FASTEN your seatbelts and turn off all electric devices: Pam Ann has touched down in the UK and is ready to give London audiences the ride of their lives. Aussie Pam shares a couple nostalgic words about her homeland with BIANCA SOLDANI and explains the challenges involved in wowing her all too faithful London fans.
Aussie comedian and airline know-it-all, Pam Ann (or Caroline Reid in the real world) is getting “lubed up for London”. Back in town with her new show You F’Coffee, Pam says audiences will enjoy a completely new experience.
“There’ll be a lot of topical stuff,” she laughs down the phone from New York in her special interview with Australian Times. “What’s going on with the airlines, right up to the minute sort of stuff! And then we’re going to have “Pam Cam”: we’ve got a little camera that I’m gonna take round into the audience, new ‘movies’, new set design and some of that new social media — Twitter is it? — people can tweet what row they’re in. It’s bloody exciting!”
And just to make sure she’s appealing to all the expat Aussies, Pam conspiratorially told us: “Yes I do talk about Qantas quite a lot…and the cracks in their wings!”
On making her triumphant return to theLondonstage, Pam says that the pressure that comes from her popularity here motivates her to be always coming up with something new and fresh. The keen eyes of her many UK fans meaning she’s never able to recycle old material.
“InLondon, for me, there’s more pressure, because everyone’s like ‘It’s not new material!’” she says with a mimicked whine. “‘Why isn’t it new material!’”
Test-running parts of her new show in New York, Pam found American audiences harder to maintain but certainly easier to please.
“In New York, I can do what the f*ck I like!
“However, audiences in the Big Apple are pretty tough because they’ve seen everything. You gotta get ‘em in the first five seconds or else they’ll just go.”
Although definitely enjoying the scene in the Big Apple, and the interaction with American audiences, Pam said with delicacy that in London, “the innuendo and irony is a lot more understood”.
Having ridiculed and parodied the ins and outs of the airline industry for years, Pam unashamedly admits she’s a bit of a “plane geek”, and with a hearty laugh said her obsession with airlines and airplanes began with her desperate need to leave Australia.
“I wanted to get out!” she laughs “I wanted to get off the island! I guess my fascination with planes started when I had to come up with an idea to get out. Tullamarine, get me the f*ck outta here!”
Despite her somewhat scathing description of ‘The Lucky Country’, Pam says she does love going home and is getting geared up for her Down Under tour this August which will include, for the first time, a show in Darwin.
She pulls a Big Kev-like “I’m excited”, saying “I can’t wait to go to Darwin and get my didgeridoo out. I wanna take that f*cking ‘Sorry’ dress up there and see what they really think!”
She says she still loves the “fantastic” Aussie comic scene because of the freedom it allows performers.
“In Australia we can f*cking say what we like!
“I think we’re harsher, I think Australians get away with being a little bit more racist. And I don’t mean I’m racist, but I’m just saying that everyone’s so far away, it’s like ‘Ah that’s alright!’”
After living many years in the UK, and now residing in the States, Pam says she still calls Australia “65% home”.
“It’s still home because I’ve got my family and everyone out there, and I love Australia but there’s a certain breed of Australians that need to move around — we’re like a virus.”
Pam’s theory about Aussie travellers and expats is that “we give people a false sense of security. They all think we’re nice and down to earth, but really, we just want VISAs.”
Don’t miss Pam Ann’s new show You F’Coffee at the Bloomsbury Theatre from the 17 April