Today, Phyllis Dixey is thought of as a fan dancer but this was only a part of her life on the stage and film. Philip Purser worked as a freelance journalist, contributing columns to the Oldie and writing obituaries for the Guardian. Photograph: Martyn Goddard She then worked as a researcher with Rediffusion Television and its successor broadcaster, Thames TV. She mostly made children’s programmes, but in 1978 she was the associate producer on the film The One and Only Phyllis Dixey, about the famous fan dancer and entertainer; she also co-authored, with Philip Purser, a book based on the film. In search of more professional autonomy, she returned to college in 1977 to train as a film director at the National Film School. A journalist on the News Chronicle until its demise in 1960, Philip vowed never to be “on anyone’s staff” again and became a dedicated freelance. Having reviewed television for the Chronicle and the Daily Mail, he decided to specialise and became the television critic for the Sunday Telegraph from its birth in 1961. He was to hold the post for 26 years, combining his critical viewing with careers as a novelist and dramatist.

From the mid-1990s Jenny cared for Bradley, who developed Alzheimer’s disease. She studied drama therapy at the (now Royal) Central School of Speech and Drama, to help them cope, and, combining her old and new skills, she shot more than 200 hours of film with Bradley to show the effectiveness of drama therapy. At the time of her death, she was editing this material into short training films and a documentary, A Love Story, to show how their relationship had deepened during his illness. Bradley died in 2012. In 1990, Philip combined his love of British film with his interest in wartime thrillers in the novel Friedrich Harris: Shooting the Hero, a tongue-in-cheek fantasy to plant an Irish-German Nazi agent among the crew filming the battle of Agincourt (in Ireland) for Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V in 1944. The agent, Harris, working for Joseph Goebbels, is tasked with either persuading Olivier to come over to the Germans to help fight Bolshevism, or, failing that, assassinating him. Needless to say, an ample supply of Guinness and the course of the war thwarted the plan.In 1959 Dixey and Tracy declared bankruptcy. She became a professional cook and Tracy became a milkman. In 1961 she discovered that she had breast cancer. It killed her in 1964. Phyllis and her brother were first educated at Fircroft Road Elementary School Tooting before the family moved to Surbiton Surrey.

Phyllis Dixey (10 February 1914 – 2 June 1964) was an English singer, actress, dancer and impresario. Her earlier career was as a singer in variety shows in Britain. During World War II, she joined ENSA and entertained the British forces. She sang, recited and posed in naked tableaux which were very popular. During 1943 Phyllis appeared in Brighton in a straight play called, “ Trilby” and then in the play, “ While Parents Sleep“. There came now a period Phyllis is most remember with her time in London’s Whitehall Theatre. War time revues at the Whitehall Theatre were ,” Good Night Ladies’!”,His Bafta-nominated drama documentary The One and Only Phyllis Dixey (1978) for Thames TV celebrated the life of the woman once labelled “Britain’s queen of striptease”. His first experience of television drama came when his second novel, a downbeat story of espionage and defectors, Four Days to the Fireworks, published in 1964, was adapted the following year in ITV’s Play of the Week series, with Denholm Elliott starring. Philip then adapted the story Calf Love for the BBC’s Wednesday Play slot (1966), and contributed an episode to ITV’s successful drama series A Family at War (1971). By 1947 the tastes of the London audience had changed, and Phyllis Dixey was forced to return to the provinces. She was not able to adapt to the direction that the public required; leaving the stage in the late 1950s, bankrupt. [4] In the early 1960s she worked as a cook at Loseley Park near Guildford. She died of cancer in 1964, aged 50, [4] in Epsom, Surrey. [5] Posthumous [ edit ] For a declining number of the British population the variety artiste Phyllis Dixey is remembered for her “ Peek a Boo” revues. Wilful, capricious, determined and bossy, Jenny had a lovely voice and a joyous laugh. The loyalty and support of friends and family during her final illness testified to her ability to inspire respect and affection.