Mrs Dale's Diary
Mrs Dale's Diary was the first significant BBC radio serial drama, first broadcast on the BBC Light Programme (now BBC Radio 2), on 5 January 1948. It was broadcast twice daily on weekdays, with the afternoon episode being repeated on the following morning. The lead character, Mrs Dale, was played by Ellis Powell until she was sacked in controversial circumstances in 1963 and replaced by Jessie Matthews. An innovative charateristic of the programme was that a brief introductory narrative in each episode was read out, spoken by Mrs Dale as if she were writing in her diary.
Format
The basic storyline was that of a doctor's wife, Mrs Mary Dale, her husband Jim, and the comings and goings of a fundamentally middle-class society. The Dales lived at Virginia Lodge in the fictional London suburb of Parkwood Hill. This was based upon the real area of Kenton in the London Borough of Brent. Later in the series, the family relocated to the fictional new town of Exton New Town; this was done in an attempt to modernise the programme, to try and escape from the hopelessly middle-class image that the show had.
Mrs. Dale's mother was Mrs. Freeman, whom Jim always called, rather gravely, "mother-in-law". The family had one daughter, Gwen, and a son, Bob. Bob was married to Jenny, who had twins; Gwen was widowed after her husband David was killed in a water-skiing accident in the Bahamas where he was holidaying with his rich mistress. The Dales and their friends (and Captain the cat, named after the character in Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas) got along together in almost perfect harmony. It was all very respectable, comfortable and middle-class, although one of the characters, an artist named Jago Peters and played by a young Derek Nimmo, had once tried to use a neighbour's Scandinavian au pair as a nude model. The programme is thought to be the first British mainstream drama which depicted sympathetically in a leading role a character known to be homosexual, Sally's (always pronounced "Selly") husband. It was an extremely brave move to feature a gay man in the series, especially when it must be considered that homosexuality was still illegal in the United Kingdom then. The way this material was handled contrasted with what was happening elsewhere: for example, the contemporary radio comedy programme Round the Horne featured homosexuality as a cause for ribald mirth, as did the Carry On films. As a consequence, The Dales is highly regarded in the history of the British Gay Rights movement. Listening to archive footage now - and there isn't much (the BBC scandalously destroyed over 4000 episodes of the show) - shows the character to be sympathetic, "ordinary", and thus the show's writers and producers should be praised for that.
Changes To The Format
In 1961, the serial was renamed The Dales. The linking narratives by Mrs. Dale were dropped at this time. The reasons behind the changes was that the BBC were very conscious that the series was considered by the media to be twee and hopelessly old fashioned. With a brand new theme tune composed by genius Ron Grainer, the new format should have worked...however, there were dark clouds gathering on the horizon of Exton New Town...
Scandal!
Infamously, Ellis Powell was sacked at this time from the role of Mary Dale. Many allegations were made against her by the BBC, who castigated her for what went on in her private life in those more innocent times. Powell denied everything and when the play (and later film) The Killing of Sister George premiered, she tried (unsucessfully) to sue playwright Frank Marcus, claiming that the central character, an embittered, lesbian alcoholic who had been sacked from a daily serial was based on her. Lord Olivier, who adored "The Dales" (indeed he was a fan of British soap opera per se, and always expressed a desire to appear in Coronation Street, a wish that was sadly never fulfilled) referred to Jessie Matthews being cast as Mrs Dale "The most wonderful example of mis-casting in the history of the profession".
In its last few years, "The Dales" became more sensationalist. Mrs Dale became a local counciller, a position she had to relinquish when she caused a man's death by careless driving. Bob died of a massive heart attack after suffering from months of panic attacks due to the stress of running his own business. Perhaps the most famous storyline was Jenny getting measles...listeners wrote in their (literally) thousands, complaining that she had already had measles in 1949!!!
When it became "The Dales", the show did try to copy The Archers, which was originally set up primarily as a medium to disseminate information to the agricultural community, and to give an insight into rural affairs to the general public. Thus medical stories became the order of the day in The Dales, Doctor Jim Dale no longer being a private doctor but a member of a group practice in the NHS. In this manner, The Dales became in the mid 1960's very much like the current BBC One soap opera Doctors, with the plots revolving around medical conditions and problems.
The Dales problem was that, in the swinging Sixties, it was looking more and more out of touch with reality (cynics have said that was why the gay storyline was introduced, in an attempt to be "with it"). Mary Quant famously said that Broadcasting House was only a rolling stone's throw from Carnaby Street. Alf Garnett delighted - and infuriated - the nation when Till Death Us Do Part started in 1966, the students rioted at LSE in 1967 and in Paris in 1968 and The Beatles were on retreat in India in 1968, and the BBC of Hugh Carleton Greene was becoming more embarrassed about the quaintly outdated "Dales" and their anachronistic "middle class values". When Jim said he was going to retire, as Hilary Kinglsey, the respected British critic said "...tea slopped into saucers all over the land."
The series ran for 5,531 episodes, culminating with the engagement of Mrs Dale's daughter Gwen to a famous TV professor on April 25 1969. On news of its demise, Liberal party MP Peter Bessell attempted to introduce a reprieve for the series in Parliament.
A stock expression in Mrs. Dale's narrative was "I'm rather worried about Jim...". It seemed as if this cropped up every day, and the phrase was avidly seized upon by caricaturists. Indeed, the phrase was a staple of many "comedy" programmes, radio and television, in the early Sixties aiming to poke fun at safe, staid and undemanding middle-class lifestyles. In particular, this was the basis of Mrs Wilson's Diary in the fortnightly satirical magazine Private Eye. The writers presented Mrs Wilson as seeing herself as comfortably middle class, in contrast to the middle class pretensions as opposed to working class actuality of her husband, for example the Wincarnis (a brand of tonic wine) and the worsted suits with two pairs of trousers (Wilson was from Huddersfield, famous for the manufacture of worsted cloth).
The last line of the last episode, was, unsurprisingly, "I'm rather worried about Jim..."
Trivia
- A famous send-up was the Nineteen Eighty-Five episode of The Goon Show in which mention is made of Mrs Dale's Real Diary:
- Seagoon: I want to read it. What's it called?
- Bluebottle: It's called Mrs Dale's Real Diary.
- Seagoon: Mrs Dale's...?? Heavens -- would the BBC stop at nothing? So this was how they kept the masses from thinking.
- Bluebottle: Eheehee! Look at this page! Eheehee! It's a Three-D picture of Mrs Dale in her nightshirt being chased by Richard Dimblebee... Eheehee! Eheeheehee! Eheeheeoooooughhhh... pauses to wipe drool off chin.
- Also, The History of Pliny the Elder episode of The Goon Show:
- Seagoon: Fear not! We shall fight them up hill and down Mrs Dale!
- The programme was often a 'target' (albeit an affectionate one) on the BBC Radio comedy Round The Horne, the show being referred to as Mrs Dire's Dreary with the part of Mrs Dire being played by Kenneth Williams!