For twenty one year millions of radio listeners were enthralled by the revelations, both mundane and sensational, contained within the pages of Mrs Dale’s Diary. The daily serial revolving around the family and friends of Mary Dale and her doctor husband Jim was one of the BBC Light Programme’s best remembered programmes.
Mrs Dale’s Diary wasn’t the first soap opera on the Light, that honour fell to The Robinson Family (later The Robinsons), the peacetime version of the Front Line Family (see my April 2025 blog post On the Front Line with the Robinsons). Head of Drama Val Gielgud was keen to replace the Robinsons and “start up a completely new family with a different set of actors and scriptwriters, and if possible a rather less tepid approach.” Mind you he was never happy with the result, labelling it “dramatically inept and sociologically corrupting”. The listeners, however, loved it with over six million (1) tuning it at its peak. It was also a favourite in the Royal household, with Princess Margaret claiming to be a fan and the Queen Mother listening in as “it was the only way to hear what goes on in a middle class family”. The programme became a byword for cosy middle class domesticity and Mrs Dale imploring that she was always “worried about Jim” was a national catchphrase
When the serial started the plot outlines, main characters and scripts were provided by Ted Willis (under the pseudonym John Bishop) and Jonquil Antony. “It was the BBC’s own idea”, said Antony, “they just handed us a piece of paper saying they wanted a doctor, his wife, son and daughter-in-law. We went on from there.”
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| Virginia Lodge illustrated in the Radio Times 3 January 1958 |
The first episode aired on the Light Programme on Monday 5 January 1948. The Radio Times painted a picture of what listener’s could expect:
Meet the Dales ...the new radio family (Dr Dale, his wife Mary, their son Bob, and their daughter Gwen) makes its debut at four o’clock on Monday and thereafter its adventures will be broadcast at the same time each day from Mondays to Fridays inclusive under the title Mrs Dale’s Diary.
The Dales live in a cosy house in Kenton, Middlesex, where Dr Dale has been a GP for the last twenty-five years. Bob Dale is twenty-two and just demobilised from the Army; his sister Gwen is three years younger and works in an office in London. Others in the family whom listeners will hear from time to time are Mrs Dale’s sister Sally (a completely contrasting character to Mrs Dale and always a welcome visitor), Katherine Mackintosh, the doctor’s Scots dispenser, Mrs Freeman, Mrs Dale’s mother, who lives nearby, and Mrs Morgan, the domestic ‘help’.
Cleland Finn tells us that for the assistance of the script writers, Jonquil Antony and John Bishop (both of whom had a hand in The Robinsons), the Dale family have been ‘documented’ in great detail – even down to Mrs Dale’s waist measurement!
Heading the cast as Mary Dale was Ellis Powell and as Jim Dale, Douglas Burbridge. Both had appeared in The Robinsons, Ellis as Mrs Williams and Douglas as the narrator. Courtney Hope was Mary’s mother Rosemary Freeman who Jim always referred to “mother in law”. Billy Thatcher was Bob and Virginia Hewett the first Gwen. As the Dales were obviously well off they also employed a daily help, Mrs Morgan played by Grace Allardyce, and there was also Monument the gardener played by Charles Lamb. Needless to say over the 21 year run the actors came and went and some characters were played by a number of people. Within four years Billy Thatcher had been succeeded by Hugh Latimer, Derek Hart and then Leslie Heritage. In quick succession Gwen was played by Joan Newell and then Beryl Calder, who, in 1951 got married just a month before her character did. Dorothy Lane appeared in the most episodes, originally as one of Dr Dale’s patients from episode seven and then cast as Mrs Freeman when Courtney Hope left after a year or so. She stayed with the serial right through to the last one in 1969.
