Playwright and script-writer, Patricia Hooker worked in Australian television and radio, as well as writing plays, for some six years before departing Australia in 1964 to work in England. In London, she worked as a court reporter while continuing to write for both the stage and the screen.
In 1960, when her first stage plays were being accepted, the Australian Women's Weekly ran a brief overview of her, in which they described her as a 'spare-time playwright' and noted that she 'is a secretary (with a shorthand speed of 200 words a minute) at the Stevedoring Commission in Sydney'. They added that 'a few months ago she passed an examination to become a licensed court reporter.' (See 'Playtime for Patricia' under Works About Author.)
According to contemporary news reports, her first radio play was Twilight of a Hero (drawn from the Book of Samuel), which was broadcast in 1962.
In a 1966 newspaper report about a meeting of the executive committee of the International Writers Guild (at which Australia was represented by Noel Robinson and Hooker herself), Hooker was described as ' the former script-assistant of ABC-TV producer Henri Safran' (see 'New Copyrights Alarm Writers', Canberra Times, 21 January 1966, p.15).
Among Hooker's claims to fame is the fact that her contribution to the Armchair Theatre, 'The Golden Road', was the first play on British television that was both written by a woman and about a lesbian relationship.
