My Sherlock

Let’s be honest, given the choice between visiting London 

or Switzerland, where would you go?

Basil Rathbone was always my Sherlock Holmes, just as Nigel Bruce was always my Doctor Watson, and they always will be. 

My affection for these two actors as the definitive Homes and Watson was seeded when I saw their films as a child.  Years later and working my way through the DVD collection, the magic is undiminished which is, I am discovering now that I have had the opportunity to revisit other childhood favourites through the magic of Youtube, a rare experience.  Some programmes were, apparently, very much of their time and have not aged well; maybe one is less discerning as a child, or simply addled with artificial flavourings from Monster Munch.

Now new generations are inheriting their definitive Holmes and Watson.  Jeremy Brett was, for many, the epitome of Holmes.  I’ve never seen the ITV adaptation myself because they are afflicted with the same menace that besets all ITV drama – adverts.  One moment the game is afoot, the next you are confronted with an ad for something called ‘Anusol’ and before you can hit ‘mute’ you hold the answer to the riddle ‘what on earth is Anusol?’, something you can never unlearn.

On the big screen, various big names have taken turns trying on the deerstalker for size, none I think more successfully than Robert Downey Jr.  Is it because he mixes just the right amount of manic energy with the conviction to addiction only somebody with his past can bring, along with a physical aptitude for violence that the books always hinted at?  Partly, but mainly because I saw the first film with my Mum as a Christmas treat and so it’s now embedded deep in the ‘positive association’ wing of the mansion of my mind (which also has a f**king enormous wine cellar).

The BBC reboot of ‘Sherlock’ though, is nothing short of a tour de force in fan creation, as if it’s made of cult.  And it was interesting to see evidence of that the other day when I was near Barts (for reasons, I should be clear, entirely unrelated to the sort of condition requiring something that might be advertised on ITV).

St Bartholomew’s Hospital is in the Smithfield area of the City of London, with St Paul’s, The Old Bailey and the famous meat market nearby, and is famous for a number of reasons, including having the only statue of Henry VIII in London atop one of its entrance gates.  It is also where John Watson studied to be a doctor and where Sherlock abuses corpses in the name of criminal science and where, in the episode ‘The Richenbach Fall’, he apparently jumps to his death.

Red telephone boxes are not an unusual sight in London.  Far rarer than they used to be of course, victim first to a campaign by BT to replace an icon with stainless steel monstrosities with about as much charm as an abattoir floor, and then to the rise in popularity of the mobile ‘phone, which saw a move away from people having conversations in soundproofed boxes on a landline to a fashion for bellowing your business at passers-by.

And telephone boxes with pieces of card in them are not an unusual sight.  Indeed, there was a period when they were prolific as prostitutes advertised their, er, goods, in telephone boxes.  It has to be said that the trend in covering the glass of a telephone box in ‘business’ cards also afforded privacy for that other function of a telephone box so beloved of late night revellers.

The telephone box near Barts though bears not adverts but messages of love and support for Sherlock.  Presumably, these have been left by fans of the show from all over the world who have come here.  It may seem odd that fans would visit the site of the faked death of a fictional character but the notes, if they are authentic and not a prop, are surely simply a continuation of the same fan fervour that seized the readers of ