INTERVIEW: Lynda La Plante on mafia meetings, later-life love and dodgy doggy haircuts

Lynda La Plante is on a promise with a shady gangster. “Before lockdown I got a call from an ex-boxer. He said, ’ello Lynda, I don’t know if yer remember me,” mimics the writer behind the hit TV series Widows and award-winning Prime Suspect as she slips into a throaty Cockney accent.

The boxer’s pal, it turned out, had just finished a 30-year prison sentence for importing drugs.

“He told me, ‘he’s going straight, and he’s got a good story’. It’s a novel waiting to happen,” the 77-year-old reveals. “So I have to wait for this to be over to have detailed meetings with him and he will introduce me to other people.”

The mum of one is as known to the underworld as she is to cops and forensics scientists. But the author and screenwriter insists: “I never get scared. They want something. It’s not money, it’s more than that. It is a bit of fame. They need to tell their stories.

“I never take a recorder into a meeting and I never take a notebook. It means they are more relaxed. I have this absolutely phenomenal memory but as soon as I have finished a meeting, I will come back and hit the bullet points. Respect is the most important thing. If I respect them, they will respect me.”

There is only one thing which frightens her – and it isn’t mafia men.

“Ghost stories,” she chuckles. “My 16-year-old son Lorcan loves them but they scare the pants off me, otherwise I am pretty fearless.”

The fruit of her latest “meeting” could be ripe for her new crime series Buried, the first of which is just out. A quarter of a century on from Widows – and following the 2018 movie and the tie-ins it sparked – Buried uncovers what eventually happened to the gangsters’ molls and introduces a new “hero” – DC Jack Warr.

Lynda with the cast and producers of Widows in 1983

The scene is set with a burnt-out cottage, a dead body and more than a million pounds worth of charred bank notes linked to a notorious train robbery – the hidden legacy of Dolly Rawlins and her widows. But it is not the only mystery for adopted Jack to crack.

Lynda, who has been open about how, aged 59, she adopted her own son from birth, explains: “The basis of the story is Jack’s search for his (biological) father. But what I wanted to establish more than anything is the love that he received from his (adoptive) father and mother. That abiding love gives him the strength for the rest of his life.”

Despite her candour, she rankles at the prefix “adopted” when it’s applied to her son.

“When Lorcan was small he had a playdate from his school and I heard this little boy say, ‘you’re adopted, do you know that?’ His parents must have told him about my son. Fortunately, he has always known. He is very calm and says when the time is right he will want to know more.

“But when I read any article about me and I see the word ‘adopted’ it hurts, because it may hurt him. The fact is, he is my son. He is very grown up in some aspects, but he is a teenager still.”

Lynda, who parted with musician husband Richard in 1996, says: “I had been trying to adopt for many years. I’d had three miscarriages and failed IVF. I’d divorced, I’d bought another race horse and a Great Dane and accepted that the dream was over. Then I got a call that if I could be in Florida in 24 hours there was a baby being born.

“I dropped everything and went. I was there when he was being born. When they put him in my arms the bond was immediate.

“I was hounded by the press because I was doing it in my fifties, and was divorced and single. I have to say, man he was an ugly baby! He had a birthmark round his nose, the biggest hands and this teeny, scrawny body. But he became one of the most beautiful babies I have ever seen in my life. He’s 6ft now and still has huge hands.”

And what does he make of the mum who had her breakthrough with the phenomenally successful ’80s ITV series Widows, and who has a shedload of international bestsellers under her belt, as well as Bafta and Emmy awards?

“He doesn’t really think about it; he has very little interest in artistic endeavours,” she says, “but he is a phenomenal electronics expert and computer wizard. He has been making Covid-19 face protection for NHS hospitals on his 3D printer after reading online about the shortages. He was with a team from Oxford and was working almost 24/7 to manufacture them from home.”

More than 33 novels and 150 hours of TV on, the Widows that launched her career have come full circle with their appearance in the author’s latest offering. She reveals: “This is the end of them. I am burying Widows with Buried.”

But there is more to come from Jane Tennison, Prime Suspect’s Detective Chief Inspector. A new novel, Blunt Force, is out in August. “I am writing Tennison all the time; so the lockdown for me has been a tremendous work period. I am so excited because I am now ahead of the game.”

She has also spent it “hilariously” trying and failing to help her Koi Carp to spawn, and clipping her Cockapoo Max.

“He has a Mohican but apart from that he is bald. He is 11, that’s 77 in human years, my age. Once you have started cutting you have to finish. People in the park laugh at us. One woman – we were standing well apart – asked, ‘What is that?’ I said, ‘It’s a Cockapoo, actually’, and she said, ‘Has it been ill?’”

At that the writer descends into a fit of giggles. Lynda loves to laugh.

“I introduce humour in all my books,” says the woman who remains the only lay person to be admitted to the Chartered Society of Forensic Research.

So what makes her happiest?

“What I love best in life is my son,” she says. “He makes me very happy, that and the fact that after I have gone and he will be there.”

Is there room in her life for romance?

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” she admits. “I have a lot of male friends who I adore but I don’t want to get involved at my age in a relationship. I am quite happy. I do what I want when I want – up to a point. I do have a 16-year-old to think about.”

Buried, Zaffre, £14.99.