Dell was born in Cape Town, South Africa, son of Creighton Mandell, of Johannesburg,[2] and graduated from Kearsney College in Natal.
He joined the South African Broadcasting Corporation in 1943, introducing for several years a programme called Rhythm Club.
The former included recordings by the likes of Jack Hylton, Ambrose, Henry Hall, Geraldo and other British dance band leaders.
[3] Though Dell mostly presented programmes of music from the dance band and swing eras, he was also an early presenter of Pick of the Pops in 1956 and, in his later years, of Sounds Easy, a Sunday afternoon programme on Radio 2 which was notable for its attention to the recordings of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee (both of whom he pre-deceased) and Henry Mancini with the "Mancini moment".
Dell provided the sleeve notes for Dance Bands UK (1988), a BBC compact disc of stereophonic transfers by sound engineer, Robert Parker (1936–2004) for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.