Norman Shelley - Life and Career

Life and Career

He was born on 16 February 1903 at 4 Milton Chambers, Chelsea, London, the son of Frank Shelley, a painter, and his wife, Alice Campbell, née Glover. He took up stage acting on the advice of the actress and teacher Rosina Fillipi. His first appearance was at the Old Vic in 1919, and in the early 1920s he toured with the Charles Doran Shakespeare Company, in such roles as Trebonius in Julius Caesar and Sebastian in Twelfth Night. During the 1920s and early ’30s he worked principally in London, where he was most associated with Peter Godfrey's experimental productions at the Gate Theatre Studio.

Shelley first broadcast for the BBC in 1926, though he made his early radio reputation in Australia and New Zealand. He gradually shifted his interest from stage to radio, and in the late ’30s he established a reputation as a respected and versatile British radio actor. In 1937 he married Monica Daphne, née Brett. During the Second World War he was a member of the BBC's wartime repertory company, but left to serve as a ferry pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary.

In the 1930s and '40s he was a Children's Hour regular, famous as Dennis the Dachsund in Toytown, and as Winnie-the-Pooh, whom he first played in 1939. He played Dr Watson to Carleton Hobbs's Sherlock Holmes over a 25-year period.

In the late 1950s he took part in recorded dramatised versions by Argo Records of Alice in Wonderland (1958) and Through the Looking-Glass, both directed by Douglas Cleverdon and both starring Jane Asher in the title role. For the same company he also recorded his impersonation of Toad in Wind in the Willows (1960) with Richard Goolden as Mole.

Late in life he found new fame as Colonel Freddy Danby in the BBC radio serial The Archers. He was still recording episodes of The Archers at the time of his death. He collapsed suddenly at Finchley Road tube station, London, on 21 August 1980, and was declared dead in the Royal Free Hospital, Hampstead. His wife had predeceased him; he was buried near her at Long Hanborough, Oxfordshire, on 28 August.