You needed to fasten your seatbelts, as Pam Ann aka the Australian comedy star Caroline Reid’s new show Around The World 2013 is about to take off at the Anvil in Basingstoke.
This outrageous Diva is the brand new face of the London Heathrow Sky Team’s Terminal 4 and has a global appeal with her acidic, raucous and camp, bitchy humour.
She has toured with Cher, crewed private jets for Elton John and even Madonna is a huge fan.
The show starts with an “in-flight” video that frames the mood for the evening with slides featuring Pam Ann stating, “I’d rather go naked than wear a smile in economy” and “nothing brightens first class like your absence” much to the amusement of the waiting audience.
Pam Ann makes a dramatic entrance dressed in red—now surely that’s a Virgin colour? She welcomes the audience with the first few rows in “First Class” the middle section in “business” and the rest in “economy.”
She has a large gay fan club and Reid is superb at empathising with them and the enthusiastic audience with oodles of local references including Basingstoke’s notorious roundabouts.
Her merciless taunting of aircrew and airlines is hilarious. Much of the humour relies on which cabin staff may be in the audience so FlyBe, Ryanair, EasyJet, Thomson, Virgin and British Airways are all given the Pam Ann treatment.
Nor did airports escape with Gatwick being described as, “a shopping centre with a runway running through it.”
There are even references to Kate Middleton and a preview of some of the in-flight movies on offer such as Superman, The Exorcist and Scarface with Pam Ann superimposed into the scenes. Mind you those, “passengers travelling in economy will have to content themselves with watching the map,” all tremendous fun.
As the trolley service arrives Reid develops her audience participation with quick-witted improvisation. We discover that Alan is a superintendent at Windsor Castle so cue some lively repartee about corgis and the Queen and glasses of champagne are then shared with the front row, sorry first class.
If you haven’t seen Pam Ann before then you are in for a treat but previous “frequent flyers” may find this flight more like a domestic flight rather than the luxury of transatlantic.