EastEnders Pat Butcher actress Pam St Clement talks about her life, career and favourite storylines

Two decades before she stepped foot in Albert Square, actress Pam St Clement was honing her skills in Sidcup.

Having spent nearly 26 years playing Walford matriarch Pat Butcher on EastEnders, the 72-year-old is one of the nation’s most recognisable stars.

And it all started with acting training at the prestigious Rose Bruford college, which has turned out talent such as Dr Who’s Tom Baker, Boardwalk Empire and Snatch’s Stephen Graham and Oscar nominee Gary Oldman.

Pam, who is at Broadway Shopping Centre in Bexleyheath to sign copies of her memoirs on Wednesday, told News Shopper: “Bexleyheath will be nice because I was at Rose Bruford in Sidcup. Gosh, I’ll feel the changes.

“I had very happy times. I loved college years. I was at college in Devon as well and they I came up to Bruford and I loved it.”

She added: “I even worked at St Mary Cray Hospital in my Christmas vacation.

“I needed a holiday job to see me through college and I thought it was a nice way to spend Christmas. I was really just an orderly, sweeping, but it was great and I loved it.”

In two and a half decades on EastEnders, Pat was frequently at the centre of the action.

One of her favourite storylines was when Pat had an affair with Frank (Mike Read), who was with Peggy (Barbara Windsor) at the time.

Pam said: “I loved the Frank/Pat affair. I loved the trip to Spain. It was a delightful thing to do because it was just actors who got on with it.

“We were away from home base and that is always nice because you are just concentrating on one thing. I loved the bowtie scene, where Frank comes round to the back door in just a bowtie.”

“I loved the scene Barbara and I did in the ice cream van. Both of us still get people coming up to us and saying how much they loved it.

“I was very lucky during my time there. Most of my time there was with family, and we were very close. The actors in my family were absolutely fabulous.”

Though she left the show a while ago, Pam said she remains close to the cast.

She said: “We all laugh about the term ‘family’ but it really is like family.

“I saw everybody yesterday and I see Babs (Barbara Windsor) for lunch and theatre when I’m in town and I keep in touch with people like Adam (Woodyatt, Ian Beale) and Tish (Letitia Dean, who played Sharon Watts). For the first time, I met the new bunch yesterday.”

People had been telling Pam she should write a book for years but it was only after leaving the soap in 2012 that she even entertained the idea.

She said: “When I left that behind that I still didn’t want to write a book.

“When I was involved in being Pat, I started to recapture myself a bit and think about my life.

“There were a lot of things about my life that I hadn’t really got straight or in perspective because it was a bit of a strange upbringing.

“I started to write things down and think about it and I thought ‘actually there’s quite an extraordinary story here’.”

Eighteen months after she began writing, Pam is set to release the book, appropriately titled The End of an Earring.

She said: “It is lovely to see it out and of course my biggest hurdle is I shall probably be slaughtered by professional authors because they will probably hate it.

“It is one of those things. As an actor, you get used to being critiqued and people commenting on your performance and that’s as it should be.

“I get just as irked when I see doing sports people doing pantomime, to be honest. Their voices can’t get across the footlights because they haven’t been trained.

“Don’t do it if you can do it. And I’m putting myself into the same position to be knocked down like a coconut.”

Publisher headline books describes The End of an Earring as ‘an incredibly warm memoir’ which is not only a tribute to Pat Butcher but also reveals the woman behind the character.

It has been noted before how different the charming and well-spoken Pam actually is to Pat.

Pam said: “People are nice enough to know my name. There’s the odd one that doesn’t. 

“There is such a diversity of opinion – I will get as many people coming up to me saying ‘you’re not at all like Pat’ as I will people saying ‘you’re just like Pat’.

“I don’t quite know what the meaning of that is. Do they mean physically? I don’t look like Katie Price and change my appearance completely for Pat.”