Olive Mary Shapley (10 April 1910 in Peckham, London – 13 March 1999 in Powys, Wales)[1] was a British radio producer and broadcaster.

[2] Although her involvement in communist politics was short-lived, it attracted the interest of the security services, who continued to monitor her for most of her life.

During a live programme called Men Talking,[5] 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.

[8] With Joan Littlewood in 1939 she created The Classic Soil (the programme still exists)[9] which compared the social conditions of the day with those observed a century earlier by Friedrich Engels.

In 1941, Salt was appointed deputy North American director by the BBC, meaning Shapley and her husband lived in New York for much of the war.

They rented an apartment on Fifth Avenue from fellow broadcaster Alistair Cooke and employed a maid named Mabel, who lived in Harlem.

She began to record interviews with Mabel's neighbours and produced radio programmes about the lives of black people in America.

She also started to produce a "newsletter" programme which was sent back to Britain and broadcast fortnightly on the BBC's Children's Hour; among her interviewees were Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson.

In 1953, the couple bought Rose Hill, a house on Millgate Lane in Didsbury, Manchester, where Olive lived for 28 years.

[15][3] She subsequently returned to her broadcasting career, taking a six-week BBC television training course in 1959, which enabled her to become a producer in the newer medium.