'I met my husband on broadway... Lewisham Broadway'

There are bedroom secrets. And then there are Pam Ayres’s bedroom secrets. Yes, that Pam Ayres. No need to adjust your set. You know which one I mean. The beguiling poetess, with a rare turn in innuendo-laden comic verse. The one who always looks as if she’s swallowing a giggle as she opens her mouth and releases that glorious, treacly, Vale of White Horse accent.

Well now it seems, at the age of 65, the cheeky minx has taken to revealing the intimacies of the boudoir. Fifty Shades Of Grey Ayres ? ‘Oi don’t think so.’

‘My husband, Dudley, has snoring issues,’ she tells me, pausing to apologise for treading on her dog as she reaches for a copy of the verse it has inspired. ‘So I decided to write about it. Everyone has this kind of guilty secret, it’s very intimate. And I wanted to talk about it.’

And so Dudley’s night-time operatics have been immortalised in her new poem We Never Did It Much But Now We Do It Every Night.

Little wonder her legions of fans clamour for the mother of two to be made Poet Laureate.

She demurs with her trademark impish grin. ‘Oh, I couldn’t see myself draped in the mantle of Poet Laureate, flattering as it is that people even suggest it. I like to go my own way, I regard what I do as fun.’ But, Pam, look at all the fun out there. Surely there are rivers of rhyme waiting to describe Prince Harry and his Las Vegas games of strip poker?

‘I suppose there are. And it is funny. But it’s also fleeting. In a few years no one will know what on earth I was talking about. I’m quite parsimonious in my efforts when I write. I want to write about subjects that will last for years.’ Like snoring? ‘Exactly,’ she beams. Not surprising that Oh, I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth was voted among the nation’s top 10 favourite comic poems and her verse has been enjoyed by millions.

Pam Ayres has occupied a warm place in the nation’s hearts ever since winning Opportunity Knocks in 1975, reciting Pam Ayres And The Embarrassing Experience With A Parrot. ‘It was very exciting, though I do remember feeling really restricted when they stuffed me into this armchair.’

The youngest of six children, Pam was born and raised in a council house in Stanford in the Vale, a village in Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). Her father, Stanley, worked for the electricity board while her mother, Phyllis, ran the home. From an early age Pam loved the feel and taste of words and would write prolifically about the world around her. ‘I remember as a teenager writing poems describing the less attractive aspects of my friends’ boyfriends. I loved humour. They didn’t go down very well.’

After leaving school at 15 and enduring a stint as a clerk in the civil service, Pam joined the WRAF, taking a posting to Singapore. She also began joining theatre groups and going to folk clubs. Once back in Britain she realised how much she wanted to perform.

‘Even in the backwater where I lived, the folk movement was seeping into the furthest corners. I’d be in the back room of some pub with a horse collar hanging on the wall, singing or reciting my odd poems. I was astounded when people wanted copies.’

Indeed the poems are as much about the telling as they are the writing. And though she describes her merry-goround accent as a mixed blessing, the symphony of sounds she produces are perfect for her work.

Young Pam with a beehive hairdo

‘I do see that. Sometimes in introductions to appearances or performances, someone will read out my work and it doesn’t sound the same. If a word is understated or overstressed it can change the humour. That’s why I like to read it all myself.’

Inspiration (‘oh that important, heavenly word’) clearly washes all around the Cotswolds home she shares with Dudley and their dogs, surrounded by innumerable sheep, cattle and poultry. ‘I was brought up in a rural area and my dad always wanted to have a smallholding, so I suppose that’s why it happened.’

She met her husband, a concert promoter, and also now her agent, when he came to one of her shows to see if she might like to go on tour. ‘I always say we met on Broadway… Lewisham Broadway.’

Her sons James and William have resisted following in her footsteps, though their childhood is immortalised in a wistful and favourite poem, Akaroa Cannon, which tells how lonely a mother can feel when her children have grown up.

There is, however, plenty to occupy this rarest of minds. Mornings are filled with writing sessions – she aims to produce something every day. Afternoons are spent painting, and evenings cooking dinner for Dudley, before she returns to a final stint at her desk.

Besides a nationwide tour and a Radio 4 programme, Ayres On The Air, due to be broadcast this month, she is planning to write a play (‘a quirky, happy play’) and more serious, poignant pieces about Britain’s memorial homes. In the wonderful world of Pam Ayres, every day is packed with poetic possibilities. And with an Olympic snorer as her muse, it seems the nights are, too.

Has to beat counting sheep.

Pam Ayres will appear at the Soho Literary Festival, Soho Theatre, London W1 on 29 September at 6pm: 020-7478 0100, www.sohotheatre.com

The Necessary Aptitude: A Memoir, is published by Ebury Press, priced £20.

For more about Pam, go to www.pamayres.com

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me TEETH

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,

And spotted the dangers beneath

All the toffees I chewed,

And the sweet sticky food.

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’

When I had more tooth there than fillin’

To give up gobstoppers,

From respect to me choppers,

And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked

And the liquorice allsorts I picked,

Sherbet dabs, big and little,

All that hard peanut brittle,

My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My mother, she told me no end,

‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’

I was young then, and careless,

My toothbrush was hairless,

I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,

I flashed it about late at night,

But up-and-down brushin’

And pokin’ and fussin’

Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!

If I’d known I was paving the way

To cavities, caps and decay,

The murder of fillin’s,

Injections and drillin’s,

I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,

And I gaze up his nose in despair,

And his drill it do whine

In these molars of mine.

‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘ for in there.’

How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,

As they foamed in the waters beneath.

But now comes the reckonin’

It’s me they are beckonin’

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

© Pam Ayres 2012