Pam Ann: UK Layover 2009

In her only Scottish landing during her nine-date UK Layover Tour, Pam Ann touched down in Glasgow.

Her Australian creator, Carole Reid, has casually distilled the entire airline industry into one compact, cabin-sized character. At nearly two hours, the performance verges on long haul for stand-up comedy, but Reid consistently refreshes her methods.

The greatest part of the show is ad libbed, responding to the heat of the room and consisting of on-the-spot witticisms and take-downs of randomly selected audience members.

Reid mockingly bullies everyone who is not in the “First Class” of the front two rows of the auditorium, jeering the grand circle as economy. Flagellation is the order of the night and the audience adores it.

A love letter to the seventies, Pam Ann is the kind of wonderful anachronism on which the modern comedy circuit thrives. Her fiercely backcombed hair, thick with hairspray and CFCs, reminds her audience of a era of high glamour, high camp and sophistication; an era long before political correctness and global warming.

There is a lot of irony in Reid’s often controversial but polished routine. Sending up the racist and politically incorrect comedy of the likes of once-fashionable Bernard Manning and Jim Davidson, the character plays with the established sexual, religious and national stereotypes the audience subconsciously bring with them.

Here, a Spanish airhostess flamenco dances up the aircraft’s centre aisle; and there's an Austrian airline desperately try to disguise the muffled murmurs of passengers trapped underneath the floorboards.

Whilst this humour is often close to the bone, Pam Ann’s smiling delivery quickly neutralise any insult. Capitalising on the trends of drag cabaret, Reid expressively mimes to huge disco numbers and the effect on the largely gay audience is instant. If lighters were allowed in the auditorium, they would be charged to the ceiling; given the level of hairspray on the stage, it is just as well they are prohibited.

This kind of comedy should not be so appealing, but it is. Cracking jokes about airlines should be a niche, best reserved for her audience of cabin crew. Whether the lure lies in her high heels or caustic tongue is a mystery but Reid has cleverly spun esoteric knowledge into a great night out.