Synopsis
By common consent among media historians, Olive Shapley was one of the most imaginative and creative documentary radio producers in British broadcasting. Her career began at the BBC in 1934 and as a woman producer and broadcaster she reached rare heights within the Corporation. She was part of radio at its most vital and innovative. Olive's professional career spanned 30 years during which time she was involved in numerous radio and TV programmes. She broke new ground both in technique and subject matter with the Mobile Rceording Unit in the late 1930s, and produced documentaries on the lives of working people. For the first time, ordinary voices were heard on the airwaves, speaking for themselves. Programmes such as "Homeless People" and "The Classic Soil" were a radio revolution and are still considered to be outstanding pieces of work. She is also well-remembered as a presenter of the much-loved "Children's Hour", the first unscripted radio programme and forerunner of the "chat show". In the early 1950s, she was a daily presenter of "Woman's Hour", to which she introduced such topics as sex and the menopause. This sort of subject matter was deemed too "radical" by the BBC, who threatened to veto the content of her programmes. This autobiography is a "who's who" of the early days of radio and TV as Olive worked with many who went on to become household names, including Joan Littlewood, Ewan MacColl, Wilfred Pickles, Alistair Cook and Brian Redhead. From Oxford in the early 1930s to her travels alone around the world in the 1980s, Shapley gives an honest and highly readable account of her extraordinary professional life. This includes her marriages, her ventures and her friendships, including her life-long friendship with Barbara Castle, who introduced Olive to the north of England where she subsequently lived for many years.
