Poirot and Me (27 page)

summer of 1994, than I was back rehearsing

for the tour and then London opening of

What a Performance. Sadly, that proved to

be a rather less joyful experience.

The show toured the country, including

Bath and Richmond, and everywhere we

went, the audiences seemed to like my

portrayal of Sid Field in those golden days of

comedy in the second half of the 1940s. One

local paper insisted that it ‘will run and run’,

while another called my performance

‘stunning’, even though, as I told one

reporter who came to see me, the headline

should have read, ‘Suchet puts his head on

the block.’

I knew the risk I was running in

impersonating such a unique talent for a

generation that had never seen him, but my

fears disappeared on the opening night at

the Queen’s Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue

in London’s West End on Wednesday, 12

October 1994. The following morning, the

Daily Mail’s theatre critic, Jack Tinker, was

incredibly generous. ‘Miraculously, that

match-less actor Mr David Suchet conjures

up the vaguely campish clowning which

made the likes of the young Tony Hancock

hold Field in such awe,’ he wrote.

I received shoals of letters congratulating

me on my tribute to Field, but the harsh

reality of whether a modern audience

actually wanted to pay to see the recreation

of old comedy routines – with a script that

did not seem quite strong enough – hung

above the show like a dark cloud.

Just a few days after the show opened,

Sheila rang the box office to book two tickets

for the following Saturday week, only to be

told over the phone that the show would not

be running then.

Sheila telephoned me at once and said,

‘Did you know you’re not playing on Saturday

week?’

I rang the box office myself immediately,

and asked them if it was true.

There was a very long pause, before

finally the box office manager said, ‘I’m

terribly sorry, sir, I thought you’d been told.’

What a Performance closed in the West

End after just four weeks, in November 1994,

even though we had been scheduled to run

until at least the end of January. It was the

shortest run I had ever had in the theatre in

twenty-six years, and – even though I had

known it was a risk – it shook my confidence.

Luckily, I was offered the role of a cold-

blooded murderer in the BBC’s adaptation of

Emile Zola’s 1890 novel La Bête Humaine,

which had been renamed Cruel Train and set

in 1940. I was to appear alongside Saskia

Reeves, who had acted with me on stage in

Separation, Adrian Dunbar and Minnie

Driver, and the BBC’s budget was £2 million.

They had even built a vast set beneath a

motorway in Birmingham, which included a

recreation of London’s Victoria Station and a

real 1940s locomotive. It was a wonderful

effort, but it did not really save the film,

which was broadcast the following Easter to

muted reviews.

So the year ended on a slightly sad note,

in spite of the reviews for my Sid Field and

the delights of the wire-haired terrier Bob

and weeks in the Lake District. What I did

not know was that far worse was to come –

especially for Poirot and me.

Chapter 12

‘THERE HASN’T BEEN

ANY TROUBLE, HAS

THERE?’

Hercule Poirot brought me so many

happy memories over the years. There

were times I will never, ever, forget, when

the affection that the little man was held in

by all kinds of ordinary people came to the

surface wherever I was. Their pleasure in

him was so disarming, so charming.

There was the time when we were

shooting on location in the neat little seaside

town of Hastings in East Sussex, and I

wanted to just take a little time away from

the hustle and bustle of the unit to collect

my thoughts. In full costume, complete with

my Homburg and cane, I walked just round

the corner into a peaceful side street to

stand on my own and think about what was

to come.

Quite suddenly, out of the corner of my

eye, I caught a glimpse of a little old lady

walking slowly towards me on my side of the

street, pushing one of those square shopping

trolleys with four wheels, clearly on her way

home. I did not say anything at all, but when

she reached me, she stopped.

‘Hello, Monsieur Poirot,’ she said, with her

head cocked to one side.

For a moment I was at a loss to know

what to say. Should I respond as Poirot? Do I

respond as David Suchet? What voice should

I choose?

I made my decision.

‘Bonjour, madame ,’ I said, sticking firmly

to the little Belgian’s voice and manners.

The little old lady smiled, and then a look

of uncertainty spread slowly across her face.

‘There hasn’t been any trouble, has there?’

she asked, her voice aquiver. ‘I mean, there

hasn’t been a murder or anything?’

Now I really did not know what to say.

‘Non, non, madame. Rien. Nothing at all,’ I

reassured her.

She smiled her tiny smile again, and

started off past me. But she had only gone a

yard or two when she stopped and turned

back.

‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ she said

politely, ‘what are you doing in Hastings?’

Once again, I did not know what on earth

to say, but decided quickly: ‘Mes vacances,

madame. I am here on holiday,’ I said in my

finest Poirot.

‘Oh!’ she said, apparently satisfied, and set

off on her way again, only to stop once again

moments later.

‘Thank you for choosing Hastings,’ she

said, with a gentle wave, and she set off up

the street away from me.