Even the main character of Dr Dale was played by three actors with James Dale taking over from Douglas Burbridge, who left due to ill health, in June 1954 and finally Charles Simon from 1963. Famously Ellis Powell was replaced as Mrs Dale by Jessie Matthews. More on that anon. (2)
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| Ellis Powell |
The premise of the programme was that Mary Dale was reading excerpts from her diary, acting as a narrator for the listener and thereby introducing the next scene or set of scenes. In the first episode, which remarkably was kept, the Dales are sorting out their house in Kenton ready to make the move to a house called Virginia Lodge in the fictional suburb of Parkwood Hill but Mrs Dale is being overzealous with clearing out.
Very few editions of the programme are in the BBC Sound Archives with numbers in just single figures for Mrs Dale’s Diary and similarly for The Dales, which includes the last full week’s episodes. One that was retained was this episode, number 2548, from January 1958 in which Mrs Dale looks back at past events, in this case what happened in 1954 and 1955. There were similar episodes for other years across the week but for whatever reason this recording was kept.
Another one that was retained is this oddity, episode 3272, which I uploaded in 2021 and dated as 1 November 1960. Given that Mary Dale refers to the election of JFK as President which happened the following week, I can only assume that the BBC’s date refers to when it was recorded. I also assume they recorded an alternative opening should Nixon have won. Anyway, in this episode Aunt Hestor visits from Canada. Listen out for some decidedly dodgy accents!
In those early years the storylines ranged from Bob joining the TAs, Gwen’s on/off marriage and Mrs Freeman’s car accident to Monument mistaking weed killer for fertiliser and killing off the strawberries, Angeline the goat munching its way through the neighbours flowers and veg plot and a roll of wallpaper being stolen. When the serial decided to get ‘with it’ in the Sixties the storylines hotted up and listeners hear more about medical matters (from mumps to smear tests and cerebral palsy), adultery, a train crash, death by careless driving and , controversially for the time in 1967, Sally’s husband Richard suddenly coming out as gay. Actors were encouraged to drop the frightfully clipped accents and open up their vowels
Ted Willis left after the first block of scripts had been delivered and the bulk of the writing fell to Jonquil Antony (who continued to work on the programme until 1963) and three other women who were recruited: Melissa Wood, Lesley Wilson and Joan Carr Jones. This team produced all the scripts for the first five years but in 1953 the BBC was already proposing that the serial be “more topical, up-to-date and outward looking”. The lead time between script completion and recording was cut in half, a new producer, Antony Kearey, was appointed and, when Lesley Wilson went on maternity leave, actor and playwright Basil Dawson was drafted in. He’d previously written for Dick Barton-Special Agent and he told the press at the time: “The BBC tell me that they want the man’s angle on Mrs Dale’s Diary and I’m going to model the men on real life people.”
When Dawson left two years later Robert Turley joined the writing team. In 1954-55 Hazel Adair was also writing scripts, she’d go on to create the TV soaps Compact and Crossroads. Some now well-known names submitted test scripts to the production team. In 1953 Doris Lessing had a go but it was rejected as “a bit strong for domestic drama”. In 1964 producer Keith Williams was trying to promote new writers and Tom Stoppard wrote five scripts, these were also rejected but Jill Hyem’s showed promise and she joined the team. Both Jill and another Dales writer Alan Downer would create the programme’s successor Waggoner’s Walk.
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| Radio Times billing for Mrs Dale Looks Back 6 January 1958 |
Whilst there was plenty of drama in Mary Dale’s diary, in the early Sixties there was even greater drama behind the scenes at Broadcasting House. In February 1962 it was reported that Mrs Dale and her husband were moving out of the middle class suburb of Parkwood Hill to the fictional bustling industrial town of Exton some 35 miles north of London in “an attempt to knock the snobbery out of the Dales.” The move came about because Dr Dale had secured employment at a group practice and would also attend an industrial health clinic. Initially Mary was not enamoured of Exton: “Oh Jim, what a place. I can smell the soot in the air. We could never live in a place like this-it’s grey and dirty”. (3)
On 26 February 1962 Mrs Dale’s Diary became The Dales. The Radio Times explained the changes:
Listeners will notice that this week’s Mrs Dales Diary becomes The Dales. It is now fourteen years since Mrs Dale first began a diary to keep listeners up to date with the affairs of the family and neighbourhood.
