Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2009. My castaway this week is the actor David Suchet, fresh from winning an Emmy for his portrayal of the fallen media tycoon Robert Maxwell,

he has been a constant presence on stage and screen for almost 25 years.

From Shakespeare to Mamet, meticulous characterizations and nuanced performances are his trademark,

never more apparent than in probably his best-known role, Agatha Christie's Poiroir.

He says of his technique, I have to inhabit the people I play.

I have to get underneath their skin. I'm fascinated by them, the same way I'm fascinated

by people. So, David Suchet, I have heard that you read all 80 of the stories that had been written both

short stories and novels about Erkou Poiroir before beginning the role. Is that true?

Yeah, well it's almost true. I won't say I've read every single one, but I read, I would suppose, very close to the complete canon and I literally set out to create only the character that Agatha

Christie created, nothing else and then spent many many weeks practicing practicing

practicing practicing practicing.

With Poirot and the others that we are going to talk about and there have been many

how do you manage to put them away?

Once they're real, where do they go? They can't just vanish surely. Do you sometimes pass in

an out of character when you're in your real life?

When I'm in a theater play you have to lose them every night you have to say

goodbye to them every night and you have to go home as yourself

I'll literally say goodbye to them. Yeah say goodbye to them and come back to one's being one's own self. I remember doing

production at the young Vic Timen of Athens and I was playing Timon, which is a very, very difficult and complex role.

He actually goes mad and a friend of mine who was a psychologist came to see the show and he came backstage after and

...