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On Sunday, 2nd February 2025 something wonderful happened, I reunited the cast of Agatha Christie’s Poirot for a very special one-off charity fundraiser in association with The Film & TV Charity.

It had been 12 years since the cast were together for the final outing for Poirot in Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case. In fact, not all the cast featured in the last episode, although it did reunite Captain Hastings and Poirot in quite a dark and emotional farewell, bringing both characters full circle back to Styles where they had their very first case together.

When The Film & TV Charity approached me in early 2024 to collaborate on a special film/TV event to help them raise much needed funds in their centenary year I leapt at the opportunity. When I started Retroboy my intention was always to achieve two simple things; to share my passions and interests with a wider fan community and to also hopefully raise a few quid for charity.

The page was blank and my role was to produce and host the event. The initial ideas we had were endless, as were the possibilities. Many ideas were explored, some were formally pursued, others didn’t get past a brief conversation. Although British comedy would always be the reason that I started Retroboy I felt that it was time to start exploring other avenues.

One idea that I continually came back to was murder mystery and mystery drama.

Growing up in the 1980s I have many happy memories of watching all the classics with my grandparents; Columbo, Murder, She Wrote, Miss Marple – with the late, great Joan Hickson and of course Poirot. It is worth saying though that this genre still remains popular today, and not just with the classics. Midsomer Murders, Vera and Father Brown are a few examples.

No matter what idea popped in my head the one that seemed to stick was Agatha Christie. Now, I am all too aware that Agatha Christie Limited rule with an iron fist, and rightly so. They have a brand and a reputation to protect. I admit this put me off a little as the last thing I wanted was a lengthy exchange on rights and the like as the planned event needed to be sooner rather than later. At the same time was the challenge with the cast; were they all available and, more importantly, did they want to do it?

Creating 'Poirot: The Affair at The Marylebone Theatre'

It was October already and the event we had planned was for early 2025, although no date had been set as we needed a venue and guests!

It feels like we visited and explored the whole of London trying to find a space that worked for us. It was quite exhausting and just when we thought that we had somewhere we hit some sort of set back. However, after a lot of meetings we finally found a gem of a theatre that ticked all the boxes- The Marylebone Theatre, near Baker Street in London.

So, the venue was booked and it all started to then feel very real. We now had to ensure we had an event to stage. I spent hours and hours discussing the proposal with the target guests and their representatives. It was with deep regret that two were originally unable to commit due to other potential projects, such is the nature of the industry. It is worth mentioning here that the original idea was to simply cover 'Agatha Christie' and not one particular series. However, it soon became clear that as we started to get our first guests showing interest and commitment that we were clearly heading into the arena of Poirot. That was fine by me and so we were able to start refining the concept and theme.

Below: The planning file that became my life for a few months and a couple of the original concept art graphics that we created and explored in the early stages (with the help of our amazing graphic designer - Sam Bessant):

All my life I have always had a bit of a philosophy and that is ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’. I therefore plunged into the world of Agatha Christie. I am so glad I did. We also got some incredible support from ITV Studios and I am forever grateful to both companies for their support in making our ambitious idea progress into a very rare and special event.

After a few false starts, mainly around availability of our star guests, the stars aligned and we were able to proceed, in principle at least. I have to say that I was possibly slightly naïve in how popular Agatha Christie actually was, and in fact what a cult and huge worldwide fan base Poirot had, even 12 years after the last episode. There are countless social media groups covering Christie and all her works. As the weeks progressed we had a few steps back, but mainly forwards. If I was doing this, I was doing it correctly. It was imperative that the event was unique and that it raised funds for the charity, this was the core objective.

On the 2^nd December 2024, we formally announced the event across our respective platforms and on social media. We were genuinely not prepared for the reaction and the event sold out in only 3 days.

Quite simply we were inundated with emails, calls and messages online from fans all over the world trying to get tickets. We could have filled The Albert Hall. However, it is important to mention that one of the main reasons that our special guests agreed to support the event was due to it being a smaller, more intimate event for charity. With only two months to go we had a lot of work ahead of us to make this event truly special and memorable. As well as the legion of UK fans we had fans buy tickets from all over the world, including the US, Iceland, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Germany. In fact, we had 60 guests from European countries and 10 from even further afield who came to London just to see our event, both remarkable and testament to the popularity of the series.

A mildly interesting fact was that exactly one year ago to the day of our planned event I met David Suchet after a performance of his show, Poirot & More: A Retrospective, in Sheffield where I first mentioned my website to him and passed him a letter asking him if you may be interested in an interview for the site. I had completely forgotten about that until only a few weeks before the event. Little did I know that a year later I would be writing and hosting my own event for not only him but all those other wonderful actors.

