Poirot and Me (17 page)

am constantly amazed by people’s affection

for him. When people meet me, or stop me

in the street, or come to see me in a play,

they always want to talk about Poirot. Some

of them even send enormous letters

explaining exactly how much he means to

them.

It is humbling, and almost overwhelming,

because everyone I talk to seems to love

him, though I never set out to make him

loved – only to make him true to Dame

Agatha’s creation.

Yet when we finished filming the second

series

of Agatha Christie’s Poirot in

December 1989, I wasn’t sure whether there

would ever be another. London Weekend

had not written an option into my contract

for a new series – as they had into my

contract for the first. In fact, there was no

guarantee

whatsoever

from

any-one

associated with the production that there

would ever be a third series.

Once again, I was high and dry, not sure

what might happen next, and yet desperate

to go on playing the little man that everyone

seemed to love so much.

Sheila and I tried to organise my life so

that I would be available to play him again if

the chance presented itself, but in the

meantime I still had a family to support, not

to mention a house to maintain. In the

second week of the first series being

transmitted, part of the roof had fallen in on

us, quite without warning.

But that wasn’t the reason I wanted to

play Poirot again. He had become a part of

my life, almost like a best friend. I too had

come to love him. The thought that I might

never bring him to life again made me sad

because I wanted nothing more than to

make room for him in my career.

Chapter 8

‘TELEVISION’S

UNLIKELIEST

HEARTTHROB . . .THE

MANGO MAN’

Another Christmas, and that niggling

anxiety remained: would I be reunited

with the idiosyncratic detective? I did not

know, and neither did Sheila. We just knew,

as we celebrated with the family, that the

fans loved him and the critics liked him. But

would that last? Might the audience be

getting bored with Poirot and me?

The answer came quickly, and I should not

have worried. On 7 January 1990, a Sunday

evening, ITV launched the second series of

Agatha Christie’s Poirot with our two-hour

special of Peril at End House, and to my

intense relief, the British press were every

bit as generous as they had been a year

earlier.

In fact, even before the reviews appeared,

I knew they liked the series, because there

was a string of enthusiastic previews.

Astonishingly, it was becoming clear that the

little Belgian was almost on the brink of

becoming a national treasure. It was a far

cry from the first days of filming, eighteen

months earlier, when no one knew what the

world would think.

The television highlights for 1990 all

included charming remarks about the new

Poirot series, and, remarkably, his effect on

women viewers.

On the Sunday morning the series began,

t he People newspaper reported that I was

receiving ‘sacks of mail from adoring women

who simper and sigh at his portrayal of the

elderly, moustachioed hero’. It wasn’t quite

true, but I was certainly getting dozens of

letters a week at the peak of the series,

though not quite all of them from women.

That same morning, the Sunday Mirror

reported: ‘Poirot has become a great family

favourite’ and a ‘hit with women viewers

too’. For my part, I had told the paper, ‘A lot

of ladies want to look after him . . . For

although he’s very self-sufficient, he is also

slightly vulnerable. They want to help him in

any way possible . . . And yet he is irritating

and objectionable in lots of ways. He’s a

typical bachelor.’

That vulnerability was something I had

been striving for throughout the second

series, as I told the Today newspaper. One

of its writers, Ivan Waterman, did an

interview with me and I explained to him

what I had been aiming at. ‘I like Poirot very

much,’ I said. ‘He’s a great humanitarian –

he has this love of people. He is a very warm

man and I like to think I care as well.’ It was

entirely true.

The day before, the Sun had shared with

its readers twenty clues they had unearthed

about Poirot and me, including the fact that I

– like Poirot – was ‘ultra-tidy’ and paid

‘particular attention to detail’; that I’d met

Sheila when we were both appearing in a

stage production of Dracula in Coventry in

1972; and that I had played in the junior

finals at Wimbledon at the age of fourteen,

but had given up tennis for acting. In fact,

the truth was that I just could not find the

time to keep playing tennis at the level that

I wanted to. If there was a sport that I did

give up for acting, it was rugby, which I

loved, but the need for training just did not

leave me time for acting.

All these personal details felt slightly

surreal; I am a character actor, not a star or

a celebrity, and that sense of the unreal only

increased when, a few weeks later, Women’s

Realm magazine called me ‘TV’s unlikeliest

heart-throb’ – even though they also

described me as ‘portly’.

Nevertheless, Women’s Realm also gave

me a chance to explain what I felt about the

little man, especially when I told them that

an ‘actor has to fall in love with his character

. . . You have to have a deep, intimate

relationship with him, get under the surface.

I’m very fortunate in that I really like Poirot.’

The British television critics had been very

kind.

