our much-loved comedienne and broadcaster, has entertained us for almost 40 years since winning Opportunity Knocks in 1975. Her series on BBC Radio 4 is Ayres on the Air, and she has also appeared as a guest on Just A Minute, Loose Ends and Saturday Live. She is one of the UK’s top-selling comediennes with her theatre shows. 
 
Pam’s poetry collections include The Works, With These Hands and Surgically Enhanced, and The Necessary Aptitude is her memoir of growing up in Berkshire during the post-war years. Pam has appeared three times for HM Queen Elizabeth, and was awarded the MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2004. Pam and her husband have lived in Gloucestershire for over 25 years, where they have a smallholding with cattle, sheep, bees, chickens and guinea fowl. 
 
www.pamayres.com 
@PamAyres

With over fifty new poems from Britain’s favourite poet, You Made Me Late Again! is an essential addition to Pam Ayres’ incomparable collection of works. 
 
Pam’s poems are observant, witty and poignant in equal measure. In ‘The Swifts’ and ‘The Pyracantha Anthem’ she marvels at nature, while ‘A Patient’s Prayer’ and ‘Litter Moron’ offer wry views on Modern Britain. From the dog being afraid of the toaster to your son leaving home for university; and from the search for that perfect swimsuit to becoming a gran for the first time – Pam’s poems are beautifully crafted, and her subjects the everyday and the universal. 
 
Delightfully illustrated, most of the poems in You Made Me Late Again! are brand new, yet it also features several firm favourites from her stage shows, published for the first time, such as ‘The Make-up Lady’ and ‘Tippy Tappy Feet’.

A Memoir

The Necessary Aptitude

The Sunday Times bestseller - a beautifully written memoir by Pam Ayres, one of Britain's most-loved personalities

Ayres gives a wonderful account of what it was like to grow up poor but respectable in post-war rural England. Some of her writing in the early chapters, describing life as the youngest of six children in a council cottage in the Vale of White Horse, Berkshire, has the original freshness of classics such as Flora Thompson's Lark Rise to Candleford

I find her work sweet and sour, gentle and sad, and often very moving in its wistful way ... The descriptions of post-war Berkshire life in The Necessary Aptitude are wonderful ... The world Ayres evokes is Hardy's Wessex ... I do admire (and envy) this marvellous woman

Excellent ... Unsentimental, especially about herself, Ayres gives a surprisingly moving account of what it was like to grow up poor in rural England without any "aptitude" for making something of herself

Christmas Guide to a Cracking Read, Mail on Sunday

Highly readable ... Pam's memoirs are a masterclass in effective and effervescent prose

An evocation of long-gone village life as captivating as Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford. At the book’s height, she reaches up and touches Laurie Lee

As funny and benevolent a memoir as you’d expect from one of Britain’s finest comic

It’s all so well written, so funny and so touching

Pam Ayres has been a writer, broadcaster and entertainer for over 35 years since winning the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1975, and she has become an audience favourite for her sharp perception of the comic detail of everyday life. Pam is the author of several bestselling poetry collections, including With These Hands, Surgically Enhanced and The Works. Many of her poems are in school textbooks in countries including China, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, South Africa, Ireland and Singapore. Pam's books, record albums, CDs and DVDs have sold many millions, and she is a regular guest on radio programmes such as Just A Minute, Loose Ends and Saturday Live. Her own programme Ayres on the Air will be entering its fourth series in 2012. Pam performs her solo stage show annually to sell-out audiences throughout Britain and around the world. In 2004 she was awarded the MBE.

'Next, I applied to work in the accounts department, a sealed room where women operated clattering machines like enormous typewriters. After I had catastrophically and erroneously applied all the wrong information to several trolley loads of documents and lumbered the staff with weeks of corrective work, I was shown the door by a tight-lipped manageress. I knew what was coming. Over the relentless, furious din of machinery, I lip-read the familiar words: "Lacks the necessary aptitude."' 
 
Pam Ayres' early childhood in Stanford in the Vale was idyllic in many ways, and typical of that experienced by a great swathe of children born in rural areas in the immediate post-war years. Though her parents' generation was harrowed by war, better times were coming. Everything the family needed was within walking distance in the village, and life with four older brothers and a sister in their crowded council house was exceedingly lively. 
 
In her late teens, Pam grew dissatisfied with her life as a Civil Service clerk with only the local 'hop' for scintillating excitement. Having seen three of her brothers called up for National Service and sent off to exciting destinations, Pam felt desperate for travel and adventure. She joined the WRAF and soon found herself in the Far East. There she began to write in earnest, and develop the unique talent that would make her one of Britain's favourite comics... 
 
Written with Pam's much-loved combination of humour and poignancy, The Necessary Aptitude is a beautifully written memoir of her early years.

Pam Ayres

A Life in Poems

‘When I look over the poems in this book, I can trace the course of my life. The various stages are all here: the young woman juggling various boyfriends, the wife adrift amid the joy and terror of new motherhood, and the astounded, adoring granny. Here is the cavalcade of much-loved dogs, the fascination with wildlife, the travel, mistakes, regrets, the heartbreaking leaving of the family home and the sober business of ageing.’ 
 
Doggedly Onward is Pam Ayres’s career-defining collected works. 
 
As Britain’s most read and adored poet, Pam has spent a lifetime bringing joy to us all, providing wise and hilarious insights into the delights and tribulations of daily life. Assembled for the first time in a single volume, Pam’s life in poems is beautifully illustrated and annotated throughout with her own reflections on six decades of making the nation laugh and cry.

Pam Ayres

Books by Pam Ayres

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