Talk:Mrs Dale's Diary

General Practitioner
Mrs Dale's husband was a General Practitioner (family doctor) in the British sense, not a Physician in the American sense. This was essential to the comfortable middle-class milieu in which the series was set. Dr Dale's forename was Jim.

A regular feature of the "diary" was a brief spoken introductory passage, as if Mrs Dale was speaking aloud what she was actually writing in her diary. A stock expression was "I am very 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).

More on Mrs. Wilson
The Mrs. Wilson column in Private Eye was a satire on the wife of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Maybe someone should start a new wikipedia entry for that topic.

Also, I think the introductory diary comment above should be added into the main article. Was this the first soap opera to use this form of introduction?? JXM 00:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Soap?
It is misleading to describe Mrs Dale's Diary as a "soap opera". The phrase was not in British usage then, and contemporary usage to describe East Enders or Coronation Street misses by a million miles. The essence of soap opera is that the characters' main function is to do each other down. Mrs Dale and her family and friends (and Captain the cat, named after the character in Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas) all got along together in almost perfect harmony. It was respectable, comfortable and middle-class. The nearest thing to a scandal was the character Jago Peters, played by a young Derek Nimmo, who was an artist, one of whose exploits was to use a neighbour's Scandinavian au pair as a nude model for some project, if I remember rightly it was a grand portrait of Britannia (like on the old penny coin) for the Town Hall or a similar institution. Very Bohemian for those days. Guy 03:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I agree that essence of soap opera is that characters "do each other down", although that may be fairly common in American soaps. True, the phrase wasn't in contemporary isage at the time of MrsDD, but we're writing the Wikipedia entry using today's terminology.  I think it'll be beyond our powers to convince Wikipedians that EastEnders or Coronation Street are anything other than soap operas (LOL).  Maybe we can compromise by changing our entry to refer primarily to a radio serial drama.   In any case, we seem to have gathered useful material in the Talk page so, with people's agreement, I'll copy some of the text to the main page.  JXM 16:52, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think you have said it yourself here, in today's understanding of the term "soap opera", which mainly relates to television, Mrs Dale was not soap opera. It is like using the term "comedy" of Little Britain when the term also includes Keeping Up Appearances not to mention Terry and June.  Mrs D was a radio serial, as was The Archers and other contemporary programmes.  It is impossible to describe what it was like in its context, just as it is impossible to describe the impact of the Beatles or Rolling Stones in terms of the 2006 music scene.  Mrs Dale's Diary was a cornerstone of quiet and respectable middle-class family life in the years after the Second World War.  It was reported at the time that the Queen Mother was among its millions of regular listeners.  In that context, the satirical transposition of imagined family life at Number 10 into the format of family life as represented by the popular radio serial was a masterstroke.  I think it is fair to say that the relevance of Mrs Dale's Diary and the fact that anybody can still be interested in it is very largely due to the Private Eye piece and its successor, including the current St Albion Parish News.  The main article does need a massage and if you can do it without losing what is there and here, then fine.  ;-) Guy 15:33, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The definition of soaop opera is usually that there is no central hero, and that there are a series of plotlines developing simultaneously. British soap operas (from the archers to grange hill) tend to be about "ordinary people" and not glamorous circles. So any or all of these apply to mrs dale's diary?2A01:CB08:8BE:AA00:151C:6F5B:977C:F6E7 (talk) 07:14, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Sally - Who she?
The article refers to "Sally", but it does not say who she was. If I remember rightly, she was Mrs Dale's sister, but this needs to be ascertained and included in the article.


 * Yes, Sally was Mrs. Dale's sister. Mike H. I did "That's hot" first! 21:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

More on Ellis Powell
The article seems to imply that Ellis Powell was a lesbian (the refs to the "Sister George" film). From a search of the Internet the only possible scandal seems to be from her alcoholism. The BBC certainly did not treat Ellis with any humanity when they sacked her. Fletcherbrian (talk) 15:31, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Handling homosexuality
There was no "and thus" about it. In the context of the times this feature of the programme was a bold departure. Things were different forty years ago, and the point has to be made and commented upon. It was always a popular legend back then that movers and shakers of the BBC numbered a disproportionately large number of homosexuals amongst them. This was supposed to be one of the influences upon their programming choices (the emergence of That Was the Week That Was, for example). The legend had a certain amount of Round the Horne ribaldry about it, as that was the way that homosexuals were portrayed (if at all).