On consideration it has been decided that a change in the manner of narrating the story as it develops will give the writers greater flexibility in introducing listeners to fresh aspects of the Dales’ life. Already many regular listeners who write to the BBC about this famous radio family refer to them as ‘The Dales’.
So, in future, instead of the ‘diary’ opening an announcer will introduce each episode; and the change will be marked by a new signature tune.
That new signature tune was written by Johnny Dankworth and played by his Septet. It replaced the harp glissando played by Marie Goossens that had been in use from the start, Dankworth’s jazz-like composition included a nod to the original at the end. The new theme was not universally liked and the BBC dropped it in July and instead used part of Dance in the Twilight by Eric Coates played by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Vilem Tausky. I don’t have a copy of that recording so in the sequence below I’ve used a much later version played by the Concert Orchestra under the direction of John Wilson. From January 1964 a new specially written theme from Ron Grainer was introduced played by an ‘ad hoc combination’ and used for the remainder of the run.
There was more drama to come in February 1963 with the shock news that both Ellis Powell and James Dale had been dropped from the programme. Before his days as a television dramatist Dennis Potter wrote for the Daily Herald and on 20 February 1963 he had this to say:
Britain’s best known privet hedge could not shield The Dales from the wind of change that is blowing through the BBC. That’s why Mrs Dale (real name Ellis Powel, aged 56) and Dr Dale (actor James Dale, 77 next week) were unceremoniously sacked from the famous radio serial yesterday. They were summoned to the office of the BBC’s head of sound drama, Mr Val Gielgud...and they left with six months tax-free pay and no job.
Mrs Mary Dale was told: “Sorry, but we are making re-adjustments to the programme.” She had played the part since the serial began 15 years ago. Dr Jim Dale was told: “Sorry, but you are too old for the part.” He had been in it for nine years.
In the serial the Dales have just flown off to America. (4) While they are away listeners will have a chance to forget what they sound like.
Why did the BBC put the Dales on a plane, and then drop them overboard? It is not like the old BBC. But there are new ideas being put about at Broadcasting House by young men in tight trousers and brown suede shows. These young men felt increasingly uncomfortable about Mrs Dale. They thought it was like having Queen Victoria to tea. They did not like her cosy, middle-class pleasantries with harmlessly banal tittle-tattle.
As a first step Mrs Dale’s Diary was renamed The Dales and turned into a superior kind of Archers. The programme was given a modish Johnny Dankworth theme tune –dropped after outraged protests from thousands of listeners-and forced to move from the gentile environs of suburban Parkwood Hill to Exton, an industrial town north of London.
The sackings were not the only change announced yesterday. A new producer has been appointed – 39 years-old script writer and actor Peter Bryant, who was Jack Groves in the Groves Family TV serial. One of The Dales’ principal script writers, Robert Turley, has left and will be replaced by Barbara Clegg.
What happens now to the Dales – or rather the ex-Dales? Said Mr Dale: “It is dreadful to be hoofed out like this after working for the BBC for 27 years and playing Dr Dale for nine.” Miss Powell, whose marriage ended in divorce last June, said: “Perhaps TV will give me a chance. I never tried TV because it could have destroyed the listener’s image of me.”
That divorce was from the actor Ralph Truman. It had been a tempestuous marriage and, according to reports in the Sunday papers some weeks later, “she was a sick woman who drank too much, backed horses and had lovers.” (5) Now unemployed Ellis Powell signed on at her local unemployment exchange. She was working as a cleaner in a West End hotel and also had the promise of work at her friend Freddie Mills’s new night club and was rehearsing for an episode of Hugh and I, though she was not happy in it and kept forgetting her lines. For some time she had suffered chronic pain from Ménière’s disease and she was taking some prescribed pills and a ‘tonic’ but was also self-medicating with gin and whisky. It was this cocktail that had affected her performance as Mrs Dale. Tragically just 11 weeks after getting the sack Ellis was found unconscious in the Marylebone flat and died in hospital 12 hours later. The official cause of death: ‘Cerebral haemorrhage’. Her son, Clive Truman, claimed that she had “tried to put a brave face about losing the part of Mrs Dale. But I know that she felt it more deeply than anyone could possibly tell”.
