- British actor, on stage from 1930 and in films from 1934. He was a former member of the Rhodesian constabulary, the British South Africa Mounted Police. After moving to Britain, he studied at RADA and made a successful career as a screen and radio actor, including as host of his own Sunday night programme, 'Quiet Rhythm'. He lived to the ripe old age of 104.
- In his nineties he retired to East Anglia with his second wife, Julia. "If the doctors are right and we are going to live to 125 years of age," he remarked to an interviewer in 1992, "perhaps I had better invest in a new pair of golf shoes. I'm only 92." He continued to enjoy a regular round until the age of 100.
- From 1968 he embarked on a new career as a hard-working charity fundraiser, first as appeals secretary for the Abbeyfield Society, then as appeals director for 13 years of the National Kidney Research Fund.
- In 1928, Arden moved to Southern Rhodesia and served in the British South Africa Police (BSAP). Two years later, he returned to Great Britain to pursue an acting career.
- Arden's most notable role was on the BBC radio show Housewives' Choice, as a host for 20 years from 1946.
- In 2003 he retired to East Anglia with his wife Julia.
- In a long and varied career in theatre, film, radio and television, Arden worked with many of the leading stars of their day, from Richard Tauber, Leslie Henson, Trevor Howard and Dulcie Gray to Roger Moore, Harry Secombe, Prunella Scales, Donald Sinden and Doris Day. He was an assiduous fundraiser for charity and, as an actor, took numerous supporting roles both on stage and in television series such as Maigret, Ivanhoe, Z Cars, Dixon of Dock Green and I, Claudius. He also wrote songs, plays and film and television scripts.
- Arden also wrote plays and songs.
- He helped to create the model for the easy-listening DJ. Arden became renowned for his velvety voice and a presenting style that was slightly more informal than the clipped received-pronunciation delivery of most of his contemporaries.
- Arden had influenced a new generation of easy-listening disc jockeys, such as Jimmy Young and Terry Wogan.
- As a songwriter, he went on to have more than 40 songs recorded by singers such as Petula Clark (among them Romance in Rome) and Joan Regan (Don't be Afraid of Love). An album of his songs, recorded by Paul Hazel, was released in 2003.
- During the Second World War, Arden worked for the BBC's African Service, broadcast on short wave from London.
- After the war, as well as Housewives' Choice, he ran his own musical radio show, Quiet Rhythm, which was broadcast late on Sunday nights for 19 years. Though not so well-known as Housewives' Choice, it built up a loyal following.
- In 2005, he published his autobiography called A Man of Many Parts.
- Returning from Rhodesia to the London variety halls, Arden worked as an assistant to Arthur Prince, a ventriloquist whose party turn involved drinking a full glass of water while his dummy, "Jim", continued to chatter away merrily.
- He was the son of a music hall comedian and a dancer.
- In the 1950s Arden also wrote many scripts for the new Independent Television and record reviews for newspapers and magazines.
- He was an English-born actor and writer who appeared in films, television shows, theatre productions and radio programs.
- Arden had written his own theme music for the programme, Quiet Rhythm Blues, recorded by Frank Chacksfield and his orchestra.
- It was for Housewives' Choice that Arden was best known. Very much of its time, the programme was the flagship of a new post-war schedule for the BBC's Light Programme, and was intended for women left at home doing the housework while their men were at work, although the presenters were invariably male. From its launch in 1946, Arden and his co-presenters - Roy Rich, Franklin Engelmann and Bryan Michie - boxed and coxed, working for a fortnight each, six days a week, in turn. The show's signature tune, In Party Mood, written by Jack Strachey, became synonymous with the radio station, and Arden continued to work as a presenter until 1965, two years before the show was replaced by Family Choice on the new Radio 2.
- After joining his father in the variety halls as a child, he was educated at the Royal Masonic School in Bushey, Hertfordshire.
- Arden continued to appear on stage for many years, his credits including a touring production of Wuthering Heights (in which he played Heathcliff) and Dear Wormwood (1965, Theatre Royal, with Donald Wolfit). In the late 1980s he appeared in productions of Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and Graham Greene's Raffles at Watford Palace.
- Arden was a Freemason for 70 years, having joined the actors' Green Room lodge in 1944.
- Charities with which he was also involved included National Cancer Relief, the National Deaf Children's Society, Mencap and the National Autistic Society. Among other things he raised more than £300,000 by compiling and selling recordings of songs and speeches by famous performers and musicians who agreed to forgo their royalties.
- Changed his name to Neal Arden by Deed Poll in 1942, published in the London Gazette. The London Gazette (first published in 1665, the year of the Great Plague) is one of the official journals of record or government gazettes of the Government of the United Kingdom in which certain statutory notices are required to be published.
- He left school aged 16 to work in a factory making spectacles, then spent three years as an officer in the British South Africa Mounted Police in Rhodesia.
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