I simply must have my Perelló olives: the rise of the posh shoplifter
'Shoplifting was always quite a grubby crime,' says Professor Emmeline Taylor, a criminologist and specialist in shoplifting and serious acquisitive crime. 'It has always been associated with the down-and-outs – you can't afford to put food on the table and clothes on your back.' Over the past five years or so, Taylor argues, that has changed.
In 2016 she coined the acronym 'Swipers' to describe the emerging class of middle-class shoplifters: 'seemingly well-intentioned patrons engaging in routine shoplifting '. Since then, the swipers have got out of hand – shoplifting offences reached a record high last year, with the British Retail Forum revealing that 20 million incidents were reported in the 2023/24 financial year – costing shops £2.2 billion and adding an estimated £133 to the cost of an average household's annual shopping bill. For the first time, fingers are being pointed firmly at the middle classes, with John Lewis and Waitrose bosses pushing back at a growing category of entitled criminals whose thefts are motivated by 'greed not need'. So what's behind the problem?
Self-service checkouts
Because otherwise decent and law-abiding citizens find it 'easy to lie to a machine in a way you wouldn't try to deceive a person', Taylor believes the introduction of self-service checkouts is a major factor in the trend.
According to a poll of 1,000 British shoppers commissioned by The Grocer magazine last year, 37 per cent of customers admitted deliberately failing to scan an item at the self-service checkouts (with men and the under-35s most likely to try conning the computerised cashiers). A third (32.5 per cent) also confessed to weighing loose items incorrectly, with 38 per cent having used the 'banana trick' to pass off an expensive item as a cheaper one. On the Mumsnet forum users admitted to 'taking advantage' of unmanned tills to scan steak as onions, or on a more minor scale, passing off Pink Lady apples as Granny Smiths. Their accounts support Taylor's belief that these thieves 'don't think of themselves as criminals; they will think they've cheated the system'. Several argued that 'big chain businesses' could afford to soak up the costs and viewed their fraud as simply paying their 'wages' for scanning their own groceries. 'After all, they are saving so much money not paying staff to man tills anymore.' But they said they would never steal from independent shopkeepers, who they saw as 'real people'.
'It's quite a fun game,' wrote user1471434829. 'I would never ever steal from a person, but tbh [to be honest] Tesco is fair game!' Another using the handle VanityDiesHard confessed to scoping out the security at various stores in advance, noting that surveillance at the local Waitrose was too good to evade, but deciding that the unmanned checkouts at M&S were fair game. 'I am angry with myself if I don't at the very least put through a carrier bag without paying,' they wrote. 'If it is busy enough there, I also put pastries through as something cheaper, ditto bread.' Not just shoplifting, then, but M&S shoplifting.
Another was occasionally tempted to 'select small loose onions instead of large onions that are marginally more expensive', admitting the crime was 'mostly due to laziness and in parts rebellion – why is there an effing price difference in them anyway?'
Taylor says the same psychology has led to a rise in 'wardrobing': buying expensive clothes you plan to wear once then returning them for a full refund. In some circles, she says, such behaviour is 'seen as culturally acceptable even though it's fraud'. Being able to return items online allows the fraudster to avoid an 'embarrassing' human interaction in which a sales assistant might sniff the garments and challenge a shopper by saying they smell like they've been worn.
Keeping up with the Joneses
While the cost of living crisis has forced the poorest in society to choose between heating and eating, Taylor says that more entitled middle-class shoplifters refuse to adjust their lifestyles to suit their more straitened circumstances.
'Those individuals who have got used to having branded goods or nicer, higher value items are suddenly finding that their household budget doesn't stretch as far as it used to,' she says. The swanky store-cupboard staples displayed on counter tops as badges of middle class pride have been hit hard by food inflation. Taylor notes the eye-watering prices of olive oil (which has risen by more than 80 per cent over the past two years) and honey (set to rise by another 30 per cent this year). Last year Tesco began putting nets and tags on bottles of olive oil because so much of the 'liquid gold' was being stolen by those who'd decided that every drizzle helps.
