As his new novel, Rumpole And The Penge Bungalow Murders, is published, Sir John Mortimer talks to Hannah Stephenson about the scandal surrounding his love child with Darlington born Wendy Craig and being politically incorrect.

BY his own admission, Sir John Mortimer, author, playwright and barrister, has always been a bit of a rebel. The man who created the inimitable defence barrister Rumpole of the Bailey bears many of the traits of his crumpled, wine-swilling alter ego, including obstreperousness.

''I can't bear political correctness. It's so unfair. I have to smoke now, which I don't really like doing, because I'm so fed up with all this anti-smoking propaganda. I have to stuff these little cigars in my mouth after dinner and I'm not at all good at it.''

Humour aside, the author has unwittingly been the subject of scandal recently, when he discovered that he has a 42-year-old son, Ross Bentley, from a brief affair with actress Wendy Craig. The Butterflies star told him about Ross because she feared it might become public knowledge.

Now 81 and wheelchair-bound, he is hoping that the media frenzy over the story has now subsided. ''I can't imagine that a 40-year-old love affair, or whatever it is, is of overwhelming interest,'' he says.

But he admits he was amazed to discover he had a love child.

''It came as a bit of a shock but it's rather good because I met the son I didn't know I had and he's very nice,'' he says. ''My daughters (actress Emily and Rosie) are fine about it. They've all met each other.''

The affair took place when he was married to his first wife, Penelope, a writer, while Wendy was married to showbusiness writer Jack Bentley. Both Jack and Penelope have since died.

He denies he was a bad husband and says both he and Penny I (he calls her Penny I, while his second wife of more than 30 years is Penny II) had extramarital affairs. ''We had quite a stormy marriage. We had lots of lovers from time to time.'' He doesn't deny that even now, he is an incorrigible flirt.

Mortimer is obviously intensely proud of his children and, when asked about Emily, says: ''Oh, she's very famous. I wanted to be an actor myself when I was a young man, so I'm delighted at her success.

''The only sad thing is that she lives so far away in Los Angeles. She has a little son called Sam, who is one. She's in Woody Allen's new film and has also made a Pink Panther in Paris. Emily's married to the actor Alessandro Nivola and they live in a house in Echo Park, where they can pluck avocados off the trees. I used to go to Los Angeles all the time but I've not been there to see her yet. But we will all spend Christmas together in Long Island.''

Meanwhile, the author of more than 20 books has been busy writing and has just penned Rumpole And The Penge Bungalow Murders, his first full-length Rumpole (all the others were short stories), in which we see Rumpole as a young barrister, defending a man accused of murder.

Many fans feared that following the death of actor Leo McKern, who played Horace Rumpole in the long-running TV series, the character would disappear from our screens. But his creator is hopeful that Albert Finney will reprise the role in a forthcoming feature-length ITV production.

So, is Rumpole going to live forever? ''Longer than me, I should think,'' Mortimer says. ''I don't want to kill him off.''

The character is largely based on his own personality, he agrees, but includes traits taken from others. ''He's very like my father, who was a barrister, and like a lot of old barristers I know. The pleasure is that he says what I think. If I said it others would say I was rather Left wing and horrible, while he is just seen as rather crusty.''

Knighted in 1998, Mortimer has always had the gift of being able to entertain, whether in his writing or in his heyday as a barrister. ''If you're a barrister and you can get the jury laughing you can usually win,'' he says.

His many film and TV scripts include Brideshead Revisited and an adaptation of Cider With Rosie, which starred his daughter Emily. He has also penned four volumes of his memoirs to date.

At one stage in the early 70s, Mortimer acted as defence counsel during the famous Oz obscenity trial, while his play A Voyage Around My Father was being staged in London. ''I used to get up at four in the morning and write and then go to court. I don't know how I did it, but it was a very nice life. I used to have breakfast with a murderer in his cell, lunch with a judge at the Old Bailey and dinner with an actor, while we were rehearsing a play, so it was a very interesting life.''

And even the advent of his ninth decade doesn't mean he's slowed down much. ''Nowadays, I start work at about six, go on writing until lunchtime and then I get drunk and go to sleep. If you write 1,000 words a day, you can write a novel in 80 days.''

* Rumpole And The Penge Bungalow Murders by John Mortimer is published by Viking, priced £16.99.

Published: 12/10/2004