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| Daily Mirror reports on the sacking of Ellis Powell and James Dale 20 February 1963 |
So who would be the new Dr and Mrs Dale? Apparently at least a hundred actors were auditioned and an approach had also been made to Elspeth March (previously married to Stewart Granger) but she demurred. On 7 March 1963 the BBC announced that Mrs Dale would be played by Jessie Matthews and Dr Dale by Charles Simon. Charles Simon was a regular radio actor and had been a member of the BBC Drama Repertory Company. (6) Bagging Jessie Matthews was quite a coup as she was a well-known name having been a theatre and film star in the 1930s and 40s and had something of a colourful personal life. Her most famous role was in the musical Ever Green, the film version of which gave her the song with which she’s most associated, Over My Shoulder. The BBC had to pay extra to get Matthews, whilst Ellis Powell was on £30 a week Jessie was enticed into the studio for £65.
When Matthews got the role producer Peter Bryant said that “there won’t be any changes – only in the way Jessie Matthews plays her role. Her personality is quite different to that of the previous Mrs Dale.” The first appearance of the new couple was on March 18 1963. In the first half-hour after the episode the duty office took just five calls from listeners- three against and two for the new Mrs Dale. Four of them said she sounded too young.
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| Jessie Matthews |
In her 1974 autobiography titled, naturally enough, Over My Shoulder, Jessie Matthews makes no secret of her past nervous breakdowns and its seems that it was her depression that precipitated the ending of The Dales. Undergoing shock treatment meant that in recordings her lines were underlined in red and Keith Williams, then Head of Serials, had to point to them when it was her time to speak. She was unable to recognise her fellow cast members and she was “too ill to go on at all”.
The axing of The Dales, now broadcast on the Light’s successor Radio 2, was announced in January 1969 with Controller Robin Scott saying “We realise it will mean taking away a slice of life to some people who have followed the serial over 21 years. But we hope listeners will grow to appreciate the new serial just as much”. He added “All things must come to an end and we felt the programme had gone on long enough.” Meanwhile, the scriptwriters were presaging the end of the programme with Dr Dale announcing that he was to give up medicine and retire. In the final weeks only one character was killed off, OJ the odd job man had a heart attack. A total of twenty-three characters appeared in the final instalment.
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| The Dales cast in 1969 |
On the programme’s demise Jessie Matthews was quoted as saying; “I had a great admiration for Mrs Dale. I could understand why she had such a big following on radio. Now I shall have more time to look around for other work. But it will take time to sink in.” Later, in her autobiography no reason is given for the end of the serial and she reflected : ‘When The Dales came to its untimely end in 1969 I did not feel unduly downcast. I had been playing Mary Dale for six years, but I had guarded against becoming stale by fitting in other jobs both on television and on the stage. Yet it was sad to say goodbye to the company, we felt rather like a family breaking up.’
As for Charles Simon, he said “It has been a very delightful and lucrative job. We have been assured by the BBC that they will offer us plenty of other work”. Leslie Heritage, who played Bob Dale since 1959 said: “As an actor I found the role gave me a great deal of financial security. It did not mean Jaguar cars, but it does mean that when the show ends I won’t starve.”
Original scriptwriter Jonquil Antony, who worked on the drama for 15 years, was of the opinion that “it was about time the programme came off. Some people will be very upset, but they will accept the decision. I can remember when the predecessor to Mrs Dale, The Robinsons, was taken off. There was uproar. But it all died down.”
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| Jessie Matthews, Charles Simon and Dorothy Lane |
I received a vast number of letters from all over the country supporting my protest, and, although I had anticipated, or at least hoped for, support, I had not dreamt that it would be as widespread, or that The Dales gave so much comfort to the sick and elderly, or that there were so many hundreds, if not thousands, of people in homes and hospitals for whom Mrs. Dale and her family have become a major part of daily life.