A similar trend was spotted during the 2009 recession, with the Centre for Retail Research clocking a spike in thefts of high end meat, cheese, alcohol, perfume and face creams as middle-class shoppers turned to crime to maintain their standards of living. 'I think there's an element there of keeping up with the Joneses,' says Taylor. 'Some people don't want to be having a dinner party where they've bought everything from Aldi or Lidl rather than Waitrose because that could raise a few eyebrows.'
Was this what motivated former criminology lecturer Pauline Al Said and her husband Mark Wheatcroft to pinch £1,000 worth of cast iron Le Creuset cookware (along with steaks, premium wine and boutique gin)? The pair planned their 2021 and 2022 crimes in advance, taking a device for removing security tags with them to both a branch of M&S and a garden centre. Last month – after they were fined £2,500 for walking out of the stores in broad daylight with their luxe loot piled into trolleys – Al Said proudly adopted the title of 'UK's poshest thief' on her X profile.
Richard Fowler, security manager at chi-chi health food brand Planet Organic, has previously flagged an increasing issue with 'posh totty' pilferers. The chain, which has eight stores across London selling only organic produce, loses £900,000 a year to shoplifters. Talking to the BBC last year, Fowler put a percentage of these thefts down to regular clientele who 'spend a lot of money with our business. [They think] 'Today I'm a little bit short of money, so I'm entitled to steal something'.'
A similar sense of entitlement has been blamed for the rise in middle-class commuters pinching snacks from convenience stores around train stations. Last month John Nussbaum, director of retail at Kingdom Security, told The Telegraph that these 'petty thieves' targeted shops largely in the early morning or early evening, with a smaller peak around lunchtime because they 'can't be bothered to queue so just leave without paying'.
The thrill factor
'Some studies show that if you get a bargain – something [for] 70 per cent off – it can release endorphins, a hit of dopamine that is pleasurable,' says Taylor.
'The same can go for risky behaviours, because it creates this fight-or-flight moment physiologically. If you put yourself in that danger moment of 'I'm going to steal this', the anxiety and the adrenalin is going. Then, when you then get away with it, that's replaced with this rush of reward.'
Some middle-class shoplifters find themselves addicted to the crime, and compare it with gambling addiction. On the Mumsnet forum one woman wrote that she'd turned to shoplifting 'when I was menopausal and had urges, god knows why'. Another, using the handle Ladyofthepond, confessed to a history of 'slipping things into pockets or not scanning things at self-service' that was the consequence of 'a mix of undiagnosed mental health issues, which was probably one of the many things that led my alcoholism, which in turn led to a decimation of my finances. When you are in the depths of addiction nothing else matters, it also leads to a very nihilistic attitude towards life, so shoplifting from large supermarkets was easy in that state of mind to justify, also not getting caught was a ridiculous dopamine hit.' The poster claimed to be currently 'in recovery and managing my mental health. I have to get my dopamine from ice baths and running now.'
Getting away with it – and a nice accent
While many of these criminals claim they'd only steal from big chain stores and not independent businesses, the evidence suggests otherwise.
In January independent shopkeepers in the upmarket Surrey town of Haslemere created a WhatsApp group to help each other identify the increasing number of 'very normal well-to-do people coming in and stealing things'. Small stores selling gifts, antiques and bicycles were targeted as well as grocers and cafés. Even one of the town's charity shops found thieves pinching retro clothes to resell online on sites such as Vinted.
Taylor believes that, if caught, more affluent shoplifters expect retail staff to let them off the hook more easily than those genuinely in need. 'They will absolutely play upon their appearance, their accent,' she says. 'They get pulled over in the shop; if somebody says, 'excuse me, ma'am you haven't paid for those', they know they can be like, 'Oh, gosh I can't believe it!' And the likelihood is they will just get away with it.'
In some circles she says that theft is considered 'cool'. 'There is an element of showing off, one-upmanship.' concludes Taylor. 'I always think it's a bit like that YOLO hashtag. I only live once, so sod it. You know, 'what are they going to do?''
