Brenda Blethyn is back on our TV screens as the titular detective in Vera. The Kent actress reveals what’s in store for viewers and how the director Mike Leigh has influenced the way she works. Lisa Williams reports.

You expect many things when you meet Brenda Blethyn – the Kent actress known for her warmth and wit – but not that she’ll open the door to you singing.

“Pleeease caaaall me baaaack,” she trills into a mobile phone, flashing a smile and greeting me with a wave.

The chorus, she explains later, was for the actor Niall Buggy, a great friend with whom she’s starred on stage.

“He rings me quite a lot, leaves a message, sings a song and puts the phone down,” she explains.

The 66-year-old has a very pretty voice and loves to sing (“It makes you feel nice, doesn’t it?”) but she points out with a grin: “I’m not a singer, I must emphasise that.”

She has plenty to sing about today, though. Launching the second series of Vera, in which she plays the titular detective created by crime writer Ann Cleeves, Brenda is delighting in returning to a character who is just as complex as the crimes she’s tasked with solving.

“I hope we get to do a third series too,” she says. “I’ve fallen in love with Vera. She’s a good policewoman, unconventional and not hampered by a romantic involvement.”

The second series – which began on ITV this week – is made up of four films, one based on a Cleeves story and three written specially for the screen.

“One episode takes place on an army barracks, which is a whole new world for Vera, with different laws and, in another one, a friend of her dad’s comes to light, so there’s an insight into Vera’s past, which is interesting,” said Brenda, who grew up in Ramsgate, the youngest of nine children.

“She thought her dad was a bully. He didn’t take her job seriously and thought she was a woman in a man’s job.”

Brenda doesn’t want to find out too much about the abrasive but talented detective’s personal life.

“The more you know about a character, the less surprising they are. I like her enigmatic side,” she says.

Having said that, Blethyn’s previous work with director Mike Leigh means she can’t help but think up more of a backstory for Det Ch Insp Vera Stanhope.

The actress launched her screen career with Leigh’s television film Grown-Ups, which also starred Phil Davies and Lesley Manville, and she cemented her reputation as one of the nation’s finest actresses in Leigh’s Secrets And Lies, which won her a Bafta, a Cannes Film Festival prize and an Oscar nomination.

Leigh famously works closely with his casts to develop the plot and characters, and Brenda admits that this unconventional approach has influenced her “totally”. She added: “He woke me up to the fact that you need to know more about the character. Just because the birthday’s not mentioned in the script, or where they live, they’re still important. I apply that to everything I do.

“I believe Vera’s star sign is Aries. But whether the writer would agree with that or not, I don’t know!”

Vera is certainly volatile as those born under the sign of the Ram are supposed to be, and she’s not afraid of locking horns with anyone who gets in the way of her crime-solving.

The doe-eyed star, who looks years younger than she is, admits that she was taken aback when first put forward for the role, having read in the books that Vera was burly and unattractive.

But, after the first series went out, she felt protective of the character and didn’t agree with what some viewers said about her.

“There’s nothing wrong with how she looks. There are people who look like Vera in all walks of life.”

Hitting the 'Toon’ with a tarantula

Brenda, who used Cheryl Cole as a model for Vera’s Geordie accent, loved filming in Newcastle, where the books and TV series are set.

“There was a different atmosphere in the city this time, because everyone knew the series. People were more celebratory, saying, 'Oh yes, Vera! We’re looking forward to the next one’,” she says, in an accent which would do the former X Factor judge proud.

Brenda praises the area for being “so beautiful” and the people for their friendliness, and tells a story about a night out she had in Newcastle during filming... It was Halloween and the cast and crew decided to dress up and hit the 'toon’.

Brenda didn’t have an outfit so improvised with vampish hair and make-up (“and a big toy tarantula which I happened to have, God knows why,”) then was gobsmacked by the effort everyone else had made.

“I did not see a single other soul in Newcastle who wasn’t dressed up,” she marvels.

Brenda goes on to say that she is reminded of her late parents every day.

“I had to sew a button on the other day,” she recalls.

“And I found the tin and there was a little bit of rope tied up which, as my father would have done, I thought might come in handy, and it did.

“And I started making bread pudding - my mum used to make it, it was lovely. I’ve suddenly discovered I have a talent for it.”

Though she didn’t tell her parents when she initially signed up for drama school aged 27, Brenda thinks it was their have-a-go attitude which inspired the move, and they were much more supportive than Vera’s father ever was.

“My dad used to say, 'Nothing wrong with failing Brenda, it’s the trying that’s important’.”

Brenda Blethyn factfile

» Brenda Blethyn was born in February 1946 in Kent.

» She attended Thanet Technical College and left school at 17.

» Her maiden name was Brenda Bottle but she kept the surname of her first husband, Alan Blethyn, after they split in 1973.

» In 2003 she was awarded an OBE for services to drama.

» She married her partner of 35 years, Michael Mayhew, in 2010.

» She owns a house in Ramsgate and one in south London

» Brenda was once again on the judging panel for this year’s 2 Days Laughter, Margate’s international short film festival.

» She appears in the film My Angel this year, starring with Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie.

The second series of Vera continues on ITV1 this Sunday at 8pm