Dale Smith

Whilst the BBC considered Heritage for their Past Doctor Adventures range, Smith continued to write short Doctor Who stories, and during 2001 he had stories published in three major charity anthologies: Missing Pieces, The Cat Who Walked Through Time and Walking in Eternity. Smith has acknowledged the role these stories played in his successful commission, saying, "It can't be coincidence that the month that I was contacted about my proposal was also the month it was announced I had stories in the three biggest charity anthologies of the year, can it?"

Following the success of Hello? (with reviews calling the play "35 minutes of tense drama" and "frighteningly direct . . . it will haunt you for a long time afterwards.") IRDP produced another of Smith's plays. The Kissing Game enjoyed a four-week run at the Tristan Bates Actors Centre, and following a relocation to Manchester to read Drama at Manchester University, Smith continued to have work produced: he was runner up in the 1997 Manchester Student Playwriting Competition before winning outright in 1998 with the play A Night on the Tiles. This was followed by a play set in and around Northampton during the Battle of Naseby.

Whilst writing short stories, Smith was also studying at Soar Valley Community College, Leicester, where he developed a keen interest in the theatre. He joined Jez Simons' Haithi Productions youth theatre group where he appeared in Simons' and Joyti Patel's The Fire Dragon at the Phoenix Arts Centre alongside future ER cast member Parminder Nagra. He entered the Independent Radio Drama Productions (IRDP) Young Radio Playwright Competition 1994 with the play Hello?, after re-writing the ending at Simons' suggestion. He won the competition, and the radio play was broadcast on LBC and performed at the Cambridge Theatre, before transferring to the Old Red Lion Theatre for a four-week run.

Paul Dale Smith (born November 1976) is a writer and playwright from Leicester, England but currently living and working in Greater Manchester. He writes under the name Dale Smith, and has had previous works published and performed under the names Paul Smith and Paul D. Smith.

Smith was born in Leicester in 1976, and has been writing since the age of 8. In his youth, he worked as a youth worker at his school, receiving training on various aspects of the job including child abuse awareness. Early in his career, he wrote stage plays but has recently turned to writing prose as "it's still almost impossible to get anything actually produced".