Pam Ayres on the Air...

On Sunday night Stu and I found ourselves at the BBC Radio Theatre in London's glitzy West End waiting for Pam Ayres to perform.

She was recording the latest series of Pam Ayres on the Air - an half hour BBC Radio Four show combining sketches, monologues and the inevitable and ever welcome poetry. The theme this time round is the seasons and we witnessed a double recording of spring and summer.

I have to say she was superb. Very funny. I'd not see Stu laugh so much in ages. He even said he might start listening to the radio now!

Aside from the comedy at the front it was the audience that made us giggle too. All crusty old Radio Four demographics, mainly in couples who would produced endless supplies of sandwiches from their bags wrapped in tinfoil and lukewarm tea from thermos flasks. So very Britsh.

We've been luck enough to been offered tickets to see the second double recording next week - autumn and winter - so we are very much looking forward to that.

And in the meantime here one of her (and my) favourtes:-

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 methey are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.