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The Guardian
13 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Regret, resentment and Reform UK: jailed Rotherham rioters one year on
It was a scene that became the defining image of the year for many. Flames licking up the side of a grey breezeblock hotel with balaclava-clad men jostling around, kicking, smashing windows, throwing debris on the fire. Protests were not uncommon outside the Holiday Inn in Manvers near Rotherham, which housed 200 asylum seekers, but there would be something different about Sunday 4 August 2024, coming after the murder of three young girls in Southport by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana days earlier. It was not the first riot of the weekend instigated by the far right but it would be the biggest and it would bring to a close a week of violent clashes between communities and with the police. The demonstration was supposed to be peaceful – at least, from the point of view of many of those who had gathered there to make a stand, as they saw it, against their town becoming a dumping ground for people the country did not want or know what to do with. But from the very start it was clear there was a contingent who had planned to cause harm, to drive out the asylum seekers at any cost, perhaps even to kill them. Later, authorities would be reeling from how close the events came to being deadly, with police only just gaining control after rioters smashed their way into the hotel. It was a 'dark day', according to South Yorkshire police's assistant chief constable, Lindsey Butterfield. Ahead of the first anniversary of the violence, the Guardian spoke to a dozen men, aged 20 to 64 at the time, who received prison sentences for their part in the riot. Most lived a few miles away from the scene and none considered themselves to be racist, though most demonstrated a readiness to believe racist lies spread on Facebook about the refugees living in their area raping women or children. And they were quick to take matters into their own hands, blaming all asylum seekers. Though each of the rioters had their own motivations, there was a common theme of mistrust in authority and the media. Some said they'd seen Rotherham decline steadily over the years. 'Everybody's just fed up aren't they? You can't get a dentist, it's hard work,' said one rioter. Reform UK is gaining ground in this part of South Yorkshire, with the anti-establishment rhetoric of Nigel Farage having strong appeal. Perhaps surprisingly, most were eager to talk, glad to be given the opportunity to voice their feelings about unfair sentences and the public misunderstanding of the kind of people they were. For some, the violence had been a 'wake-up call', with the partner of one rioter saying he had PTSD from going to prison and had 'completely changed'. He had been on drugs and alcohol – there were numerous alcohol monitoring tags among the released men – but 'he has turned himself around, it was the catalyst that stopped it all'. Wives and girlfriends spoke of how tough it had been for them, particularly looking after children without the support of their spouse. Christmas had been especially challenging for young children with a parent behind bars. 'It has been the worst experience of my life,' she said. 'It was the first time I've ever known anyone go to prison.' Glyn Guest, a 61-year-old retired window cleaner, said he was walking his dog Ollie near the hotel when he was drawn in, having not known there was going to be a protest. 'I heard a load of shouting and bawling and that were it,' he said. He was sentenced to two years and eight months for violent disorder after continually walking up to the police line and being pushed back – getting his nose broken – and at one point grabbing a riot shield. His version of events was that a police officer 'lost her footing' but the court interpreted the video as him pulling her over, which she said had left her 'terrified for her safety'. 'I didn't agree with them when they were setting fires and that. I thought that were a bit harsh like, chucking house bricks and that. I didn't go down for trouble. 'But the judge just wouldn't listen. It was bad. I can't weigh it up,' he adds, about the length of his sentence. He said being locked up was 'hard' and he lost a lot of weight – his face looked drawn compared with the mugshot taken when he handed himself into police. All the men who spoke to the Guardian wanted to make it clear they were not far-right – a label that had made prison dangerous and terrifying, serving their time alongside gangs of non-white offenders who 'were after us because a screw grassed us up'. 'They were waiting for us, with the riot – but it was wrong, they got it all wrong.' Those who were sentenced to two or three years served about a third of their sentence before they were released on licence, wearing ankle tags that require them to be home between the hours of 7pm and 7am. The scene in Manvers last summer – with lines of officers pushing back groups of men – was reminiscent of another era, when striking miners were subjugated in clashes with police. 