Poirot and Me (8 page)

to see her waving. My heart was in my

mouth, and our house was on the line.

But there was some comfort on that

summer Monday morning, because I was in

good hands. The man driving me across

London to Twickenham Studios was a friend,

and, though I didn’t know it then, a man that

I was destined to spend the next twenty-five

years sitting beside as we drove all over

England.

How he came into my life is a rather lovely

story. A couple of years earlier, just after I’d

come back to England from filming Harry and

the Hendersons in America, where I had

played the ‘Bigfoot’ hunter Jacques Lafleur,

who was determined to kill the giant animal

that John Lithgow and his family wanted to

save, I’d been offered a part in a play called

This Story of Yours at the Hampstead

Theatre Club.

It was a harrowing piece by John Hopkins

– who had cut his teeth writing Z Cars for

BBC Television – about a burned-out

detective sergeant who kills a suspected

paedophile in police custody. Written in

1968, it had been turned into a film called

The Offence in 1972 by Sean Connery, who

had bought the rights and played the

detective, and was directed by Sidney

Lumet.

Detective Sergeant Johnson was such an

important part that I didn’t want to miss any

of the rehearsals, but about halfway through

I caught the flu. Sheila and I were still living

in Acton and it was a horrible battle to get

across London to Hampstead by Tube, so we

decided I should take a mini-cab – a rash

decision really because we weren’t sure we

could really afford it. But there was no other

way I was going to get there, so we called

our local firm, and a nice Irish driver turned

up.

As we set off, he looked in the rear-view

mirror and said, in a cheery Irish brogue,

‘You don’t look too good.’

‘I’ve got a bit of the flu,’ I told him.

‘Why are you going to work then?’

‘There’s no alternative. They can’t go on

without me. I’ve got to be there.’

As the 45-minute drive went on, the driver

told me that his name was Sean O’Connor

and that he’d been working for the firm for a

few years. He was charming, and I ended up

telling him, ‘I wish I could afford to do this

every day.’

Mightily relieved, I got to rehearsals and,

at the end of the day – about 5.30 p.m. or so

– I came out of the theatre, which is near

Swiss Cottage Tube station in north London,

bracing myself for what I knew would be a

very

unpleasant

trip

home

on

the

Underground.

To my astonishment, Sean was outside

waiting for me. He’d asked that morning

what time I finished, but I hadn’t paid much

attention.

‘I thought you’d need a ride home,’ he

said, as he got out of the car and opened the

back door for me.

Sean took me back to Acton, and didn’t

charge me a penny. I couldn’t believe it, and,

from then on, whenever we wanted a mini-

cab, Sheila and I would ring our local firm

and always ask for Sean.

When I was offered the first Poirot series a

couple of years later, my contract allowed

me to have a car to and from the studio

every day of shooting, and so I asked

whether I could choose the driver. The

production office said yes, and I asked for

Sean.

Funnily enough, when I first told him, he

was driving me to what was then still the

Comedy Theatre in the West End, this time

for

Tom

Kempinski’s

play Separation,

because there was a bus and Tube strike in

London that day.

‘Do you want to change your life?’ I said,

as we struggled through the snarled traffic.

‘What do you mean?’

So I told him about Poirot, and that it

meant I was allowed a driver of my choice.

There was barely a moment’s pause

before he looked at me over his shoulder

and said, ‘Not half.’

Sean has been with me ever since, and

has become a well-known driver in the film

and television industry in this country.

But when he’s driving me on Poirot, I

always sit beside him in the front of the car –

and there is a very specific reason why I do

that. It goes to the heart of what I believe

about being an actor. I always sit in the front

because I never want to be perceived as a

snob or a star. I don’t feel comfortable with

the idea of being chauffeured, and never

have, although I have to admit that there’s

nothing that Poirot would have liked more.

He would always sit in the back, quite happy

at being chauffeured.

So it was Sean who ushered me across

London on that June morning in 1988, the

first day of filming. I sat there, feeling more

nervous than I’d ever done in my entire

career.

‘Am I going to do this right?’ I asked

myself. ‘Will it work?’

Things did not start well.

Shortly after Sean dropped me outside my

dressing room at Twickenham, just down the

road from the River Thames at Richmond,

my rather nervous male dresser arrived with

the suit I was supposed to wear for the first

day’s shooting.

It was for a scene in Poirot’s flat in

Whitehaven Mansions, as part of the opening

to the short story The Adventure of the

Clapham Cook, which told of a missing cook,

a mysterious lodger and the disappearance

of £90,000 pounds in foreign bank notes

from a bank in the City of London.

I’d looked at the scene in the car with

Sean on my way to the studio, and could see

it clearly in my mind.

One of the things I could see was that

Poirot would be dressed in his black patent

leather shoes, his spats, striped trousers and

waistcoat as part of his morning suit. But

those were not the clothes that arrived with

my dresser on that June morning. Instead, I

was presented with a distinctly dull, ordinary

grey suit. I was horrified. All the fears that

had welled up inside during the first costume

fittings a few weeks earlier came flooding

back, and I sat down in my chair with a

bump.

