Pam Ayres at 77: not shy, not retiring either

The ‘people’s poet’ on grandkids and Glastonbury

She has been amusing audiences for almost 50 years with her witty, consoling rhymes on life’s experiences, from not looking after her teeth to the agony of hosting dinner parties, weight gain and ageing.

Her acute observations conveyed in clever, witty verse have been used on many special occasions. One called ‘Yes, I’ll Marry You My Dear’ is often used at weddings, ‘Woodland Burial’ (about wanting to be buried in a wood) is read frequently at humanist and woodland burials.

She’s making an appearance at Glastonbury Festival this year – for the second time. “I’m down with the kids, down and dirty,” she chuckles.The woman who made her name by winning the talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1975 is still touring at 77 (her next tour is in the autumn), and is collaborating on a stage musical about countryside disquiet called Who Are You Calling Vermin? and has no intentions of retiring. “I won’t retire, not unless I have to. I’ve always written from the time I was a child at school. I don’t envisage a time when I would stop enjoying it. So I’ll go on as long as I can and as long as I feel I’m doing a good job.”

“I don’t feel 77,” she continues brightly. “I don’t feel like an old woman at all, but I am. I find it quite amusing that I’m 77 because I don’t feel any different from the way I did in my 20s.”

“I’m very interested in wildlife and I’m depressed by the way it has disappeared during my lifetime,” she laments. “Lots of things have gone extinct. The wildlife that I grew up alongside, the great clouds of swifts and swallows that used to come in the summer, the sound of the cuckoo in spring, the river and brook would be full of watervoles and there would be frogs, thrushes, hedgehogs, and they have gone largely. Yeah, you see them but they are a rarity. That’s what I find so infinitely sad.”

Most of her life savings have been spent on a 22-acre wildlife reserve in the Cotswolds where she lives, which is where she walks every day. Her new book I Am Hattie The Hare – the second in a series of four themed around wildlife and conservation

– gently introduces the species to younger readers, but also touches on the impact of mankind on the environment and how life is changing for our hares. Her grandchildren have already taken the first two books to school, and have given positive feedback.

“I’ve encouraged the children to be interested in our wildlife and want to look after it,” she says proudly.

I Am Hattie The Hare by Pam Ayres, illustrated by Nicola O’Byrne, is published by Two Hoots, priced £12.99.