'I used to work at Manvers colliery, half a mile underneath the hotel,' said Mick Woods, who was sentenced to two years. 'We were on strike for a year and what did British people do? Nowt.' Unlike the other rioters, all of whom said they had never been to a demonstration before, Woods has spent a good deal of time at protests and on picket lines in his 65 years. He cannot tolerate the way British people, especially the working class, do not stand up for themselves, he said, and is 'proud' that he protested. 'My conscience is very clear. Very clear. The people what don't go down there [to protest], they are proper criminals.' Though Woods appeared to be anti-immigration generally, his protest had been against 'atrocious terrorist acts' in Southport. He had sympathy for the asylum seekers, he said, and had not wanted them to be hurt. 'I don't blame people coming here. We're sticking us nose in people's business, all over the planet,' he said. In footage played in court, he was standing next to a man with a dog and told police officers if they hit him, the dog would get them. He called an officer a 'disgrace to society'. But the court agreed there was no physical violence from Woods, nor did he do anything to encourage it from anyone else. 'I was shouting at the coppers saying, 'You should be ashamed of yersens.' And I went, 'You want a bumming by Gary Glitter.'' He laughed. He'd been a nuisance, but on any other day his behaviour may not have been considered criminal. Others referenced his case as an example of a particularly harsh sentence, though he said prison was on his 'bucket list' and he saw himself as a 'political prisoner'. 'It wasn't violent disorder, it was threatening behaviour, and I ought to have not admitted to it,' he said. Almost all of the men said they felt under pressure from their solicitor to plead guilty to violent disorder, a serious offence that virtually guaranteed prison time. 'Post office workers, they did the same to them and some of them took their lives,' said Woods. 'You can say this, that and t'other, and they'll make people into summat they're not, and that's what they did with me.' At least 100 people have been charged by South Yorkshire police for the riots and 85 of those have been sentenced to a combined 213 years in prison. The force is continuing to arrest perpetrators of the violence. In reality, for most of those individuals jailed, what they saw as harsh treatment only entrenched their beliefs. The father of two rioters who were sentenced for throwing objects at police, said he had gone down a far-right 'rabbit hole' online trying to understand why his sons were imprisoned for seemingly minor crimes. He believed his sons received such harsh sentences because they were 'protesting immigration' and that it was the prime minister, 'two-tier Keir' Starmer, who was responsible. 'It were all [the] press that got us in jail,' said Jordan Teal, 35, who was identified despite wearing a balaclava, and sentenced to two years and eight months for shouting at police that they were 'protecting paedophiles' and ripping off fence panels that were used as weapons. 'I hope you're proud of yourselves,' he said to the Guardian. In fact, South Yorkshire police had its own evidence gatherers, officers deployed with videocameras, as well as bodycam and aerial footage taken from two helicopters. Largely, though, it was the hundreds of hours of footage posted on social media by the rioters themselves that got them convicted. Joel Goodman, a photojournalist, refused to hand over any photos from the Rotherham riot, despite legal threats from South Yorkshire police. Michael Shaw, now 27, has the footage on his phone of the kick against a riot shield that was part of a clash that landed him two years and six months. 'They absolutely battered me that day, did the coppers.' Under the helmets and body armour, and behind the polycarbonate shields on one of the warmest days of the year, there would not be a lot of patience for those who did not do as they were told. A former soldier from the Yorkshire regiment, Shaw had gone 'with no mask or gloves or anything', there was 'no intent' he said. Like others, he said: 'I'm not racist, I just don't like it when people are raping women and children. It would be exactly the same if it were white lads.' He left the riot as the hotel was set on fire – did he feel bad for the asylum seekers trapped inside the hotel? 'No comment.' It was clear, he said, the big sentences handed down for Rotherham and the other riots a year ago hadn't worked as a deterrent: 'Just look what's happening now in Epping.' So would he do it again? 'One man's not going to make a difference. I wish I'd have stayed in bed.'
