VIRGINIA Ironside’s one-woman show, which arrives at Ludlow Assembly Rooms on Wednesday, February 13, may be entitled Growing Old Disgracefully, but she admits that taking to the stage is probably the most disgraceful thing she herself can be accused of.

Not for her the ‘wearing purple and learning to spit’ of Jenny Joseph’s famous poem. She’d rather not, she declares, ‘sit on a pavement’ when she gets tired.

The slightly unexpected phenomenon of one of the UK’s best known agony aunts taking to the stage and taking her show to the Edinburgh Fringe grew from her experiences at literary festivals, Hay among them, invited to talk about her books, including No! I Don’t Want to Join a Bookclub and No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses.

“I did quite a few and quite enjoyed them,” she says, “and I found the audience enjoyed them too, but there doesn’t seem to be much in them for the ‘performer’ – you’re lucky if you sell a few books and get your expenses paid.”

She decided that she was good enough to merit a greater reward for her efforts and that “I could do more (with the material) as a show than a talk at a literary festival.”

As with so many unexpected success stories, it was a chance meeting, this one with Nigel Planer, that provided the catalyst and propelled Virginia on to the stage and a tour that keeps on going.

“I said to him, do you know anybody who might direct me and take it to Edinburgh?

“We were on a cruise at the time and at sea, so nobody could go anywhere, and he saw it and said “I think you’ve got something and I’d love to direct you.

“I was just hugging myself, once I had his name as an endorsement.

I worked up a script and went to his house and rehearsed.

Having stood up in front of him and performed it I felt nothing could be more embarrassing.

“I realised I had nothing to lose, and I thought there must be old people in Edinburgh who don’t want to see all the things put on for the young people.”

As it turned out, there were plenty of people who wanted to see Virginia on stage and her show was one of the hits of the 2012 Fringe. “Totally at ease in the spotlight, she effortlessly prods us into several laughs a minute – and groans of happy recognition,” declared The Stage.

“It was quite extraordinary,”

she says. “I then got some proper producers who got me all these dates. I love it. I keep thinking I can’t go on enjoying it this much.

But I have got a lot better at it, and each time I do it it gets a bit bolder and I learn something every time.”

She is also making best possible use of the tour to visit friends and relatives around the country – on this occasion she will be staying with friends in Ludlow and visiting her godmother in Ledbury.

Virginia admits to having a soft spot for Herefordshire, her grandparents having retired to Much Birch (between Ross and Hereford) from India. “Originally they lived in a house in Ross that’s now an old people’s home.

The benefits of getting older, she says, are that everything is a bit sharper when you recognise that death is nearer.

“Everything I do has more of a point to it. You don’t have so many choices.

“People appear to enjoy the show, which is very nice,” she says. “All my life I have tried to make people feel less unhappy and this is a very direct way of doing it.”

Virginia Ironside will be at Ludlow Assembly Rooms with Growing Old Disgracefully on Wednesday, February 13 at 7.30pm. To book, call the box office on 01584 878141 or go to ludlowassemblyrooms.

co.uk