Poirot and Me (9 page)

and Mrs Simpson, in which he played Foreign

Secretary Anthony Eden, and later to Sharpe

where he was the Duke of Wellington. But

though Hugh and I were almost exactly the

same age, and he had studied at the Webber

Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, we had

never actually worked together until that

first day at Twickenham.

Yet we were destined to become forever

intertwined in people’s minds, just as Basil

Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were after those

twelve wonderful black and white Hollywood

adventures of Sherlock Holmes between

1939 and 1946.

Hugh was born in London but brought up

in the Midlands, and is married to the actress

Belinda Lang. He became a tremendous

support to me, someone I could rely on

every bit as much as Poirot did on his

Hastings, and I think I helped him too. But it

was very difficult for us to work out exactly

what our relationship should be on the

screen. It meant that we had to be very

aware about exactly where we stood or sat

in relation to the camera. In the end, we

decided that I should almost always be in

the foreground and he slightly behind, unless

the story dictated otherwise.

Quite rightly, Hugh didn’t want Hastings to

be a comedy character – a straight man, if

you like – because he thought, as I did, that

his character was there to represent the

audience in the story. That meant we had to

find a way of making sure that Hastings was

never allowed to look like a complete fool.

To help him with this, Hugh developed a

dead-pan expression to convey to the

audience that Hastings was someone who

may not have been hugely intelligent but

nevertheless represented the ordinary man.

As Hugh put it himself at the time, ‘One of

Hastings’ functions is to elucidate what is

going on in Poirot’s mind.’

One way Hugh decided to do that was to

use the phrases ‘Good heavens’ and ‘Good

Lord’

regularly,

as

a

gently

ironic

commentary on his attitude to Poirot. Was

he truly amazed? Or was he actually making

fun of the great detective? Whatever the

truth, it was a wonderful device, and it

worked.

The more upright and sensible Hastings

became, the more it allowed me to

accentuate

Poirot’s

foibles,

the

little

mannerisms that I knew lay at the heart of

his character. Hastings also gave me things

to react against – like his love of his dark-

green, open-top Lagonda car, for example,

as well as his delight in the English

countryside and sport, especially golf.

Both the car and the countryside of the

Lake District play their parts in The

Adventure of the Clapham Cook, where

Poirot amply displays his dislike of the

‘wasteland’ of the country on a trip to

Keswick, by stepping in a cow pat and

complaining that there is not one restaurant,

theatre or art gallery in sight.

It was Hugh who pointed out to me how

much money was being lavished on the sets,

props, costumes and background to make

the production look authentic. We were

walking across the Albert Bridge in Chelsea,

on our way back from Mrs Todd’s house in

Clapham, in a night scene, when Hugh said

to me, when the cameras weren’t rolling,

‘Look, they’ve even got a camera crane. And

have you seen how many vintage cars and

passers-by dressed in exactly the right

period clothes we have? It’s extraordinary.’

He was quite right, but it was the first

time that I had really noticed it, because I’d

been so caught up in my portrayal of Poirot.

No sooner had he pointed it out, however,

than I became even more nervous, as I knew

that it meant that a very great deal of

money and expectations were resting on my

shoulders. Later on, I discovered that London

Weekend Television, who financed that first

series for Brian Eastman, spent almost £5

million on the filming of those first ten

stories, an average of half a million pounds

per episode, a fortune in 1988.

Our first story not only allowed me to

introduce some of Poirot’s idiosyncrasies, it

also allowed me to show his finest qualities.

His kindness to Mrs Todd’s parlour maid, for

example, which leads him to the Lake

District and the missing cook’s ‘inheritance’

of an isolated cottage, his elaborate

politeness to everyone he meets, and his

habit of reading the Bible in bed every night.

The Adventure of the Clapham Cook also

introduced one of the other principal

characters in Poirot’s life, his friend and

sometime foe, Chief Inspector Japp of

Scotland Yard, played by the superb Philip

Jackson. Strangely enough, like Hugh, I’d

never worked with Philip before those first

days of shooting. Only three years younger

than Hugh and me, he was born in

Nottinghamshire and had studied German

and Drama at Bristol University before going

to Liverpool rep for eighteen months.

Astonishingly flexible as an actor, Philip had

then played in everything from the BBC’s

Last of the Summer Wine, to Dennis Potter’s

acclaimed television drama Pennies from

Heaven.

He had read Agatha Christie as a child, but

he didn’t go back and read the stories again

after being asked to play Chief Inspector

Japp.

‘I chose to take the character from the

scripts alone,’ Philip said at the time. ‘The

challenge to an actor is to give the character

a depth beyond what is printed on the page.’

What Philip did so well was to play what

was essentially a comic policeman absolutely

straight. There was no mugging for the

camera from him, no raised eyebrows or

comic winks. He just kept his trilby hat

clasped to his chest and his eye on the man

or woman he thought was guilty. Philip

portrayed Japp as a down-to-earth, by-the-

book copper who is unpretentious and

almost child-like. He may have taken his cue

from Inspector Lestrade of the Sherlock

Holmes stories, but he never once allowed

himself to be made to look like an imbecile.

