Au revoir, Poirot

Now that the Poirot series with David Suchet is coming to an end, never again to be seen on the telly (except in endless repeats on ITV2, 3 and 4, not to mention Alibi and Dave) I can finally say it: this is rubbish and it always has been. 

Agatha Christie was a good writer. Her books with Hercule Poirot are short and fast-paced and the stories are always told tongue-in-cheek - not to be taken seriously. The name Hercule Poirot - Hercules Leek - gives it away, as does the fact that he is Belgian. Not to mention his wee tash and his prissy manner.

So okay, I liked the books. It was the TV series I hated. Suchet is a great actor but he's all wrong as Poirot. Too big, too fat. Poirot should look like a leek. Clenching a 2p coin between his buttocks as Suchet says he did makes no difference. As soon as he opens his mouth he's just wrong. Not to mention that every episode goes on too long. Two hours and five minutes, ffs. It could all be over in an hour and five minutes with a decent bit of editing.

But it's the language I really can't take. Christie's Poirot, even though he's a Belgian, would never say "Viens" to someone he didn't know from Adam. Nor would he say: "Pourrais-je?" meaning May I? And the constant use of "S'il vous plaît" when he means Je vous en prie is really annoying. And so on. This is the writers' fault, not the actors'. At least this week the women playing Scots and Russian characters got proper voice coaching and came up with a few genuine idioms, but that only made Poirot's accent and language even more annoying.

What is it about the Brits that we not only canny be arsed to learn to speak other people's languages but can't be bothered asking a foreign language speaker or going to Google Translate to get other people's languages right onscreen? What's up with newspapers that can quote in French, German and Spanish but never get the accents right? Don't they use Word? Or does their version not have a Symbol menu to help them put the acute on café or the ü in München or the ñ in niño? We can at least make the effort to communicate correctly. I was never a fan of Tony Blair but I was impressed when he gave speeches in French - and I don't care if somebody else wrote them for him.

You'll notice I haven't mentioned the therapeutic effect that learning a second language has on the elderly brain, not preventing dementia but at least putting off the onset. With my current ability to read, understand and write English, Scots, French, Gaelic, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Occitan - and a bit of Latin, though it's hard to find dead Romans to talk to these days - I should be safe for a few years or at least till the next time I find myself in the kitchen wondering: What did I come in here for?