Pam Valentine

When Pam Valentine was at school her English teacher said she should write. Her Latin teacher said she was heading for a life of crime. She chose the first option but has often thought there would have been more money in the latter. Espionage appeals.

Her family has been in the theatre since the seventeen hundreds as managers, directors, actors and authors. She started to write plays when she was just able to do joined up writing. She acted them in front of the bathroom mirror giving herself marks out of ten. Nine was her lowest score. She wrote one play set in China. Ending every speech with ‘Ah so!’. This one she performed to the family and couldn’t understand why they laughed so much.

She went to a school in London where every girl was automatically expected to go to university. So when she left she became a model. Fun for a while especially being in a television series but not intellectually challenging, so she gave it up and worked for one of London’s top theatrical agents. Hectic and exciting. If the agent didn’t have an actress for a part, he sent her. A crash course in acting without three years at RADA. But she said no when he wanted her to ride a horse, dressed in feathers, her not the horse, in Bertram Mills Circus. She did a brief stint selling model gowns in a posh London shop. She got the sack for tellling a very difficult customer the quickest way to the ground floor was straight through the window.

Her early writing career began whilst raising three children, being a theatrical landlady, and running a theatre in education programme for the local theatre. As she became successful, she gave up the last two but felt obliged to keep the children. She wrote for the Two Ronnies, but decided to try situation comedy. The first one she wrote, You’re Only Young Twice was accepted. It starred Peggy Mount and Pat Coombs. Then came How’s Your Father with Harry Worth. That was followed by That’s My Boy with Mollie Sugden. Then My Husband and I with Mollie and her husband William Moore.

Pam decided to return to her first love and started to write plays. First she wrote for radio then theatre. Concord have published a lot of her plays. Day of Reckoning, Alternative Accommodation, A Dog’s Life, What Time Is It?, and Poor Lonely Man.

Pam’s first love is theatre because there is a captive audience and it is possible to make them react as the author wants. She feels it is essential to give an audience a situation they can identify with. Having done that you can surprise and even shock them. The current play she is writing has a medical mystical theme. She had better get back to it!