David Suchet recently gave an interview for Poirot and More: A Retrospective that is currently enjoying its UK Tour before transferring to London’s Harold Pinter Theatre in January for a three week run.

The global adoration of Suchet’s Poirot still staggers him. “It’s extraordinary. It’s now eight years since I stopped filming, and during Covid, my mail bag has doubled. Because people have been locked inside, and have been downloading and buying the box sets, and watching all 73 episodes, and they write to me saying it’s got them through the pandemic. I had no idea, in 1987 when I started filming, that this series would have the international impact that it has. I’m genuinely humbled by the fact that people still find it so rewarding, and I’m eternally grateful, I really mean it. I never, ever anticipated it.”

On the contrary, when he was first approached about the role, he had the gravest doubts about accepting, and even confessed to them in an interview before the series first aired. “I said, ‘I’m frightened it may be boring’,” he admits. “I got into terrible trouble with ITV for saying that!”

Poirot had already been portrayed by Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney, and Suchet had even played Inspector Japp to Ustinov’s Hercule in Thirteen at Dinner, a 1986 TV film. Returning to Agatha Christie’s books, however, he soon set his little grey cells to work creating a version all his own, now regarded as definitive.

“I never set out to be better than anyone else, or even different – it just happened,” he recalls. “I reread the stories and engaged with a little man that I hadn’t seen before, and it was that little man that I decided to become.” Developing the character was a complex, meticulous business. “I’ve always believed an actor’s job is one of creative servitude – in other words, I’m allowed my own voice as a creative artist, but never beyond what I believe the writer intended or hoped for his or her creation.”

For Poirot, this meant a scrupulous attention to detail. Between takes, he refused to sit for fear of creasing his immaculate suit, choosing instead to rest by using a “leaning board” – an upright contraption with a little ledge for the buttocks, pioneered in early Hollywood for actresses in tight, ornate gowns. Then there was the distinctive facial hair. Poirot’s whiskers were never Suchet’s own – such a moustache would have made him too conspicuous in public, “and I would never have been able to maintain it!” he says.