Heydays Hotel (1976) for Granada, starring a young Nigel Havers, was, he maintained, an experiment in trompe l’oeil television; a conventional period drama turning unexpectedly into something quite different. In 1970, she informally adopted a small boy, Mark Ugbomah, who lived in Wood Green, north London, enrolling him at the Michael Hall Steiner school, in Forest Row, East Sussex, and later becoming godmother to many members of Mark’s extended family in the UK, Jamaica and the US. In last few years of her life Phyllis fought a brave battle with cancer and died on the 02 June 1964, at the age of 50 years old. 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.

Her headstone in Epsom Cemetery had deteriorated but was restored late in 2005 by the British Music Hall Society.NOTE: The opening title captions this as “Peek-A-Boo with Lesley-Anne-Down as The One and Only Phyllis Dixey” and indeed that is how it was billed in listing magazines and newspapers but it is the latter part that this production seems to be more commonly known as. 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. One of her last, and happier, projects was Imogen and Kanishka’s Wedding in Kolkata, the film she directed of my daughter and son-in-law’s wedding in 2015. In 1946 she appeared in the film Dual Alibi with Herbert Lom. The following year she closed her Whitehall show on the heels of five years of success. For several years she and Tracy toured her revues through Britain and Scandinavia. By the mid-1950s competition from similar revues plus the advent of television had taken their toll and she was forced to stop headlining and producing her own vehicles. In 1956, billed as “The One and Only Phyllis Dixey”, she appeared with Paul Raymond’s touring revue. She danced professionally through 1958.

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. In 1978 Thames Television produced a drama documentary on the life on Phyllis Dixey. The documentary was televised and had a memorable performance by Lesley Anne-Down in the role of an adult Phyllis Dixey.

Today, Phyllis Dixey is thought of as a fan dancer but this was only a part of her life on the stage and film. Jenny’s life was transformed in the early 1980s when she met and married the radical American historian Bradley Smith. For many years the couple alternated their lives between his teaching base in California and her apartment overlooking Primrose Hill, in north London. A new British tour was arranged but there were many new touring companies with tableau and fan dancing routines. A young Paul Raymond had entered the world of the nude tableau show in 1951 and there were also a number of competing revues. The 1950’s were the last years for many provincial variety theatres which were closing down due to the onslaught of television and many artistes were leaving the theatre at this time.

The One and Only Phyllis Dixey by Philip Purser and Jenny Wilkes.Published by Futura Publications Ltd., London. 1978 ISBN 0 7088 14360 Phyllis and her brother were first educated at Fircroft Road Elementary School Tooting before the family moved to Surbiton Surrey.

Shooting the Hero was an extended version of one of his favourite journalistic devices: the spoof. Notable April Fools’ Day articles included the Last Great Tram Race, inspired by his “childhood memories” of Liverpool, which prompted a huge number of fond recollections from readers but was completely untrue. It went on to provide the title of his memoir (1974). In 1968 he produced what many consider his best thriller, Night of Glass, about four Cambridge undergraduates, one of them, like him, a provincial grammar school boy, who turn a rag-week dare into a genuine attempt to break a prisoner out of Dachau concentration camp in 1938. It was during the last few months of her life that she turned to the comfort of the Catholic Church. She was received into the Church during a visit in Guys Hospital from Father Crispin in April 1964. At the end of that month she returned home to “The Retreat” for the last time. Phyllis Selina Dixey Tracy died at home on Tuesday 2 June 1964 aged 50.