Dennis Spooner - Early Life

Early Life

Following a brief spell as a professional footballer with Leyton Orient, Spooner served his National Service in the Royal Air Force, where he met, and formed an amateur writing partnership with, Tony Williamson. During the 1950s Spooner returned to office work, and met and married his wife Pauline.

Spooner did not desire a career in business and tried to break into the entertainment industry through performance, forming a comedy double act with Benny Davis, now a journalist living in Spain. They worked the London circuit, but found only moderate success. Spooner then turned to writing and began selling half-hour comedy scripts to the BBC TV comedian Harry Worth. This eventually led him to writing several scripts for Coronation Street in 1960. He also contributed to the ITV police procedural series No Hiding Place and Ghost Squad as well as to the top-rated comedy series Bootsie and Snudge and to ATV's attempt to revive Tony Hancock's career in Hancock (1963).

Around this time Spooner met Brian Clemens and they struck up a partnership that lasted for the rest of Spooner's career. Clemens offered the young writer work on The Avengers, which was near the beginning of its nine-year run on ITV. Clemens bought two more of Spooner's scripts in that first year, making Spooner a fairly important writer during the Ian Hendry era of the programme.