If he were a little slower than Poirot, so be

it, but he would never allow Japp to be

humiliated.

On the set, Philip quickly realised what I

was trying to do as Poirot, and reacted to it

by being more and more ordinary in the face

of Poirot’s idiosyncrasies, while all the time

demonstrating his affection for the detective

he spends so much time fencing with. As

Philip puts it, ‘He’s sort of friends with Poirot

in a strange kind of way, although he is

certainly irritated by the fact that this

Belgian detective keeps beating him.’

As Poirot’s secretary, Miss Lemon, Pauline

Moran also displayed the affection she felt

for Poirot, even if he did infuriate her at

times. Though she’d trained at RADA and

worked a lot on television, as well as

appearing with the Royal Shakespeare

Company, once again, we had never worked

together

before.

But

she

grasped

immediately that her character was almost a

reflection of Poirot.

As Pauline explained about Miss Lemon,

‘She has the same fastidiousness and

obsession with detail and precision as Poirot.

I have a great aptitude for minute detail

myself.’

Pauline also grasped that although Poirot

was always respectful and charming towards

women, he was also always reserved with

them, and so she remained meticulously

professional with him in every scene, never

flirting for a moment, no matter how much

she may have cared about him privately. She

was ‘a wonderful secretary and very, very

proper with Poirot’, as she puts it. ‘If she was

even thirty seconds late, both of them would

be horrified.’

In fact, The Adventure of the Clapham

Cook encapsulated much of what would

develop in the years to come. Poirot’s

fussiness; his pride in his ‘little grey cells’

and in being Belgian not French; his capacity

for generosity of spirit, especially towards

servants; his respect for Miss Lemon; his

delight in Hastings’ loyalty; his fondness for

Japp; and, perhaps most of all, his ability to

laugh at himself – for example, by framing

the cheque for one guinea that Mrs Todd

sent him after dispensing with his services.

The spectacular sets, clothes, props and

locations underlined the authenticity that

everyone wanted to bring to every frame.

The audience truly felt that they were being

transported to 1935, 1936 or 1937. The only

downside was that we were forced to film

each of the one-hour stories in just eleven

shooting days, one of the tightest production

schedules it is possible to imagine.

That meant that the only real chance I had

to learn my lines for the next day’s shooting

came when I got home at about 8.30 p.m.

each night, which was incredibly taxing. I

would then repeat them to myself in the car

on the way to the studio the next morning,

which meant that my driver Sean heard

every line, as I used to speak them out loud.

As the weeks passed, he would gently

make suggestions from time to time: ‘Maybe

it might be a little better, if you don’t mind

me saying so, if you dropped that last line.

You don’t need to say it.’ Sean gradually

became my filter, and he came to know the

role almost as well as I did.

It was all the more exhausting when, not

long after we started shooting, the old

arguments about what Poirot should or

should not do raised their head again.

When Poirot and Hastings go to visit Mrs

Todd’s house in Clapham, in pursuit of the

missing cook, they go for a stroll on the

common while they wait for Mr Todd to

come home from the office. They want to

talk to him about his cook, as well as speak

to the couple’s ‘paying guest’, a lodger, at

the same time.

Clive Exton’s script called for Poirot to sit

down on a park bench to talk to Hastings,

and so, when the moment came to rehearse

the shot, I did exactly what Poirot would

have done. I removed my handkerchief from

my pocket, carefully wiped the seat, spread

the handkerchief out, and then sat on it, so

that there would no danger of Poirot getting

a stain on his trousers.

Ed Bennett, the director, genuinely

thought that looked ridiculous, and said so,

which rather upset me. Once again, it was as

if all the conversations I’d had with everyone

connected with the series over the past

weeks – focusing on my determination to

play Dame Agatha’s Poirot exactly as she

had written him – had been sidelined. It felt

as though I was suddenly right back where

I’d started.

But I was not prepared to budge. I felt

certain that wiping the seat and sitting on

the handkerchief was exactly what Poirot

would have done in those circumstances. I

refused point blank to sit down without doing

so.

‘But it looks ridiculous,’ I was told again

and again. ‘The audience will think he is

quite mad.’

‘Nonsense,’ I replied. ‘It is exactly what

Poirot would do and exactly what Agatha

Christie has him doing.’

The director would not allow me to do

what he believed looked ridiculous, and I

would not sacrifice the integrity of my Poirot.

It was a stalemate. But I was fighting for

what Dame Agatha wrote, and in doing so,

serving Poirot’s creator.

If I lost the argument, it would mean that

my custodianship of Poirot’s character was in

severe jeopardy – so much so that I really

thought that I might not be able to go on

playing him. I had to play the character she’d