I am by no means a polymath, but I do have good knowledge of the subjects that I am interested in. I was all too aware that there were some die-hard fans out there and so needed to ensure that the event was well researched. What better excuse to start watching Poirot again, from the beginning. That isn't a quick task with 70 episodes, countless publications and online articles dedicated to the series and it's actors. I also wanted an event that was engaging, fun and interesting.

Having written ‘ACT I’, which although only an hour it isn’t easy trying to pack in all the good stuff and balance it with time, technical cues and the wealth of material on the series, I moved onto ‘ACT II’. I had largely started ‘ACT I’ at the beginning of the series and by the end of that part I was up to series 8, the series that saw most of the key cast depart, at least as regulars, only returning briefly for The Big Four in series 13. To that I started writing ‘ACT II’ as more of a general Q&A about the cast’s careers and the end of the show in 2013.

We had the wonderful David Horovitch join us and some fans asked why David was selected, being better known as Inspector Slack in the original BBC Miss Marple series alongside the incredible Joan Hickson. The answer is simply really; the event was originally planned as a wider Agatha Christie event to also include Marple but this would have been quite impossible in the time we had to really do the wider Agatha Christie universe justice.

However, David was very keen to support the event and as he did in fact appear in the Poirot episode The Kidnapped Prime Minister I thought it a nice touch to also give a nod to him and his connection to Miss Marple and the cross over into Poirot.

Then a couple of weeks prior to the event, having virtually finished the whole thing on paper, an idea popped into my head. Although the key cast had largely departed the series after series 8 Poirot did essentially gain a new ‘sidekick’ from Series 10 in the eccentric and imitable character of Ariadne Oliver or ‘Mrs Oliver’, played by the fabulous Zoë Wanamaker.

The ‘little grey cells’ started up again and so I approached Zoë, purely on a whim as the event was virtually ready and had already been months of work. But, in for a penny and all that. Then three days before the event was due, I was absolutely stunned to hear that Zoë had accepted.

I had long admired Zoë for many years and, again, she was also a link to Marple of course as well as having appeared in some very successful productions such as Harry Potter & The Philosophers Stone, Love Hurts in the 80s and My Family, alongside the brilliant Robert Lindsay.

Zoë has also had a very successful career onstage and her and David Suchet go back a long way. So, ‘ACT II’ was rewritten and only a few people were made aware of our extra special guest in order to keep the whole thing a big surprise.

Fast forward to the day of the event and after the final preparations were made, the set was created and the technical and sound checks completed…we were all set!

Our audience was absolutely incredible, engaged, generous, fun and some quite emotional! I tried to get around as many people as I could to thank them for supporting us and so, if I did miss you (it was a very busy evening!) then I apologise but please accept my sincere thanks and gratitude for coming to support the event on behalf of myself and the wonderful charity involved!

The event raised thousands for the charity and I am personally so pleased that the event meant so much to so many people. We have received wonderful feedback from people who attended the event and some very personal and heart-warming messages. So once again, thank you if you joined us ‘mes amis’ and here’s to Hercule Poirot and all those wonderful characters that were created by the genius and legend that was Agatha Christie.

PICTURES & EVENT STORYBOARD

THANKS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are a lot of people that I would like to thank on behalf of myself and The Film & TV Charity, without whom we would not have been able to produce and deliver such a special event:

My sincere thanks and gratitude to all our special star guests; Sir David Suchet, Hugh Fraser, Pauline Moran, Philip Jackson, David Horovitch and Zoë Wanamaker CBE and their representatives, for all their generosity, support and kindness - without them we simply would not have had an event.

Special thanks to Alan De Sousa Caires, at The Film & TV Charity for helping me turn an idea into reality and for sharing all the blood, sweat and tears along the way, we ended up like an old married couple! A huge thanks must also go to the team of helpers at the charity, from the team helping with social media and box office to Kevin, Phil and Rachel, who gave up their spare time to help on the evening and make sure everything ran to plan. Also, my sincere gratitude to ITV Studios and Lydia at Agatha Christie Limited for their guidance and support.

A huge thank you to Lorna, Chris, Tom and the brilliant team at the beautiful Marylebone Theatre and to our hospitality and security staff. I have a feeling we will be working together again!

The unwavering love and support of my partner, Matt, and all my family and friends (who had to put up with me living and breathing Poirot for months) and for helping to support the evening by just being there. A huge and heartfelt thanks to Morris Bright MBE and Ciaran Brown for all their help and assistance with logistics on the evening; from photography to managing front of house and everything in between!

A big shout out and mammoth thanks to our wonderful and talented graphic designer, Sam Bessant and to Jenny Cavell for all her brilliant photography skills and being my sense of calm backstage, you're an absolute diamond.

But the biggest thanks has to go to all of you who supported us by buying tickets and coming along to share such a special evening! Without you we would not have an event and the money raised for charity through those ticket sales was nothing less than phenomenal! Until next time...adieu mes amis!