WRITER and entertainer Pam Ayres, who celebrated 25 years in show business last year, returns to Tewkesbury next week with more funny stories and a poem or two.

Pam first appeared on TV's Opportunity Knocks in 1975 and quickly became a household name.

Her comic poems became so popular that she was the fifth best-selling poet in 1998 and 1999, after Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Sylvia Plath.

Her best known, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth, was in the BBC's top ten of The Nation's Favourite Comic Poems.

Her book, Pam Ayres - The Works, has sold around 100,000 copies and she has also been recorded on CD, cassette and video.

In her most recent series of programmes for BBC Radio 2, Pam Ayres' Open Road, she travelled about the country meeting people with interesting stories to tell.

She can be seen and heard at The Roses on Wednesday and Thursday, March 7 and 8, at 7.30pm.

Tickets are £12.50 (concessions £11.50), from the box office on 01684 295074.

7 Household name: Pam Ayres.