Radio 4’s most popular series Ladies of Letters stars Prunella Scales and Patricia Routledge as the caustic correspondents Irene Spencer and Vera Small. But what of the weird and warped imaginations of the show’s creators?

In this, the series’ tenth rocking year of broadcast, co-writers Lou Wakefield and Carole Hayman are ready to dish the dirt on what lies between the Basildon Bond sheets, and why Robert Maxwell’s death by drowning also had the ladies dead in the water for six long years.