Telegraph
13 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Five years in jail for giving people smugglers social media boost
Anyone caught promoting people smugglers' services in social media posts will face up to five years in jail under new offences announced by the Government. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is to change the law to criminalise the creation of online content which promotes or offers services facilitating a breach of UK immigration law. The new offence, to be introduced through an amendment to Labour's borders bill, will cover small boat crossings, the creation of fake travel documents such as passports or visas, or promising the chance to work illegally in the UK. It will also become a crime to post online content that encourages someone to break UK immigration law in exchange for money. This would cover someone being paid by a people smuggler to post material on social media which promotes illegal journeys to the UK. It will also be punishable by up to five years in jail. The new offences come as the Home Office revealed around 80 per cent of small boat migrants told officials they used social media during their illegal journey to the UK, including to locate or communicate with an agent or facilitator associated with a people-smuggling gang. More than 25,400 migrants have crossed the Channel to the UK so far this year in 432 small boats, up 50 per cent on last year's figure and the highest number since the first arrivals in 2018. Some 5,454 have made it in July alone in 80 boats. Ms Cooper said: 'Selling the false promise of a safe journey to the UK and a life in this country – whether on or offline – simply to make money, is nothing short of immoral. 'These criminals have no issue with leading migrants to life-threatening situations using brazen tactics on social media. We are determined to do everything we can to stop them – wherever they operate. 'We have to stay one step ahead of the ever-evolving tactics of people-smuggling gangs and this move, part of our plan for change to boost border security, will empower law enforcement to disable these tactics faster and more effectively, ensuring people face proper penalties.' The National Crime Agency (NCA) has smashed crime gangs using social media accounts to promote crossing, including a pair of men from Wales who ran an operation through Europe labelled ' Tripadvisor for people smugglers '. Dilshad Shamo, 41, and Ali Khdir, 40, brought about 100 migrants illegally to Europe each week over a period of two years and offered them bronze, silver, gold and platinum packages, depending on risk. They were convicted after pleading guilty to people-smuggling midway through their trial. A platinum package could get you a flight, whereas silver might land you a 'comfortable ride' in the back of a lorry. Migrants from the Middle East heading to Europe rated their journeys in videos filmed inside lorries, boats and even on planes. Investigators found the video reviews on the phones of the smugglers themselves, seemingly made as promotional material. Another network operated by Amanj Hasan Zada, a Preston-based smuggler later jailed for 17 years, also posted videos of migrants thanking him for helping them. Albanian gangs have used social media to promote £12,000 'package deals' to Britain, including accommodation and employment upon arrival. Since December 2021, the NCA has worked with social media companies to remove 22,000 posts promoting organised immigration crime. More than 8,000 were removed in 2024, a 40 per cent increase on the previous year. It follows measures introduced as part of the Online Safety Act under which social media companies have been required to prevent and remove adverts by people smugglers for small boat crossings of the Channel or face jail and multi-million pound fines under new laws. Under the Act, two current offences involving modern slavery or exploitation and aiding and abetting crossings have become 'priority' offences in the bill. This means social media firms have to proactively prevent the adverts from being posted and remove any that are put up. If they fail to do so, Ofcom, the watchdog, has powers to fine them up to 10 per cent of their global turnover, equivalent to £9.7 billion for Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The watchdog Ofcom will also be able to block their services in the UK.
Telegraph
13 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Lynda La Plante on crime-ridden Britain: People live in fear. Politicians don't know what to do
Many of us lie awake wondering whether we can pay the mortgage. The night before we meet, Lynda La Plante lay awake worrying whether it's possible to find DNA on a body obliterated by a bomb explosion, including the teeth. The plot of the novel she is currently writing, the sixth and final to feature her sensitive, much-loved detective Jack Warr, apparently depends upon it. 'I got on the phone to a scientist friend this morning and he told me he was pretty sure even very badly charred clothing can retain DNA,' she says cheerfully. 