Factual Edits
This is the first Wikipedia article I ever edited, long before I really knew what I was doing and certainly didn't know about the Talk Page. I was impelled to do so because I found the article full of nonsense, such as that the Dales' son Bob had died during the serial. It is still - almost - the only nonsense I have discovered on Wikipedia. Heaven knows the reason for it. Anyway, my changes were conservative and minimal, and to my surprise remained in place, and still do. I am not sure that the interest of Lord Olivier is not part of the nonsense - I would say that 'citation needed' is putting it mildly. Perhaps I ought to put in Lord Willis's involvement in the programme's genesis, though - that's in his book. Regarding the homosexuality question (above), one irony is that a number of leading male cast members were gay.

Rogersansom (talk) 09:46, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I have now standardised some titles as italic 82.16.224.196 (talk) 07:10, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

- but there is still not a single reference for anything in the article --Smerus (talk) 08:22, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I have just discovered the criticism above, and added info. concerning quite a number of relevant published works. It is quite difficult to provide source references for a radio programme - the books tend to be secondary to the serial, not vice versa. The books I have listed are all in my possession except for Ted Willis's writing autobiography, from which I hold a photocopy of the section relevant to the original scriptwriting of the 'Diary'. There are comparatively few episodes from the serial in existence, and I hold copies of some. I also hold a very large collection of copies of Radio Times, and cuttings and photocopies from further issues. I have read the earliest scripts of the 'Diary' at BBC Caversham. All these things are sources, but are quite difficult to list as references.

Having said that - the article is still a bit eccentric. As well as doubting the Olivier connection, which I suspect is mythical, I doubt whether Jenny was in the serial as early as 1949. I do not really have the time or commitment at present to dispute the article systematically. But it is very heavy on parody and mickey-taking, and disproportionately concerned with homosexuality.

82.10.145.63 (talk) 16:38, 9 March 2009 (UTC) Don't know why it is not signing my name - Roger Sansom

The first Mrs Dale.
The series was usually introduced by some harp music which was also frequently the butt of jokes. The first Mrs Dale was the late Mary Malone. When the series was revamped and she was dropped she bitterly commented "cast off like an old shoe" and committed suicide shortly after. At the inquest it was stated that "she only lived for the show".

Wasn't there also a butler or valet named Hickling?AT Kunene (talk) 13:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

The first Mrs Dale
The first Mrs Dale was Ellis Powell (see the article), who certainly made the "old shoe" comment to the press. I know of no reason to think she committed suicide. (For a time she was replaced as Mary Dale in the very early days by Thea Wells. She then replaced her own replacement.  The same thing later happened with the part of Sally, Mary's sister.)

Fickling was Richard Fulton's manservant, Richard being eventually Sally's husband, and then ex-husband.

I do not think I have anywhere online outlined my thesis - not too serious - that the Dales carried resonances of the Royal Family. The unglamorous central figure, motivated by duty. Her sometimes peppery husband. The dominant figure of her mother. One son, one daughter (as the Royals had for years). The pretty, spoilt sister with a complicated love life. You can work it out further than that, but of course it can't be pushed too far. It doesn't belong in the main article, but some of the stuff in that is pretty debatable!

Rogersansom (talk) 09:49, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Last episode
In the closing minutes of the last episode Jesse Mathews states that both her and Jim were going off on a cruise and then finally closes with the classic remark "But I'll always be worried about Jim".

I wonder where that cruise ship is now?AT Kunene (talk) 13:43, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Archive status
I removed most of this passage which had an OR templete attached for some years. The database for the British Library lists no more than six episodes in its collection, none dating from after 1954. As the BL collection has drawn on BBC resources, I think this is a fair indication of what the BBC probably retains. Unfortunately, the Wiping article, which scarcely discusses radio material, is somwwhat tangential to this article. Philip Cross (talk) 18:07, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Other characters
Other characters I recall: Mrs Mountford and her companion, Miss Marchbanks. And the servant class: Mrs Morgan, who later married Maggs. Rothorpe (talk) 00:30, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

I have just bought on Ebay a magazine with a 1952 picture of the Dales cast which is new to me. Grace Allardyce, who played Mrs Maggs, looking a very smart lady of the time, instead of being photographed "in character". Her non-Mrs Maggs voice (I never heard her when she was Mrs Morgan) was very ladylike. Dorothy Lane, who was Mrs Freeman, told me that she was great to play a scene with.

Rogersansom (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 12:36, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

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