Whodunit in Bollywood?
QUESTION Have there been any Russian or Indian films based on Agatha Christie’s books?
WITH more than a billion books sold in English and another billion i n more than 100 l anguages, Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist in history.
Small wonder her works have been made into more than 150 films and TV series.
Stanislav Govorukhin’s 1987 version of And Then There Were None, Desyat Negrityat, is considered to be one of the best adaptations of this classic story.
Most versions shy away from the grim tale or add clunky humour to alleviate the tension. The Soviet version i s as dark as Agatha Christie’s novel.
Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj is developing a threefilm franchise based on Agatha Christie’s works.
He gained fame for giving the Bollywood treatment, complete with dance numbers, to three Shakespearean tragedies: Maqbool in 2003, based on Macbeth; Omkara in 2006, based on Othello; and Haider in 2014, based on Hamlet.
He has yet to reveal which Agatha Christie stories he will film, but has said The ABC Murders and Murder On The Orient Express are his favourites.
The claim that these films will be the first Bollywood adaptations of a Christie novel is not quite true.
Though Christie is uncredited, Raja Nawathe’s Gumnaam ( Anonymous) i n 1965 closely follows the plot of And Then There Were None: ‘Eight people are trapped on an island when their plane abandons them. They find a large mansion whose butler is expecting them. Then one by one, they die.’
The opening song and dance routine, i n which Bollywood legend Mohammed Rafi sings, is utterly thrilling.
There is a non- Bollywood adaptation, 2016’ s Chorabali (Quicksand), based on Cards On The Table.
Directed by Subhrajit Mitra and set in atmospheric Kolkata, India’s capital under the British Raj, Hercule Poirot is replaced by Professor Ardhendu Chatterjee, played by Barun Chandra.
Lara Crofts, Falmouth, Cornwall.
QUESTION
Who played the guitar solo on Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man?
SINGER-SONGWRITER Donovan has struggled to remember who played on this hippy classic.
In February 1968, the singer travelled to Rishikesh in India with The Beatles to study transcendental meditation.
He wrote Hurdy Gurdy Man there, in part to honour his mentor, f olk/ blues musician Mac MacLeod, who was part of a trio called Hurdy Gurdy, named after the droning stringed instrument.
Donovan returned to London to work with producer Mickie Most on the Hurdy Gurdy Man album.
The songs f eatured various session musicians including future Led Zeppelin bass player John Paul Jones.
Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page had previously featured on several tracks f or Donovan, including Sunshine Superman, which may be why the singer stated in 1996: ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man f eatured a certain Mr James Patrick Page and the soon-to-be Led Zeppelin rhythm section, John Paul Jones and John Bonham.’ He was only partly right.
John Paul Jones stated in 2005: ‘I would like to confirm that the musicians on the record were as follows: Donovan, acoustic guitar; John Paul Jones, arrangement/ musical director and bass guitar; Alan Parker, lead (electric) guitar;
Clem Cattini, drums. No other musicians were involved in this session.’ Donovan’s confusion over the recording is not surprising as it was a frenetic process.
He once said: ‘Those days we recorded three songs in three hours and an album in a week.
‘All the takes were essentially live, and that’s the feeling. Jimmy came in and was very quiet, one of the session guys.’
Alan Parker was a session guitarist who worked with Cat Stevens, Frank Sinatra and David Bowie. He is best known for his television scores, including ITN’s News At Ten theme music, and film scores such as Jaws 3-D and Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.
Clem Cattini is one of Britain’s premier s ession drummers, appearing on hundreds of recordings by artists as diverse as Cliff Richard and Lou Reed.
Andre Linneman, Birmingham.
QUESTION When British Labour Party politician Andy Burnham described Manchester as a canary in a coalmine recently, did he use the expression correctly? Where does it come from?
CANARIES were once used in coalmines as a way of detecting the presence of carbon monoxide (CO) gas.
It’s hard to know what Burnham was trying to say, but if he was insinuating that the British government was experimenting to see what they could get away with in terms of financial support for Covid-affected areas, a better comparison would have been to guinea pigs, rats or mice, all of which were once commonly used in laboratory experiments.
Given that canaries were used to test f or the presence or absence of something, it doesn’t
IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Irish Daily Mail, Embassy House, Herbert Park Lane, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. You can also fax them to 0044 1952 510906 or you can email them to charles.legge@dailymail.ie. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence. seem a suitable comparison.
Because it is odourless, CO gas is particularly dangerous as it is hard to detect. The body absorbs carbon monoxide more easily than oxygen, so it’s starved of the gas it needs, which may l ead to unconsciousness and death.
A canary will sing under almost any circumstances. Some animal behaviourists believe caged birds are issuing a distress call. If a canary stops singing, it is because it can’t breathe properly, which is a warning sign for miners of the presence of carbon monoxide.
Canaries were introduced into mines in Britain in 1911, though they were in use in the US and Canada much earlier.
Despite the invention of carbon monoxide detectors i n 1927, canaries continued to be used in coalmines until 1986.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.
QUESTION In Ramsgate, Kent, a multi-storey car park was built the wrong way round. Are there other buildings where the plans were misread?
THE Lucerne Arch is an iron and plastic excrescence on St Peter’s Walk, Bournemouth.
Dubbed a bus shelter for giants by Bill Bryson in his Notes From A Small Island, it was designed to connect two shopping arcades, one Grade I listed.
It was built 90 degrees adrift because the designers forgot fire engines needed access through a major shopping street. It’s now home to pigeons and buskers. Neil Bourne, Bournemouth.