'Particularly the waistband of trousers. So that was a relief.' The 82-year-old La Plante is sitting in the panelled sitting room of her 17th-century home in Kingston. Her hair is bouffant, her gold earrings sparkle and her bellowing voice is positively aristocratic. The interior of her house is so grand it resembles a baronial castle – enormous fireplaces, stag heads on the walls – the fruit of an estimated £30 million fortune amassed from four decades as a best-selling crime novelist and writer of groundbreaking TV hits such as Widows and Prime Suspect. At one point, her enormous poodle-wolf hound cross, Theo, wanders in, as tall as the table and almost the size of La Plante, who is tiny. She is the grand dame of British crime fiction and by goodness she looks the part. Yet if La Plante is sheer glamour, her writing is pure grit. Her novels (there are 50 and she has sold 15 million copies of them) bulge with the painstaking minutiae of behind-the-scenes detective work rather than gun-toting police heroics on the street. Her current obsession is forensics, and her latest novel, The Scene of the Crime, introduces a new protagonist who is an expert in the field: Jessica Russell, head of the Met's newly-formed and experimental Serious Crime Analysis Unit and a typical La Plante heroine – tough, self contained and, inevitably, the victim of ingrained dinosaur sexism within the force itself. The team's first job involves the attempted murder of a wealthy wine trader, and Russell exhaustively coordinates the DNA analysis and digital forensics data. 'You tend to see all these impossibly young female detectives on TV, running around chasing people and arresting them,' says La Plante slightly sniffily. 'But if you meet the experts, the specialist scientists who today are the ones really solving crimes [through forensics], there is a real quietness and concentration about them.' That there are women on TV solving crimes at all is arguably down to La Plante, who throughout her career as a crime writer has invariably placed determined, battle-hardened women centre stage. She initially started out as an actress, graduating from Rada in the mid-1960s, and spent several years starring in TV cop shows such as The Sweeney, Z Cars and Bergerac, and also working with the RSC. Yet in the early 1980s, fed up by the paucity of strong roles available to women in crime shows, she successfully pitched Widows to Thames Television. That show, in which three bereaved wives of armed robbers pull off a bank raid, was an instant hit, attracting a staggering 18 million viewers. In 1991 she followed it with Prime Suspect, which ran for 15 years on ITV until 2006 and starred Helen Mirren as the indomitable Jane Tennison – the first female character to lead a police force in a prime-time TV crime drama. 'A character like Tennison had never been seen before,' says La Plante. 'A high-ranking female police officer, leading a murder squad, and with all the misogyny and discrimination she faced.' From the outset La Plante was determined to ensure her books were as realistic as possible, her constables and criminals as gutsy and authentic as their real-life counterparts on the streets. Her novels are always impeccably researched, sometimes at considerable personal risk. For Widows she spent time with drug addicts in Kings Cross and ex-cons in East End pubs, basing her main characters on the people she met. When she was researching her 1990 novel Bella Mafia, which centres on the fall-out of a mafia mass shooting, she spent a couple of weeks in Italy researching the Sicilian underworld, interviewing various mafia dons. Sensing one morning that someone had been inside her Palermo hotel room while she was out, she placed a hair across her desk. 'And when I came back, it had gone,' she said. So the mafia were looking through her work? 'Yes, to check what I had written. They didn't want any identities inadvertently revealed.' She has also interviewed several of Britain's most violent offenders. 'Peter Sutcliffe was pitiful,' she says. 'And Charles Bronson still sends me cartoons. I have literally hundreds. They always have the same line: 'Never walk backwards into a madman's cell'.' She gives a dark little laugh. 'He asked me to be his bridesmaid twice. He's such a showman. Because of the biopic that was made about him [2008's Bronson, starring Tom Hardy] he has amazing kudos in prison. But the prison officer he took hostage in his cell [Adrian Wallace, in 1994] was so traumatised he was forced to retire early from his job.' How on earth did she keep her cool being around such dangerous people? 'I was able to do it because I'm an actress,' she says. 'I learnt very quickly not to show disgust, not to show anything in fact but enjoyment. Don't take the notebook out. Don't turn on the tape recorder. You have someone turn on you once, and you never forget it.' Politicians don't know what to do It sounds a brutalising business. What motivates her is 'the terrible trail of destruction criminals leave in their wake'. She is not remotely hardened to either the consequences of crime or to the social breakdown that often lies behind it. But the day-to-day news cycle horrifies her. 'I hear about the mothers who lose their children to knife crime on the way to school and my heart breaks,' she says, her eyes watering. 'People are living in so much fear, on the Tube, on the streets.' Moreover, she thinks it's getting worse. 'My driver took the car to the car wash and another car cut in front of him in the queue. He was about to get out to remonstrate when the attendant signalled to him not to. Apparently the driver of the second car had waved a machete. There were three more young men in the back. So what are you supposed to do?' Does she have any insight into why people are becoming more aggressive? 