Murdermystery tour!
Comic Alan Carr tours the UK to discover the real Agatha Christie…
Alifelong fan of Agatha Christie, comedian Alan Carr is embarking on a UK adventure inspired by his heroine, and he can’t wait!
Over three episodes, Alan explores the places that influenced Agatha throughout her career, and even goes behind the scenes at Greenway, her holiday home in Devon.
‘I got to look at her private books and her photo albums,’ reveals Alan. ‘It was lovely, especially visiting Burgh Island, where she wrote two of her books. It seems like a cliché to say, “I’m walking in Agatha Christie’s footsteps,” but I genuinely was!’
Alan also discovers some little-known facts about the author, who wrote 66 novels, and 20 stage plays including long-running The Mousetrap.
‘We’re used to that black-andwhite photo of her holding a pen where she looks quite stern,’ says Alan. ‘But she had so much vim as a young woman. She travelled to Egypt, Syria and Iraq, and enjoyed surfing and roller skating.
‘That’s one of my bugbears about Agatha Christie. People go, “Oh, she’s cosy and twee.”. Actually, some of the ways people get murdered in her books are grim!’
Learning curve
Alan says filming his first documentary series was a bit of an eye-opener.
‘I’m totally new to documentaries, so it was a learning curve,’ he says. ‘We get me saying things like, “Agatha Christie loved wild swimming,” so I put on my wetsuit. Then I thought, “I can see it in a photo, I don’t really need to go wild swimming!”’