ALAN Plater can't imagine what he'd do if he wasn't writing. "I love doing it," he says. "It's like asking why does Steve Davis play snooker. There's no life for him if he doesn't play snooker."

The Jarrow-born writer isn't short of work. With projects for theatre and television on the go at the same time, he's spent a lot of time on the M1, A1 and GNER in the past year.

"You can't make things in a convenient way. It's feast or famine in a way. It just so happens three things have been in production at the same time," he says.

He's speaking during rehearsals at West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, where his latest theatre work, Blonde Bombshells Of 1943, is being premiered. This was inspired by his BBC TV film Last Of The Blonde Bombshells, starring Judi Dench and Ian Holm.

The play is new, the latest twist in a project with "a long and complicated history" stretching back to 1988, when it was one of six one-off plays for TV series.

Plater's story told of a female musician buying from a second-hand shop a saxophone she'd played during the Second World War. After the series fell through, the idea lay dormant until 1992, when someone suggested turning it into a full-length stage play.

In fact, he wrote a film screenplay about a wartime female swing band getting together again. The movie came close to being made but, eventually, the project - which had Dench and Holm attached by that point - was picked up for TV.

There was no way that version could be transferred to the stage without a "West End budget, an Andrew Lloyd Webber-style budget", says Plater. Talks with Playhouse artistic director Ian Brown resulted in a play that switches between the present day and 1943, as two band survivors recall the old times. Dilys Laye and John Woodvine take the leading roles in a show featuring the music of Fats Waller, the Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller.

"The film was set in London and the Home Counties, the play is set in the North," says Plater. "We discovered that Ivy Benson, one of the most famous female band musicians, was from Leeds and so it all seemed to make sense. Frankly, I'm more comfortable writing about the North than the Home Counties because I understand the society more.

"It's a new play. I didn't look at any of the old scripts. I started with a blank sheet of paper. By starting again and looking harder at the past, you find out things and create a new set of characters."

The premiere follows hot on the heels of another Plater new play, Charlie's Trousers, at Newcastle's Live Theatre, with which he's had a long association.

He was born in Jarrow, moved to Hull just before the Second World War and lived there, apart from university days in the 1950s in Newcastle, until 1984. "I claim dual nationality," he says.

He's now London-based and doesn't miss the North - mainly because he's a regular visitor. "We're up and down a lot. My wife and I both have three kids each and a lot of grandchildren. Two lots live in Newcastle and others in Hull," he adds.

He's also making a return to TV, where previous successes include The Beiderbecke Trilogy, Fortunes Of War, Barchester Chronicles and A Very British Coup. Plater has adapted Stevie Davies' book The Web Of Belonging into a film for ITV with a cast including Brenda Blethyn, Kevin Whately and Anna Massey.

"It's something I've been nursing after first reading it six or seven years ago when a friend said it would make good telly. In the nature of things, it's taken a long time," he says.

Another project close to his heart is a CD release, Songs For Unsung Heroes, made with jazz musician Alan Barnes. "It's an album with songs about people that haven't had songs written about them before. Heroes like Spike Milligan and jazz musicians. Alan and I are just a couple of jazz anoraks," he says.

Plater is touring to promote the CD, including a gig at Darlington Arts Centre in June with "an eight-piece band, a singer and me talking".

Future projects for the busy Mr Plater don't end there. He's writing a chamber piece for Hull Truck theatre company marking the centenary of Hull City Football Club.

On a larger scale, Barrie Rutter's Northern Broadsides company has commissioned a new play, with working title of A Night With The Rude Mechanicals, which arose from an article in The Guardian newspaper.

"I dropped in a phrase that I'd rather go out drinking with Falstaff at the Boar's Head on a Saturday night than Othello or Hamlet because I'd have more fun," he recalls.

"Rutter e-mailed me the same day saying, 'Write me a play'. I sat down and within an hour had filled three pages. I sent it to him and he commissioned the play. After three hours, the deal was done.

"The play will be about Shakespeare hanging out with the roughnecks in the East End, stealing their characters and ideas and putting them in his plays."

The play will tour the North in tandem with Comedy Of Errors. Plater doesn't write London West End plays, he says, although sometimes they end up there, like the one about his late agent Peggy Ramsay. "I just wrote it for me in a very selfish way. I sent it to Alan Ayckbourn, who was also with her, and said I've written this and can't think who it's for," he says.

With Maureen Lipman starring, the play was seen in London and then on tour. It's even been performed in Japan by a man in Tokyo who specialises in staging productions of successful London plays.

It's Ramsay he quotes when you ask whether, at 69, Plater has any inclination to slow down. "She used to say if you are a writer, you write; if you don't write, you aren't a writer," he says.

l Blonde Bombshells Of 1943 runs at West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, from today to May 22. Tickets 0113-213 7700

Alan Plater's Songs For Unsung Heroes is at Darlington Arts Centre on June 5. Tickets (01325) 486555.

At Your Service will return next week