Hurrah for beige people
He’s made a career out of playing the overlooked, now McDonald & Dodds star Jason Watkins is hoping Hollywood will come calling...
Eventually, someone always asks actor Jason Watkins to walk on his hands. He’s been doing it since he was nine and once came close to breaking the world record for distance covered. Jaws drop, and not just because he’s quite nimble for a 54 year old. Sometimes they drop because of what he’s wearing when he springs into position. ‘I did it on the set of
The Crown while dressed as Harold Wilson,’ he says. ‘It did get a laugh.’ If the stage and TV work dries up, who knows when the skill might come in handy? ‘There could be a circus out there,’ he agrees.
His flexibility extends to his acting. He admits he’s made a career out of playing oddballs. He’s wowed in serious dramas like The Lost Honour Of Christopher Jefferies (for which he won a BAFTA), but also in comedies like W1A and Trollied. It takes versatility to be cast both as a vampire leader in Being Human and as Mr Humphries in the BBC revival of Are You Being Served? ‘And in lockdown people are discovering things in box sets that I’ve been in previously, which is quite nice,’ he says.
He’s just returned to our screens in the second series of hit ITV detective drama McDonald & Dodds, which pairs the go-getting young DCI McDonald (played by Cold
Feet’s Tala Gouveia) with Jason’s nerdy, oddly precise DS Dodds. On the surface Dodds is ‘bland, beige, middle-aged’, yet he has ‘a presence’, says Jason. ‘He’s one of those people who’s easily overlooked, but he’s actually rather good at what he does.’
Hurrah for the beige people then. Jason finds them appealing to play. ‘Dodds is gentle, subtle and effective.
He’ll get to the finishing line,’ he says.
There are parallels with his own life. In his twenties
Jason was told he wasn’t leading man material (‘Well, look at me. I’m not Brad Pitt,’ he says) and that success, if it came, probably wouldn’t happen until he was
40. And so it came about. He nearly gave up and had to be financially supported by his wife Clara. He even joined her working in her jewellery business for a while. ‘And I’ve never forgotten it,’ he says. ‘I’m doing OK today, but it took a long time to build that. As a character actor it takes a while to even get in the room.’
He’s not only in the room now, but choosing the furnishings. He says he’d like to give Hollywood a whirl. ‘I’m not going to be cast as a superhero, but I could play a villain. It would be a challenge. Some of the stuff coming out there is brilliant, and it has mass appeal, which is what we all want. We want our work to be seen.’
Ten years ago he would not have been making these sorts of decisions because his career
took a back seat to his home life – which pretty much imploded overnight when he and Clara lost their daughter Maude to sepsis. ‘Maudie’, as he calls her, died on New Year’s Day 2011, aged two, after developing a cough. Even after repeated visits to the doctor and A&E, they were wrongly told that Maude just had croup. She died in the night, bringing their world crashing down.
Jason and Clara’s way of dealing with their seismic loss has been extraordinary. They’ve campaigned endlessly for charity and privately counselled other bereaved families. Jason dedicated his BAFTA to Maude, and the film Nativity 2 ended with a moving credit to her. They have two children now – Bessie, Maude’s older sister, 13, and Gilbert, nine, who turned out to be a balm to their grief. Clara insisted she wanted another child soon after losing Maude. ‘It was primal. Clara wanted another child not as a replacement, but because she didn’t want to be cheated by life. It was a way of reestablishing her role as a mother.’
He chats about the strains of parenting in this
I’M NOT GOING TO BE CAST AS A SUPERHERO, BUT I COULD PLAY A VILLAIN
IT WOULD NOT HAPPEN TODAY… IN THIS AGE OF CCTV AND MOBILE PHONES
pandemic, and the pride – and terror – of discovering your kids are just like you.
‘Gilbert sits gazing out of the window when he’s supposed to be working and I think, “That’s how I was.” How can you criticise your children for being the way you were?’
The bigger question is how can you have a normal family life when you’ve been through the worst?
‘It was very hard early on,’ he admits. ‘Because Maude died in the night we didn’t sleep as we were always worried. But it does ease. Children don’t let you stay in that place. They’re wiser than you think, and have their own needs. What I say to any parent now is enjoy your children.
Don’t expect too much of them, or yourself. Some of the nicest times are spent just hanging out with them. Just mess about!’
Jenny Johnston McDonald & Dodds airs tomorrow at 8pm on ITV.
Suzy Lamplugh would be 60 this year. It’s hard to get your head around that, because in everyone’s mind the young estate agent is exactly that: young. She was 25 when she disappeared in July 1986. We still don’t know what happened to her, although the bare facts are etched in the memories of those who remember the case.
She left her office in Fulham, supposedly to show a client – the mysterious Mr Kipper – around a property. She has never been seen again, and the crime (Suzy was officially declared dead in 1994, presumed murdered) remains unsolved.
One of the affecting things about The Mystery Of Suzy Lamplugh, a new documentary on Sky that pieces together the story of her disappearance, is seeing footage of the time – her family at heart-rending press conferences, the busy police incident room – juxtaposed with up-to-date interviews. Those who are still with us (Suzy’s parents are not) have had the luxury of growing older.
