Pam Ann was amazing! Seriously one of the best live performances I have seen for a long time. The show owes a lot to Barry Humphries' performances (as Dame Edna Everage et al), with Caroline Reid appearing as two characters, Lily (a myopic Asian air-stewardess) and Pam Ann. Like Dame Edna, Pam Ann invites audience participation with live game shows, and generally takes the piss out of the poor fools (un)lucky enough to get seats near the stage. Pam Ann's got a wealth of special material, as most of the humour revolves around the horrors of airline travel. And the humour is universal I think, as nearly everyone has flown on a plane, and often more than one airline to compare the service.
Pam made many references to it being Australia Day. The three audience-plucked game show guests were Australians, with one person from Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, prompting many easy jokes ("you can tell where they're from by how they're dressed", "Brisbane - that's not Australia. There's Australia, and then there's Queensland"). She even made reference to T.A.A. at one point, which got a giggle from the Australians in the audience (there were many, this is London after all), while the joke flew straight over everyone else's head.
My favourite segment of the show was a videoclip where Reid performed a little caricature of different airlines, donning the appropriate uniform, and mocking the stereotype. We saw the giggling subservience of a Singapore girl, the dictatorial Aeroflot stewardess, the airhead from Virgin Atlantic, the rough-as-guts easyJet steward from Essex ("we're flyin' ova wart-arr" , and an Iberian show-pony. But the best was British Airways ("those [Heathrow] T4 bitches"): immaculately dressed in the BA uniform, a grumpy Reid leans against a seat, checking her nails, huffy at the prospect of doing anything for the passengers, all while Malcolm MacLaren's Aria on Air plays whistfully in the background. Hilarious!!
