Simon Dee

Cyril Nicholas Steve Allen Henty-Dodd (28 July 1935 - 29 August 2009), better known by his stage name Simon Dee, was a British television interviewer and radio disc jockey who hosted a twice-weekly BBC TV chat show, Dee Time in the late 1960s. After moving from the BBC to London Weekend Television (LWT) in 1970 he was dropped and his career never recovered. He succumbed to bone marrow cancer on Saturday 29 August 2009, leaving three ex-wives, four children, and four grandchildren.

Early career

Simon Dee was born on 28 July 1935, in Twickenham, England and was educated at Brighton College and Shrewsbury School. His first jobs were bouncer in a coffee bar, actor, photographic assistant to Lord Snowdon, designer for Christian Dior and vacuum cleaner salesman.

Radio Caroline

In 1964 he joined Radio Caroline, a pirate radio ship broadcasting pop music from outside UK territorial waters. On 30 March, Easter day, his was the first voice to be heard on the radio station, welcoming listeners and handing over to the only other DJ on the ship at the time, Chris Moore, for the opening programme.

BBC

Dee became so famous that in 1965 he was given a job on the BBC Light Programme, introducing a late-night show on Saturdays. He also worked on Radio Luxembourg. He told a reporter at the time that he left Caroline "while the going was good". After BBC Radio 1 opened in 1967, he introduced the Monday edition of Midday Spin and sometimes presented Top of the Pops on BBC television.

In 1967 Dee began his early evening chat show In Conversation With on BBC television. The show became very popular, with up to 18 million viewers. Dee Time opened with sports presenter Len Martin announcing "It's Siiiiimon Dee!", in emulation of The Johnny Carson show, and closed with a shot of Dee driving off in an E-type Jaguar with blonde model Lorna McDonald. Only two complete editions of Dee Time survive in the BBC archives; the programme was transmitted live and the BBC rarely recorded live programmes they did not intend to repeat. He became hugely successful and adopted an extravagant lifestyle. In the 2004 Channel Four TV programme, Dee Construction, fellow DJ Tony Blackburn recalled, "He used to drive up and down the King’s Road in an Aston Martin driven by his secretary. To be honest, I thought that was a bit of a waste of money." He had cameo roles in films, including The Italian Job (1969) and Doctor in Trouble (1970).

ITV

Due to a disagreement between Dee and BBC bosses over Dee's huge salary demands, his contract was reviewed in 1969 and he left the channel. It is said that BBC Director General Bill Cotton not only refused the pay rise that Dee demanded, but said that he would cut Dee’s wages by 20 per cent "to test his loyalty". He was offered £100,000 for a two-year contract with the independent channel LWT and commenced a series with them in January 1970. But Dee fell out with the LWT management as well and they terminated his contract after only a few months. There was friction between Dee and David Frost, part-owner of LWT, after whose show Dee's was broadcast. Both were talk shows, and Frost thought that some of Dee's items would make the shows too similar. Dee felt that Frost was deliberately sabotaging his show. After a bizarre interview with actor George Lazenby, who had been smoking cannabis and who outlined at length his theories about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, the show was dropped.

Decline

In June 1970, Dee joined his former Radio Caroline boss, Ronan O'Rahilly, to campaign for pirate radio and against the Labour government's Marine Broadcasting Offences Act, issuing a poster of Prime Minister Harold Wilson dressed as Chinese dictator Mao Zedong. Pirate radio had become a political issue and, in the run up to the general election that summer, Radio Caroline International launched a campaign in support of the Conservative Party, which supported commercial radio. Dee later claimed that there was an Establishment plot against him because of his open opposition to Wilson, and recently released government files show that he was indeed being monitored by the Secret Service.

Having alienated both the BBC and independent television, Dee disappeared from the airwaves. He signed on for unemployment benefit at the Fulham labour exchange, occasioning considerable press coverage. Unable to revive his show business career, he took a job as a bus driver. He also had several court appearances and in 1974 he served 28 days in Pentonville prison for non-payment of rates on his former Chelsea home. Every time he left his cell, the prisoners on his wing shouted, "It's Siiiiiimon Dee!" He was so shocked by prison that he swore he would never get into debt again. On another occasion he was jailed for vandalising a lavatory seat with Marilyn Monroe’s face painted on it, which he thought was disrespectful to her. On another, later misdemeanor, the magistrate who jailed him was BBC Director General, Bill Cotton.

Later career

Dee has found some brief broadcasting jobs since that time. In the late 1970s, he was a DJ with the Reading-based Radio 210. In the late 1980s, he hosted Sounds of the 60s on BBC Radio 2. In 2003, Victor Lewis-Smith arranged for a one-off new live edition of Dee Time to be broadcast on Channel Four, following Dee Construction, which covered Dee's career.

References and parodies

The British comedian Benny Hill parodied Dee and Dee Time as the character "Tommy Tupper" and his chat show "Tupper Time". Tupper's guests are a 107-year-old man who drops dead while being introduced, a vicar who strolls in with his flies unbuttoned, a celebrity actor who hardly says a word, and an actress who is very drunk. This sketch is included in the compilation movie The Best of Benny Hill.

In the BBC radio comedy programme Round the Horne, the words, "Siiiiiimon Dee", would be followed by Hugh Paddick's deadpan addition of a suffix such as "-pressed" or "-praved".

Monty Python's Flying Circus refers to Dee in its "The North Minehead By-Election" sketch, where Mr "Hilter", "Bimmler", and "Ron Vibbentrop" are hiding out in a guesthouse. One of the other guests thinks he recognises them: "Haven't I seen you on the television?" "Nicht. Nein. No." "Simon Dee show, or was it Frosty?" "Nein. No."

Actress Elizabeth Hurley has claimed that Dee was the model for the character Austin Powers in the spoof 1960s films of 1997-2002

External links

• Simon Dee at IMDb
• Associated-Rediffusion TV (includes a clip of Deeconstruction)
• Page on Old Brightonians
• Radio Rewind on Simon Dee (Audio clips of rare recording of the Light Programme's Midday Spin show of 31 July, 1967)