Suzy’s sisters, Lizzie and Tamsin, have never been ones for the limelight, but her brother Richard is in the twopart series, revealing the last images ever taken of him with all his sisters. ‘We’ve never been able to grieve,’ he says, in the gentle and dignified manner that has characterised his family’s response. ‘You want to stay positive. You don’t want to mourn her loss because you don’t want to betray her.’
His mother Diana, who died in 2011, devoted the latter part of her life to campaigning for lessons to be learned. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which offers advice about personal safety, is still going. But in the early days, Diana tried to be involved in the search, taking to the streets where she was last seen, even carrying cash (to elicit information) and a gun. It was, says Richard, ‘a rusty old thing’ that had belonged to his grandfather. ‘I don’t think we even had bullets.’
To a younger audience, the story of Suzy Lamplugh may seem hard to understand. ‘I don’t think it’d happen today,’ says Jim Dickie, the former detective superintendent who led the reinvestigation from 2000 and is still emotionally invested. ‘A young woman like Suzy couldn’t disappear without a trace. In this age of CCTV and mobile phones there would be a footprint. The initial investigation was all paperbased, so quite a lot of stuff was missed or not actioned – they were inundated with information and had no way of managing it properly. Later I had everything transferred to the HOLMES system [technology used for police investigations].’
The documentary does a sterling job of revisiting that early investigation. There are also very up-to-date strands, and an intriguing contribution by a new potential witness, identified only as ‘Ann’ whose face isn’t shown.
In the series, Jim shares his account of how, less than two years ago, Ann approached him after hearing him talk about Suzy in the media. She claimed that a friend, who had since died, had repeatedly approached police to tell them he’d seen a man struggling with a large piece of luggage along the towpath of the Grand Union Canal a few days after Suzy disappeared. It was
5am and struck him as most odd. Later, when serial sex offender John Cannan was charged with another murder – and publicly linked to Suzy’s case – this man identified him as Cannan.
‘He went to Brentford police station three times, but for whatever reason his information was not passed on. But his account is very detailed and credible. He not only told his wife and two friends when Cannan was on trial, he went to the court to make sure Cannan was the man he’d seen.’
Jim immediately passed this information onto the relevant authorities, but he’s dismayed that still no search of that section of canal has been done. ‘I don’t think it’s been sufficiently developed and I think there is an opportunity there. The police say the canal is dredged regularly. Well, I’ve made my own enquiries. The people who maintain it don’t dredge the whole canal. They only do what they call spot dredging, certain bits. And it’s generally around the locks, not the section of interest.’
In 2014 the canal was searched for murdered teen Alice Gross, and this has been mooted as a reason. ‘But again this is further up,’ says Jim. If he were heading the investigation now, would he order a search? ‘I would move heaven and earth to see if there is a body in luggage there.’
The importance of a body in any murder investigation cannot be over-emphasised. Convictions are possible without one, but they’re much more difficult. Laying a body to rest is also vital, Jim points out. ‘As a homicide investigator, you seek to bring a case to a successful conclusion, and mostly I’ve been able to do that. I’ve been able to tell families what happened to their loved one, and they’ve seen justice. The Lamplugh family deserve closure. As Richard Lamplugh says very eloquently, they want to bury Suzy at a time and place of their choosing. That’s very important.’
Then there is the justice. Focus in the latter part of the documentary is
on Cannan, who is still the prime suspect. The police have long believed Cannan – released from prison after an eight-year sentence for rape just days before Suzy went missing – should have been implicated earlier.
His name was on one of those pieces of paper in the early investigation, but it was only when he was arrested for another murder that links to Suzy were made.
The evidence against him was, police thought, convincing. As Jim recalls, ‘I remember Bill Griffiths [then-deputy assistant commissioner] at a news conference actually said John Cannan is the only strong suspect. That’s unprecedented. I don’t know of any other case without a prosecution and conviction where a very senior police officer has said that in a press conference.’
But the CPS decided not to prosecute, based on insufficient evidence. Cannan has repeatedly denied involvement, but his eligibility to
apply for parole next year should sound alarm bells, insists Jim. ‘He should never be released. I think he will remain a danger to females to the day he dies. There’s a pattern of repeat offending. How many more chances do you want to give him?’
There are other interesting nuggets in the series. Questions are asked about whether the social attitudes at the time – sexist attitudes – got in the way. It’s widely accepted that Mr Kipper did not exist, but various theories emerged about whether Suzy was involved with a lover. Jim says: ‘She was an attractive, vivacious, professional young woman. Yes, she had boyfriends, what’s wrong with that?
Professor Jane Monckton Smith has an interesting take. Now a criminologist, she was a police officer at the time. ‘In 1986 the police was absolutely dominated by men and you can’t tell me that a middle-aged macho investigator knows much about what goes on in the heads of young women. That’s important. The victimology is important. Why did she get into a car with someone, which is probably what she did? Why did she leave her car where it was, with her purse inside?’ Ultimately, she says, ‘the system failed’.
Is it too late for closure for the Lamplughs? Richard says the entire family is haunted by ‘what ifs’. ‘What if Suze was still alive? Would she have kids? Who would she be?’