Actors - Mike Dorsey

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	Actors - Mike Dorsey

Mike Dorsey (born 1930 in Yorkshire, United Kingdom) was an Australia-based theatre and television actor best known for his long-running role of Reg MacDonald in the 1970s television soap opera Number 96.

Dorsey's acting career began in the late 1940s when he started acting with the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in bit parts. After three years in the army in the early 1950s Dorsey returned to acting, with several minor stage roles on the UK provincial theatre circuit. The scarcity of acting work led to a career change to the publicity business, and Dorsey subsequently did the publicity in London for such performers as Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk and The Yardbirds. He later did two tours with The Rolling Stones, one of which brought him to Australia where he decided to settle in 1965.

In Australia Dorsey's career as an actor and performer quickly took off. Beginning in the mid 1960s he had several guest starring roles in Australian drama series including Riptide, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, and many appearances in the various Crawford Productions police drama series. During this period he also played the on-going role of Captain Roke in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation-Artransa Films science fiction children's series Pheonix 5 (1970), was the straight man on Joe Martin's show Tonight on Channel Ten, and had a brief role as a police detective in Number 96 in 1972.

Beginning in January 1974 Dorsey played the regular role of comedy character Reg "Daddy" MacDonald in Number 96. An officious bureaucrat with the local council, Reg lived a regimented life and liked to speak in acronyms as a sort of verbal shorthand. Along with wife Edie and daughter Marilyn (Frances Hargreaves) the character became a hit with viewers and was retained in the series - surviving several drastic cast purges - until its demise in August 1977.

After the series ended, Dorsey, like many of his former Number 96 co-stars, had a guest starring role in school-based drama Glenview High (1977). In 1978-1979 he played an on-going role on hospital-based soap opera The Young Doctors. He then took the regular role of Vic Marshall in Network Ten daily soap opera Arcade (1980), a notorious critical and popular failure cancelled after being on air only six weeks. Dorsey subsequently ran a theatrical group.

Today he is retired and living in Rockingham, Western Australia.

Dorsey, Mike Dorsey, Mike

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