The Sunday Times, in particular,

welcomed the return of my ‘definitive,

understated

portrayal

of

the

Belgian

detective’, and the reviews certainly worked

in the series’ favour. As January turned into

February, in 1990, we began to exceed the

audiences of eight million or so every Sunday

evening from last season, rising towards ten,

eleven and even, briefly, twelve million

people each week.

The most intuitive remarks about my work

in the new series came from the novelist and

journalist Celia Brayfield, who turned herself

into a critic in one of her columns and

described my Poirot as ‘enthralling’ and ‘the

most mesmeric figure on television’. Celia

also pointed out, very shrewdly, that I was

unafraid to portray Poirot’s less attractive

traits, whilst taking care not to turn him into

a caricature.

My peers in the acting profession were

equally generous, because just a few days

after the new series began, I discovered that

one of the episodes in the first series,

Triangle at Rhodes, had won first prize in the

drama category at the International Film and

Television Festival in New York. That

happened just days before the first series

was to launch in the United States, on

Thursday 18 January 1990, as part of the

PBS Mystery series.

The American reviews of the first series

were astonishing. The Philadelphia Inquirer

was particularly kind. Their staff writer,

Jonathan Storm, praised the subtlety and

integrity of my performance, which ‘. . . over

the years, have eluded such fine actors as

Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney . . . Suchet

adds a benevolence that also makes Poirot a

fine friend.’

The Washington Post said that I made ‘a

fine Poirot, with just the essential twirl of his

absurd moustache of self-importance’, while

the New York Times observed carefully that

my interpretation ‘does justice to the portrait

on the page’, and Broadcast Week called my

performance ‘stunning’, adding that, ‘He’s

taken the Belgian sleuth and has made him

his own.’ The Wall Street Journal concluded

firmly: ‘All in all, this Poirot is a delight.’

In Canada, at the same time, the Toronto

Star’s Greg Quill was every bit as

enthusiastic, describing my performance as

‘the definitive Poirot – an excitable,

fastidious,

arrogant

and

essentially

egomaniacal sleuth . . . qualities that shine

through in his wonderful performance.’

I simply could not have asked for more

generous reviews. They made me feel that

my work was somehow vindicated.

All this success was wonderful, but – with

no guarantee that there would ever be

another series – I needed to work. Then,

suddenly, a chance presented itself when

Trevor Nunn, the artistic director of the Royal

Shakespeare Company when I worked there

in the 70s and 80s, asked me if I would

consider playing Shakespeare’s Timon of

Athens at the Young Vic for two months in

April and May 1990.

No longer working full-time with the RSC,

Trevor had by then established himself as

one of the leading directors of the West End

stage, with a string of hits, including the

musicals Cats and Les Miserables. I had

enjoyed working with him on the Moss Hart

and George S. Kaufman comedy Once in a

Lifetime in the West End in 1979, but that

was some time ago, and I certainly wanted

to work with him again – but what if they

suddenly asked me to start a new series of

Poirot? Would I be able to do both? What if

they overlapped? I really didn’t know what to

do.

Finally, after a great deal of heart-

searching and without any firm news about a

third series, I took the plunge and agreed to

do Timon with Trevor. There were to be five

weeks of rehearsals and a two-month run,

which would take me into the last weeks of

May 1990. The only thought in the back of

my mind was that if there was going to be

another series of Poirot, I was going to be

very stretched indeed.

But Timon was a wonderful challenge. One

of Shakespeare’s last plays – first performed

in 1607 or 1608 – it is not revived all that

often. People tend to think it is about

children being baked in pies, because they

confuse it with Titus Andronicus. In fact,

Timon had last been performed by the RSC a

decade earlier, in 1981, with Richard Pasco

in the leading role, and a few years before

that with Paul Scofield as Timon. One reason

for the reluctance to perform the play is that

it is unfinished. Some experts are even

convinced that not all of the play was written

by Shakespeare himself.

There were a lot of reasons why I wanted

to play the part. Of course, I longed for the

challenge – what character actor would not?

But it would also be my first time playing

Shakespeare with Trevor, something that I

had always wanted to do. It would also be

the first time I had appeared on the stage

since Separation back in 1987, and Timon

would give me the opportunity to re-

establish myself as a classical stage actor,

alongside my television work. I also hoped

that I might bring some of the millions of

people who watched me on television into

the theatre, and thereby unite two parts of

my career.

You see, I have always firmly believed

that, as an actor, my staple place of work is

the theatre, and that means that I must

keep returning to it. I have never wanted to

be just a television actor, or a movie actor,

or a star, or a celebrity. I want to remain

exactly what I had always longed to be – a

character actor. That’s why, when people ask

me if I have a favourite medium, I always

tell them that I don’t. I will do anything that

allows me to be the actor I always wanted to

be.

Before Timon even opened, however, I

was thrown into a state of confusion. London