After leaving school at 15 and starting a job in the civil service, no one would have tipped that Pam Ayres would become a household name.

But she’s been part of the British cultural landscape ever since she won Opportunity Knocks, the original TV talent show, more than 30 years ago, with her distinctive brand of comic brilliance.

Famous for her down-to-earth poetry and West Country burr, the 57-year-old lives in Cirencester, Gloucesershire.

Her tours still sell out, and her first book, The Works, is now being re-published, along with quotes from Pam as to why she wrote the poems.

Growing up, the youngest of six children in post-war Britain, while Pam enjoyed writing, it didn't seem to be a career path open to Pam.

“There was nothing literary or poetic at all,” she says.

“It was a nice family but it was also a rough and ready country one and so I did feel the odd one out because I was interested in books. I was in the school play and my mum came and supported me – she was good at English too. But it wasn't an artistic family.”

After two years in the civil service Pam wanted to get out and see the world, so she decided to join the air force.

She laughingly dismisses speculation that she was once a secret agent.

“The rumours have given me a veneer of glamour which I didn’t have before but it is all nonsense, I worked as a clerk,” she says.

While Pam may not have been a spy, her new job did allow her to take a sneaky look into another world that she hadn’t seen before – performing.

While stationed in Singapore she bravely stepped onto the stage for the first time.

Writing the poems might have come naturally, but she says performing in front of a real audience was “absolutely terrifying”.

Part of the problem was that there was no one to model herself on.

“I’d looked in books but there hadn’t been anything for someone like me with a pronounced sense of humour who wasn’t from the Footlights background,” she explains.

“I had a country accent and there didn't seem to be anything for me in any of the scripts and allegedly funny sketches that you could perform, so I began to write my own, tailored to my own idiosyncrasies.”

Positive feedback helped her to grow in confidence and when she returned to England she started performing at folk clubs.

After being talent-spotted at a club by Radio Oxford, she was signed to do a weekly spot where she’d read out one of her poems. That went down so well that she put together her own small book and sold 7000 copies.

When she had the audience in fits at a village show in Bampton in 1975, the organisers told her they were going to put her forward for Opportunity Knocks.

Pam was a sparky alternative to the predictable types of entertainment audiences were used to and she became an overnight TV success, quitting her day job for her new career.

While it was great to become a professional entertainer, Pam confesses that her stagefright was replaced by fears about a lack of income.

Luckily, help came from an unlikely source: “I got a television advert for cream cheese which paid me £600 which was a fortune,” she says.

“I was being paid £23 a week so it was a real large sum of money and I thought it’s a sign! I’ll take it and see how long I can keep going and that was the beginning of it, I’ve now been going for 30-odd years!”

Her first book, The Works, was published soon afterwards and included all the hits that had made her an overnight celebrity, including Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth and Battery Hen.

In 2004, Pam received the MBE for services to literature and entertainment.

While many modern reality TV stars soon find they are heading back to their normal lives once the hype has passed, Pam managed to grab hold of fame and stay a household name, even bagging herself a husband, Dudley Russell (who is now also her manager) and two children along the way.

While she’s no longer so keen on some of her past work, such as The Vegetable Garden And The Runaway Horse, she’s hoping that readers will also take the time to read some of the poems that weren’t so famous the first time around, including Wayne and Clive The Fearless Bird Man.

As for the future? Fans shouldn’t hold their breath for another book of verse, but Pam does admit that an autobiography is in the pipeline. Whether it's going to rhyme remains to be seen.

  • The Works by Pam Ayres is published by BBC Books, priced £14.99.