Some mind-blowing stats about everyone’s favourite TV detective.
A seventh of the world’s population has watched Poirot. That’s one billion people.
At any given moment an episode of Poirot is being aired around the world. 24/7.
Legions of the Belgian-not-French detective’s admiring fans packed the Empire Theatre, Eden Court last night for a retrospective with the actor who created the definitive Poirot.
No question.
And David Suchet agrees.
Suchet is Poirot
He’s a gracious man and doesn’t dismiss other actor’s versions of Poirot, but agrees – he is Agatha Christie’s Poirot.
The heart of the evening centred around Suchet’s explanation of how he came to inhabit so thoroughly and completely the character of Poirot.
Suchet first explains the powerful connection he has to the Agatha Christie family.
They spotted him in the lead role in Blott, the 1985 BBC TV adaptation of Tom Sharpe’s Blott on the Landscape, liked him, and put him in the frame for the Poirot.
He’s not a buffoon
Poirot may be eccentric and amusing, they said, but he is not a comic buffoon. Please don’t laugh at him.
Once the role was his, these were the words Suchet took to heart.
He read all 70 Poirot novels, carefully annotating every detail about him given by Agatha Christie in the text, starting with ‘Belgian! Not French.’
Clues in the stories
On he went, through dozens of clues, noting things like: ‘Conceited professionally- but not personally’ and ‘A real towny. Dislikes the country’, ‘Very particular over his appearance’ and ‘Regards his moustache as a thing of perfect beauty.’
We began to see exactly how Suchet came to be Poirot.
It was relatively easy to get the physical appearance right, the immaculate attire and the pomading of the famous moustache.
The walk too. It was inspired by Laurence Olivier’s attempts to mince, something he achieved by clenching an old penny between his buttocks.
Suchet tried something similar and found Poirot’s gait.
Voice from the brain
But the accent, Belgian French.
And above all, the voice. Agatha Christie said Poirot’s voice came from his brain.
How on earth do you achieve that? Actor’s voices come from their diaphragms.
Suchet listened to hours of French accents and guttural French Belgian accents, and discovered Poirot’s unique voice.
Gradually he began to move his own voice upwards out of his diaphragm, using humming and other actorly techniques until after many hours, it sat in his brain – et voilà.
Poirot was completely formed, and Suchet inhabited him for 25 glorious years.
Suchet misted over when his friend, author Geoffrey Wansell the show’s on-stage interviewer, asked him to talk about the final episode, during which Poirot dies.
Poirot’s death
“The hardest day’s filming before or since,” says Suchet.
“Do you miss Poirot?” asks Wansell.
“It was like saying goodbye to someone who had been an intimate best friend for a quarter of a century,” says Suchet.
“Farewell my friend, I will never be you again. Yes, I miss him.”
With that the Inverness audience rose to their feet in ovation, and we had to bid a reluctant farewell to David Suchet with thanks for the most insightful masterclass in the actor’s art of how to BE someone else.
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