TV Times, 21 April, 1961, page 3

Meeting the underworld

NEXT Saturday's episode in ABC's The Avengers - "The Frighteners" - has been written by Lt.-Col. Jasper Davies, formerly of the Royal Artillery, once an intelligence officer in Cyprus.  But perhaps we all know him better under his famous thriller-writing pen name of Berkley Mather.   Mather goes to great lengths to draw his criminal characters true to life.  He told me from his Sussex home: "I have a working arrangement with a former Scotland Yard Superintendent and a Chief Inspector, who arrange for me to meet underworld characters from time to time.  "Usually, I pop up to Soho for a drink with them.   These tough types are astonishingly frank - when they know they are talking in front of former policemen."  One of the underworld types Mather met recently is the basis of a character in "The Frighteners" - but he won't say which.

back to 1961