Simon Dee

Early life

Dee was born on 28 July 1935, in Manchester, Lancashire, the only child of Cyril Edward Dodd (1906–1980) and Doris Gwendoline Pilling (née Simon) (1907–1952) who married in 1934 in Salford (a Radio Caroline biography gave his birthplace as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada). He was educated at Brighton College and Shrewsbury School.

He served his compulsory national service in the Royal Air Force photo-reconnaissance unit, taking aerial photographs of the combat zone during the 1956 Suez Crisis, and being wounded in the face by a sniper in Cyprus. While stationed in Baghdad with RAF Intelligence, he auditioned for British Forces Radio.

Career

Demobilised in 1958, his first civilian jobs included bouncer in a coffee bar, actor, photographic assistant to Balfour de Havilland (dismissed when he loaded the wrong film into the camera for a fashion shoot and none of the photos came out), builders' labourer, leaf-sweeper in Hyde Park, and vacuum cleaner salesman.

Radio Caroline

In 1964 Dee joined Radio Caroline, a pirate radio ship broadcasting pop music from outside UK territorial waters. He witnessed the station's construction (and that of its rival station Radio Atlanta) at the Irish port of Greenore, and sailed with the ship to its anchorage off the coast of Essex. On 28 March, Holy Saturday, his was the first live voice 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. (The first voice heard on the station, in pre-recorded promotions, was allegedly that of John Junkin).

In August 1964 Radio Atlanta merged with Caroline and became Radio Caroline South. Dee transferred to the former Atlanta ship when the original ship sailed to an anchorage off the Isle of Man to become Radio Caroline North. He left in 1965 to go freelance, but had fallen out with directors of the station beforehand, having refused to play certain records and another occasion when he disobeyed the ship captain's orders.

BBC

In 1965 Dee 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". He joined the team presenting Top of the Pops in 1966, replacing David Jacobs, and next year he introduced the Monday edition of Midday Spin on the BBC Light Programme. He fell into early disfavour on Radio 1 after twice playing Scott Walker's recording of Jacques Brel's song 'Jackie', which had been banned by the BBC.

In 1967 Dee began his early evening chat show Dee Time on BBC TV. The show became very popular, with up to 18 million viewers. It opened with sports presenter Len Martin announcing "It's Siiiiimon Dee!", imitating The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and closed with a famous film sequence of Dee driving off in an E-type Jaguar with blonde model Lorna McDonald. McDonald appeared anonymously at the time, dressed in a mini-skirt and “kinky”-style boots. The opening sequence has been described as both "iconic" of the times and a "visual cliché" that lent itself to parody (for example, by comedian Benny Hill). Dee's biographer Richard Wiseman, who was associate producer of a "one-off" revival of Dee Time for Channel 4 in 2003, considered that the scene was what "most people who lived in Britain during the Sixties will remember him for". Only two complete editions of Dee Time survive in the BBC archives; the programme was transmitted live and the BBC recorded contemporary live programmes only for any possible legal ramifications, wiping them after six weeks. He became very successful and adopted an extravagant lifestyle. Also in 1967, he was the host of the Miss World contest transmitted live on BBC1 from the Lyceum Ballroom, London. He also had cameo roles in films, including The Italian Job (1969) and Doctor in Trouble (1970).

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."

ITV

Owing to a disagreement between Dee and the BBC over his huge salary demands, his contract was reviewed in 1969 and he left the channel. He was being paid £250 per show (equivalent to some £3700 today) and claimed ITV were offering him £1,000. It is said that the BBC's Head of Light Entertainment Bill Cotton not only refused the pay rise that Dee demanded, but said that he would cut his wages by 20 per cent "to test his loyalty". He was offered £100,000 for a two-year contract with the ITV company London Weekend and commenced a series with them in January 1970 on a Sunday evening. It proved a ratings disaster as it was on after the Frost programme late in the evening. This coupled with the show only being part-networked with Granada Television screening each edition a week later on a Saturday and the Yorkshire Television region not taking the show at all. (Part networking programmes and screening programmes at different times was common under the former Independent Television federal system)

Dee fell out with the station management and they terminated his contract after only a few months. There was friction between Dee and David Frost, part-owner of London Weekend, 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 outlined at length his theories about the assassination of John 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 Tse-tung. 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 later released government files showing that he was being monitored by the Security Service. Dee also believed that his phone had been tapped because of his opposition to Britain's mooted membership of the Common Market.

Having alienated both the BBC and independent television, Dee disappeared from the airwaves. He signed on for unemployment benefit at the Fulham labour exchange, giving rise to considerable press coverage. Unable to revive his show business career, he took a job as a bus driver.

Later career

Dee later found some brief broadcasting jobs. In the late 1970s, he was signed to appear as holiday cover on the Reading-based Radio 210, but never made to air. In the late 1980s, he appeared to have established himself as host of Sounds of the '60s on BBC Radio 2, but this engagement came to an end amid disputes with the BBC about the show's location in Bristol and his wish for it to be transmitted live. 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.

Court appearances

Dee had several court appearances and in 1974 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 Petula Clark's face painted on it, which he thought was disrespectful to her. The magistrate who sentenced him was Bill Cotton.

In popular culture

Filmography