Even as I remember that day now, it

brings a tear to my eye. It was so touching,

and seemed to reflect exactly how much

ordinary people really seemed to care about

the little Belgian, even if he was entirely the

product of Dame Agatha’s imagination.

There was another wonderful moment

when we were filming on location on the

south coast of England, not far from Poole in

Dorset, and – once again – I had slipped

away from the unit to collect my thoughts.

This time, a middle-aged couple appeared,

obviously on holiday and enjoying the spring

sunshine. They were arm in arm, and had

clearly been married for some considerable

time, because theirs was one of those

relationships in which the husband says

something and the wife agrees almost at

once.

Needless to say, it is the husband who

spoke first.

‘Oh,’ he said, clearly recognising me as

they passed and drawing them both to a

stop. ‘I hope you don’t mind us interrupting

you.’

I smiled, and nodded encouragingly in the

most appropriate Poirot manner.

‘Shall we tell him?’ the husband asked the

wife.

‘Oh yes,’ she said, smiling.

‘Well,’ the husband said, ‘we love all your

programmes. We really do. Don’t we,

darling?’

‘Oh yes,’ his wife agreed, still smiling.

‘We always watch them when they come

on. Don’t we?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘We never miss one. Do we?’

‘Oh no,’ his wife replied.

‘We see them all, we really do.’

His wife was now positively beaming with

pleasure. I was transfixed.

‘We even see the repeats. Don’t we?

Whenever they come on.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And we’ve got all the box sets. Haven’t

we?’

‘Oh yes.’

But then the husband paused for a

moment, and a brief frown crossed his large,

rather cheerful face. His wife’s beam also

faded slightly.

‘The thing is . . .’ he started to say, but

then hesitated and turned to his wife. ‘Shall I

tell him what I said to you the other day?’

She nodded, taking the cue of seriousness

from him.

‘Well,’ he went on in his warm, bluff voice,

‘the thing is, you see, we love your

programmes . . . but we can never

understand a single word you say.’

I really did not know what to say. I was at

a complete loss for words.

Then I smiled, as warmly as I could,

before murmuring something as politely as I

possibly could, before thinking to myself,

‘Talk about a letdown!’

But then I thought about what a very long

way Poirot and I had come from The

Adventure of the Clapham Cook and The

Disappearance of Mr Davenheim in those

early days. People still loved him, even if

they could not understand a single word he

said.

These wonderful moments were in my

mind as I came home after making Cruel

Train in Birmingham for the BBC. There was

no news from London Weekend about a new

Poirot series, but that was nothing unusual. I

was still struggling to reconcile the success

o f Oleanna with the failure of What a

Performance, and was wondering exactly

what the future would hold for me. I was

going to be fifty in a year or so, the children

were growing up, and I was beginning to

question what would happen to the rest of

my career.

I knew I had made the right decision to go

back to the theatre, and that my television

success with Poirot meant that I had

developed a new theatre audience who

would come and see me on the stage mainly

because of the little Belgian. I also realised

that he had helped me build an international

reputation to go alongside my British one.

Between them, Poirot and John in Oleanna

had brought me offers from all sorts of

different places around the world, including

Hollywood.

One thing that underlined how much Poirot

had come to be loved since the series began,

and I had started to play him, was the

steady expansion of what was to grow into

my fan club. The whole process had begun

gradually a couple of years before, but it was

now growing at a pace that I found quite

astonishing. This was before the internet, of

course, which has seen an even more

amazing expansion around the world,

especially, believe it or not, in Russia.

To be honest, I was not quite sure how to

react to it all, as I was a character actor

playing a part, not a more conventional

leading man, who would – to some extent at

least – always play himself. But the amount

of affection felt for Poirot was quite

extraordinary.

So I was comparatively relaxed when, at

nine o’clock in the evening of New Year’s

Day 1995, ITV broadcast our new version of

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas . It may not have

been the best evening for the show, as

people are generally exhausted after the

exertions of New Year’s Eve – audiences

tend to dip that night – but it was received

well, though there were rumours afterwards

that the viewing figures were not quite up to

their recent levels of about ten million.

Six weeks later, on Valentine’s Day 1995,

ITV went on to show Hickory, Dickory, Dock ,

which the critics seemed to like, though

again the audience did not reach quite the

dizzy heights they had done.

Perhaps I should have seen the writing on

the wall because of those viewing figures.

Perhaps I should have paid more attention to

the rumours that started to circulate that the

broadcast of Murder on the Links and Dumb

Witness were to be delayed, but neither

worried me unduly. In spite of my decision to

play in Oleanna, everything appeared to

have returned to normal with the filming of

the four two-hour specials. In my heart, I

expected LWT to come back to me before

too long with a proposal for a seventh series.

That was a terrible mistake. One morning

in the early spring of 1995, a friend rang out

of the blue and said, ‘Have you seen the

paper this morning?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘Why?’

‘There’s a report that they aren’t going to

make any more Poirots.’

I was astonished. I had not heard anything