Interviewing Pam Ayres made me laugh out loud several times and for a good half-hour afterwards I was still sniggering. Not all comedians and performers are as engaging off-stage as they are on but with Ms Ayres, what you see is most definitely what you get.

This weekend she’s pitching up to the Woodstock Literary Festival to launch her autobiography The Necessary Aptitude.

It weighs in at a hefty 400-pages and details her childhood in the Vale of White Horse, including her time at Stanford in the Vale primary school and secondary modern in Faringdon.

After four years in the Women’s Royal Air Force, she worked at Morris Radiators in Woodstock Road, then Smiths Industries in Witney.

An entertaining read, it is packed with fascinating local references.

But it’s not until 300-plus pages in that we reach the showbiz part of her life and that just about sums Pam Ayres up.

She likes to takes her time and when the punch lines come they are relaxed and all the more amusing for it.

About her schooldays in Faringdon, she joked: “Far from putting up a blue plaque, they’ve bulldozed my old school.”

And on royalty: “I was really nervous about performing for the Queen. It’s not as if we have much in common.

“In the end, I talked about how much my teenage sons used to eat and she said she couldn’t believe how much her grandsons ate, either.”

Her Majesty must have been impressed, as she awarded Ms Ayres an MBE in her birthday honours list seven years ago.

Meanwhile, the girl who grew up in a council house has sold millions of books of poetry, despite failing her eleven-plus and leaving school at 15.

“I don’t know how many books were sold in the early days but my first book of poetry was in the best seller list for 46 weeks, so it must have been a lot,” she said.

She leaves the business and money side of things to husband and manager Dudley Russell, a former theatre producer.

While explaining they make “a great team”, she can’t resist quipping: “He’s the one with all the inside knowledge about theatres, so if he went off with a floozy, I’d have to pack up performing.”

Her big break came in 1975, when she appeared on ITV talent show Opportunity Knocks.

It propelled her to stardom and she even went on to host her own TV show.

In fact, by the time Hughie Green knocked, she was already making a name for herself by performing in folk clubs, including one at the Bell Inn in Ducklington.

That sparked an invitation to appear on Radio Oxford where “paralysed with fear” she read her poem The Battery Hen.

It was chosen as Radio 4’s Pick of the Week and prompted the Beeb to sign her up for a six-month stint on local radio.

Around this time she penned Oh, I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth at Smiths’ Witney High Street offices, while counting down the hours to a dental appointment.

Her homely verse and distinctive country burr are part of her appeal but in the beginning, they worked against her.

“There was a lot of snobbery. The accent made everyone think you were a yokel.

“They just wrote you off and tended to look down their nose at you.

“I never set out to be a poet. I wrote pieces to perform. They were for my own voice and timing and I was just trying to get a laugh from the audience.

“Then, when people started to buy my poems I thought ‘Cripes, I had better give them more attention’.”

There was no game plan in terms of her career.

“I blundered along. But from an early age, I had this restlessness and a feeling that I was supposed to be to be in the entertainment industry.”

At 64, she has absolutely no intention of slowing down.

She writes in the study of her Cirencester home and says she will carry on as long as audiences want her to.

Tomorrow she is at the Betjeman Festival in Wantage where she will read her new poem We Never Did It Much But Now We Do It Every Night.

“It’s about how when you get to our age, it’s everyone’s guilty secret.

“Snoring, I mean,” she laughed.

* The Necessary Aptitude by Pam Ayres is published by Ebury Press at £20.

Pam Ayres is at the Henley Literary Festival this weekend.

For more information see henleyliteraryfestival.com