‘I’m sorry, but I am not going to wear that

suit,’ I said quietly. ‘It isn’t what Poirot would

wear. He would wear his morning suit.’

‘But this is what I’ve been told to give you,

David,’ my dresser told me, the surprise –

and the nervousness – only too obvious in

his voice.

‘Well, I won’t be wearing it.’

I will never forget the look he gave me

when I said that. There was despair in his

eyes, as well as a little confusion. Who was

he going to please – the director or me? He

was caught in the middle.

There was a long pause, and then he

backed quietly out of my dressing room, with

the grey suit over his arm. But I was as

determined as I’d ever been that I was going

to be true to the Poirot I saw in my mind’s

eye and heard in my head.

In my heart, I knew that there was bound

to be some reaction from the director, who

had clearly decided that was what I should

be wearing for the scene, but I wasn’t going

to be put off. So, after my dresser came back

to help me on with the padding I needed to

play Poirot, I waited for another costume.

I didn’t have to wait long. Just a few

minutes later, a costume lady arrived, this

time carrying a morning suit, complete with

striped trousers and waistcoat. My dresser

took it from her. Hardly a word was said, but

I was delighted that my views were being

listened to.

Nevertheless, as I walked onto the set for

my first scene, I was still trembling with

nerves.

For the first shot, the camera was to track

up from my feet, taking in my patent leather

shoes, my spats and my striped trousers – I

was to flick a speck of lint from them with

my hand – and then rising to take in my

waistcoat and bow tie, before arriving on my

face, with my fingers stretched upwards in a

steeple – the cathedral of hands, as I liked

to call it.

Hastings was suggesting crimes that Poirot

might be interested in from the newspaper,

but Poirot carefully rejected all of them,

before telling Hastings that he had to attend

to his wardrobe. It was a little vignette of

how very particular Poirot was about his

clothes.

What was really terrifying me though was

the simple fact that I knew that I had to be

exactly right from the very first moment the

camera caught sight of me, because once it

did, I would never truly be able to change

that first impression. I was still trembling

when the director, the then 38-year-old

Edward Bennett, who was to go on to work

on many British television series, called,

‘Action!’

But my years in the theatre had taught me

one thing that helped enormously: the ability

to block everything out and concentrate. I

knew that if I focused entirely on my Poirot,

he would help me conquer my nerves.

To my immense relief, the fastidious little

detective did exactly that. He saw me

through my first day, and my second, and my

third, just as he has on every single day ever

since. More than anyone, it was Hercule

Poirot himself who helped me to bring him to

life on that first day at Twickenham.

Mind you, I had a lot of help, especially

from my fellow actors in the core of the cast,

including the wonderful Hugh Fraser as

Poirot’s trusted friend and colleague Captain

Hastings, Philip Jackson as Scotland Yard’s

Chief Inspector Japp, and Pauline Moran as

Poirot’s secretary, Miss Lemon. And then, of

course, there were Clive Exton’s superb

scripts, adapted from Dame Agatha’s stories.

Clive was a Londoner, born in Islington,

who had started his career writing for

Armchair Theatre on ITV in 1959 and had

gone on to write for both television and film,

spending ten years in Hollywood before

returning in 1986. He would end up writing

no fewer than twenty Poirot scripts.

Funnily enough, there also turned out to

be a strange echo of my time on Bryher in

the Isles of Scilly that year, because the

music for my first Poirot series was written

by Christopher Gunning, the exceptionally

talented composer who had also written the

score for When the Whales Came. His Poirot

music, including the delightful theme, was to

win him a British Academy Film Award in

1989 for the best original television music.

People still tend to hum it whenever they

think about the series, and even hum it to

me when they meet me.

In the first scene of The Adventure of the

Clapham Cook, Poirot is refusing to take an

interest in any of the crimes Hastings

suggests because they are not crimes of

‘national importance’, as he puts it, rather

grandly.

Poirot is brought down to earth with a

bump when Miss Lemon ushers in a banker’s

wife from Clapham, Mrs Todd, played by

Brigit Forsyth, who wants him to find her

missing cook, who disappeared just two days

earlier. When Poirot tells her that this is too

small a matter to concern him, Mrs Todd

snaps back that he is just being ‘high and

mighty’ and that a good cook is ‘very hard to

find’ and ‘most important’.

To Hastings’ amazement, Poirot admits his

error at once, and accepts the case,

revealing two of his most endearing

characteristics – his kindness and his ability

not to take himself too seriously.

In fact, that first episode established a

great deal about Poirot, not least the

importance of his relationship with the ever-

loyal Hastings. That was something that

Hugh Fraser and I worked on throughout

those first days of shooting.

Hugh had years of experience on the stage

and on television, in everything from Edward