A BUBBLY barmaid who worked pulling pints for 25 years, and celebrated her 70th birthday with TV stars, has been honoured with a memorial plaque at a Newport pub.

Pam Knight was described as the “life and soul of the party” at the Pen & Wig in Newport.

She mixed with punters aged 18 to 80, and partied with more than 300 on her birthday at the Stow Hill pub – including I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here! winner Joe Swash and former EastEnders star Kara Tointon.

New landlord of the Pen & Wig Dwaine Strong said the grandmother, who died on September 4 2013 aged 73, deserved nothing less than to be remembered with a memorial.

“She was very well known and very popular from what I am told,” said the 33-year-old, who took over at the end of October 2013. “It seemed a nice touch.”

The plaque takes pride of place on the wall behind the bar, below a photo of Ms Knight, and reads ‘Pam Knight, the oldest barmaid in town’. There is also a reference to her considerable charitable work for the RNLI.

Pub barmaid Ceri Edmunds said she had known Ms Knight, originally from Liverpool, since she was young.

She said: “She was always really happy and up for a laugh. She did lots for charity and her family meant the world to her. It is lovely for her to be remembered like this.”

Her daughter Rachel John, 44, said of her mother following her death last year: “She was such a character. She touched everybody, she lit up the room.

“Wherever she went she was the star of the show, the life and soul of the party.”

Ms Knight, along with her daughter, and her 21-year-old granddaughter, Bianca, all worked at the Pen & Wig in 2011.

A huge EastEnders fan Ms Knight was said to have been “gobsmacked” when the soap stars turned up at her birthday celebrations in 2009.

The actors then spent four hours talking to guests at the Pen and Wig, Newport, and posing for pictures.

Swash, who played Mickey Miller in the show before winning I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, was booked for a surprise appearance, and ended up bringing his then real-life girlfriend and on-screen half-sister.