Olive Shapley

Who is Olive Shapley?

Olive Mary Shapley was a British radio producer and broadcaster.

As an undergraduate at St Hugh's College, Oxford from 1929 she soon met her lifelong friend Barbara Betts, the future Labour politician Barbara Castle; the two women spent their holidays together, but unlike Betts, Shapley was briefly drawn to communism. After a brief unhappy period working for the Workers' Educational Association and teaching at several schools she joined the BBC in 1934 as an organiser of Children's Hour programming in Manchester, but soon developed an interest in documentary features as an assistant producer. This was not without its problems. During a live programme called Men Talking, Shapley had to use placards requesting Durham miners "not say bugger or bloody", one incident of several which persuaded BBC Director General Sir John Reith to insist on broadcasts being scripted. Using a recording van, weighing "seven tons when fully loaded", Shapley recorded actuality, which was innovative at the time, but the broadcast of swear words could now be avoided. She thought a claim by Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff that she was an innovator as being expressed in "very flattering terms".