Farewell to Pam: scores of friends and neighbours bid farewell to Wigan actress and singer

Scores of mourners attended the 81-year-old’s funeral at Christ Church, Ince, despite the entertainer’s having died in February without any surviving relatives.

They heard the curate, Rev John Keeley, deliver a eulogy which showed what a long, varied and often starry life Pamela Culshaw (her real name) had enjoyed.

She was a veteran of the North West’s club circuit as a singer in a career that began in earnest the 1960s but had seen her learning to tap-dance at the age of just six and loving the adulation of appearing on stage when still at senior school. Eventually she ditched post-educational work as a dole office clerk to take up showbiz full time.

Pam was also known as an actress who landed cameo roles in many films and TV programmes over the years.

Recent appearances have included All Creatures Great and Small and the new ITV chiller Passenger. Two years ago she acted alongside Cate Blanchett and Dame Harriet Walter in a retro comedy show called Documentary Now! which has been screened in the US but has yet to be shown in the UK.

Among many others, she also had parts in Coronation Street, Brookside, Shameless, Eric and Ernie, Scarborough and Alien Autopsy, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Peter Kay, Ant and Dec and Victoria Wood.

Musically she performed alongside Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck and Liberace. She had a particular love of performing in Blackpool while one of her nicknames back in the day was The Queen of Wigan Pier. She brought out an album of songs of that name too.

The congregation heard that in the early days of her career she was greatly supported by comic legend Ken Dodd and her Equity application was endorsed by the actress Pat Phoenix who played Elsie Tanner in Coronation Street.

Her coffin was borne into the church to John Barry’s music to the film Out of Africa, the hymns The Lord’s My Shepherd and The Day Thou Gavest were sung during the service, and she was borne out to the Robbie Williams hit Angels.

There followed a burial at Westwood Cemetery and wake at Whelley Ex-Servicemen's Club.