But the protests were to no avail and the last episode, number 5,431, aired on Friday 25 April 1969. The final line went to Mrs Dale as she says “One thing that’s never going to change. I shall always worry about you Jim” The following Monday a new kid was on the block with the start of Waggoner’s Walk.
In 2012 Penelope Keith, herself an avid listener to the serial, spoke to a number of people who’d worked on Mrs Dale’s Diary and The Dales in a programme titled I’m Rather Worried About Jim.
In this programme we hear from radio critic Gillian Reynolds and then Keith Williams who produced The Dales and went on to be head of serials. Producer/directors interviewed are Betty Davies (who’d worked on the programme in the 1950s and 60s) and Jane Morgan who have some lovely gossip about Dorothy Lane who played Mrs Freeman, plus Martin Jenkins and Andrew Sachs who recalls his time directing Jessie Matthews. (7) Actors featured are Shirley Dixon (at least the 5th Jenny Dale), Aline Waites (the 4th Gwen Dale), Peter Baldwin (Corrie’s Derek Wilton) who was a member of the BBC Drama Rep, Elizabeth Proud (Rosie, who famously burnt Mrs Dale’s diary), Gordon Griffin (grandson Billy Owen), Jean Trent (Lois Jackson) and Jim McManus (garage owner Pat Hill). (8). Studio manager Enyd Williams, later a radio drama director, remembers having to create the effect of Mrs Freeman’s cat Captain throwing up. Series writer Jill Hyem recalls the script conferences. (9) I’m Rather Worried About Jim was produced by Angela Hind and was first broadcast on Monday 16 January 2012.
(1) The 1966 BBC Handbook states that 3.0m heard the afternoon edition and 3.5m the morning repeat
(2) In fact other actors sometimes had to step in to play Dr or Mrs Dale if even for a week or two. Norman Claridge stood in as Jim Dale in 1959. The part of Mary Dale was also taken by Thea Wells in 1948, Noel Dyson in 1963 and Ruth Dunning in 1966 and 1967
(3) The Dales never did settle in the new town and later moved to a rambling old house in Wells Street in the old town area of Exton
(4) The Dales really seemed to enjoy holidays beyond the reach of most Light Programme listeners. My perusal of programme synopses shows they also visited Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Malta and ‘Arabia’
(5) Apparently, like her fictional counterpart Ellis Powell kept a diary and it was serialised in The People after her death
(6) By the mid-60s the BBC Drama Repertory Company employed 40 full-time members plus an additional four for English by Radio, six for schools productions, nine for The Archers and four for The Dales. Whilst some members, such as Mary Wimbush, Peter Tuddenham, Timothy West and Diana Olsson had named parts in Radio Times cast lists, the billings often included the wording ‘Other parts played by members of the BBC Drama Repertory Company’
(7) Others who produced The Dales and went to make their name elsewhere include Wyn Knowles (editor of Woman’s Hour 1971-83), Patrick Dromgoole (TV producer and director) and John Tydeman (renowned radio director and head of radio drama 1986-94)
(8) Some actors who appeared in the serial but are better known for other roles include Hattie Jacques who played Mrs Leathers in 1959, Jack Howarth, Albert Tatlock in Coronation Street, played Mr Maggs for over a decade, Clifford Rose, Kessler in Secret Army, played Cliff Barbour, 15-year old Nigel Havers was one of the many actors to play Billy Owen and Bill Treacher, Arthur Fowler in EastEnders played Sydney Pratt. There was also a brief appearance in 1958 for Nicholas Parsons filling in as Bob Dale and for many episodes in the mid-60s Derek Nimmo was Jago Peters, one of Gwen’s boyfriends.
(9) Other script writers for The Dales included Ray Rigby who went on to write the award-winning screenplay for The Hill, former Dixon of Dock Green writer Rex Edwards and actor Jeffrey Segal who you may recall as Arthur Perkins in TV’s Rentaghost
This is the second in a short series of posts marking the launch of the BBC Light Programme 80 years ago.
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