'I've no idea. I just know that these days it's everywhere. Speeding cyclists almost knocking you down in Richmond Park... ' She's not sure how to solve it, either. 'Politicians seem to have no idea. They don't seem able to cope. And releasing prisoners early is not exactly helping. Those people have committed a serious crime and they should serve their sentence. Imagine being the victim of a domestic abuser, thinking he's been put away for five years and one day being told he's been released early. How would that make you feel?' She starts talking about the recent pro-Palestinian marches. 'I get terribly upset about the children in Ukraine and Gaza, but the pro-Palestine marches are so confrontational. You want to take them aside and say, why? Why are you here? Vanessa Feltz was attacked by a protester recently, who hurled an anti-Semitic remark at her. You think, 'What is this?' 'People say, 'Be more guarded,'' she continues. 'They say, 'Pull your cuffs down if you have a nice watch.' And you think, 'I don't want to live like that.' So I rarely go into town these days. Soho is terrifying after dark. Instead I invite all my actor friends [who include Richard E Grant and Celia Imrie] to dinner here.' She has, inevitably, over the course of her career, thought an awful lot about whether people are inherently evil. Much of the time, when she interviews serial killers (she has also talked to Dennis Nilsen and the Kray brothers) she is trying to find out what drives them. She rarely does. 'People often ask if people are born that way,' she adds. 'And they are not. If a boy is taking a knife into school, it's possibly because he is being bullied. Or because there are people at the school gates selling fentanyl and he's got sucked into a gang. 'But then you have to go further back [in that child's life], to the start of primary school where teachers can't cope because children aren't potty trained and they don't know how to behave. So it means you have to put more money into primary schools because there are inadequate parents. And so on.' Jeff Bezos's 'revolting' wedding She throws her hands up. 'The problem with getting politicians to solve all this – there is no one above them with any vision. And they keep changing their minds. Their policies keep changing. One minute you are encouraged to get a mortgage, the next it's gone up by £300. People wonder how to map out how they are going to live. And then they think, 'Well, I won't bother, I'll just stay on benefits.'' She's gone a bit off topic. 'Politicians then try and reform the benefits system but find they have to prove who is needy because you can't be seen to be taking benefits from the needy. Of course, it always comes down to money.' So how would she raise it? Tax the rich more? 'The problem there is that wealthy people are moving out of Britain rather than paying more tax. But it worries me that they don't think they should pay more tax. They don't feel they should contribute. You don't get this in America. Say what you like about Musk and Bezos and that revolting $40m wedding, but at least they give millions to charity. 'People in this country don't. Whereas I'm one of those people who finds it very hard watching TV because I go, 'Dear God, the donkeys'. I'm sitting there on my phone, donating to the starving children, donating to the life boats.' La Plante grew up in Crosby, in Liverpool. Her father was a salesman and her mother a stay-at-home housewife, and she describes her childhood as 'idyllic' and 'impossibly free'. At Rada, to which she won a scholarship at the age of 16, her peers included John Hurt (who kept nervously and vainly trying to ask her out) and Anthony Hopkins. Her memoir Getting Away With Murder is stuffed with waspish anecdotes about this time in her life and her later career, including the many celebrities she has rubbed shoulders with: Mick Jagger and David Bowie, who wanted her to write them a film but were too hungover during their first meeting with her to decide what it ought to be about; Paul McCartney, who she dismisses as 'vacuous'. She also, in 1978, got married to her husband Richard (they divorced in 1996; the marriage was childless) who at the time dabbled in property and rock music. 'I finally understood grief when my dog died' More soberly she writes about her sister, Dail, who was run over by a lorry and died at the age of six before Lynda was born (she also had a younger sister Gill, a casting director, whom she talks to every day, and a brother Michael who has since died). Her mother was so capsized by the death of Dail she would occasionally disappear for long periods ('Your mother has gone away for a rest', her father would tell Lynda) and, when she died, insisted on being buried with Dail's teddy bear and school hat. Yet La Plante is at pains to stress that, at the same time, both parents made huge efforts to ensure the household didn't collapse into despair. 'My sister was always part of our lives even though she was missing. But they never let her death impede our childhood. The house was always full of laughter.' It's tempting to wonder if the loss of Dail has motivated La Plante's career, as though, through her crime procedurals, she is seeking to find justice in some oblique way for the sister she never knew. 'No, not really. For decades grief was never something I personally understood. But, and this is almost embarrassing, last year I had this Borzoi dog, Hugo. Beautiful. And one day he died. He was only a few years old. About a month earlier he'd eaten some pampas grass which is terribly dangerous for a dog, and although he survived the operation, we think perhaps there was some internal bleeding, or he had a heart attack because one day he suddenly couldn't breathe. 'Anyway, I broke. I've never known such incredible grief. Ever. And it made me realise, for the first time, an inkling of what my parents went through.' She's sobbing as she says this, aware on one level that it is madness to compare the loss of a dog to the loss of a child, but at the same time unable to help it. 'The weird thing is I often write about grief, but that was the first time I'd experienced it.' Pictures of the exquisite Hugo adorn every window sill. She turns to look at poor Theo, who even a dog fanatic would agree is an absurd looking creature. 'We got him a few months ago. I deliberately went for a dog as different to Hugo as possible.' La Plante leads a disciplined existence, swimming daily in her indoor pool, walking Theo, although given his size this is hard to imagine, and writing every day. She tends to write from 7am until lunch and spends her evenings watching TV. Not that she thinks much of it is any good. 'You do still get terrific TV in this country. I loved Ripley. But the problem is you no longer have people who say, 'This is good, let's do it'. Instead you have a panel. And that panel often don't know good writing and they don't encourage it either. It's very hard as a writer to hear, 'This is a great script, the best we've had in years, but we don't have room for it'. That happens to me all the time.' La Plante has written many times for TV, including adaptations of her own novels: the Anna Travis books featuring the eponymous London-based detective were adapted into the TV series Above Suspicion starring Kelly Reilly in 2009. Recently, though, she has struggled to land a new script. In the past she has put this down to ageism within the industry. She demurs on this now. 'I don't know whether it's ageism. I don't know if people look at me and think, 'Well, we've had enough of her'. But if it's happening to me it must be happening to an awful lot of writers, given how much crap gets foisted upon us. More game shows and more dreadful game shows. 'We used to have soaps which were great training grounds for writers and actors,' she adds. 'These days the soaps deal in such horrific story lines, rapes and murder, that they are taking precedence over beautifully cultured drama. I see all these actors coming through and all they have on their CV is EastEnders because that's the only work they can get.' When she was 57, four years after she divorced Richard, she adopted a baby boy, Lorcan. He is now a trainee pilot and lives in a cottage in her garden with his girlfriend. The pair are extremely close: when, a few months ago, she went to hospital with chest pains (it ended up being a chest infection), he stayed with her all night, terrified she was going to die. 'It was his birthday too, the poor boy.' He often pops in to cook dinner. 'Partly because I'm such a terrible cook. I can't stand poncy food [this is true; as I am leaving, a delivery driver arrives with a Domino's pizza for her lunch]. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I have fish and chips.' The newspapers had a field day when she adopted him because of her age, and two decades on she remains very hurt by how they treated her 'Ronnie Wood can have a child at the age of 68, but I was attacked. I had the press rifling through the bins to find out if he was black, white, Chinese. I didn't understand that something that was so beautiful could become so cruel. But I think people didn't realise at the time how many miscarriages I had had [she suffered four with Richard and endured years of failed fertility treatment]. I now realise I've given so much confidence to other women who feel they can now adopt.' She is not impressed by a recent report detailing a rise in people in their 70s and 80s having children through surrogacy. 'It's not fair on the child. You're going to leave them too soon. Surrogacy can be a blessing for some women, but I have a feeling it's also being misused by women who can't be bothered to become pregnant. 'I fear IVF is another scientific wonder that will become abused. There are so many babies that could be adopted. It's awful to think people are ridiculed for doing it at the age I did it when you can give your son a wonderful life, a wonderful house.' I look around at her living room again, stuffed with sofas and flowers and ornaments and a hundred photographs of her and Lorcan and yes, it certainly does seem a wonderful life. She is happy, too, not to be sharing it with anyone else. 'God no, I don't date. Having been through it once, I can't be doing with all that. When I was writing my memoir I looked back on my marriage and thought: 'What was I doing?'' Anyway there would be no time. There is her true-crime podcast Listening to the Dead, her next novel to research and write. 'Fortunately I have all these lovely experts I can call on for advice. They pick up the phone and go, 'Oh God Lynda. Not another murder'.'
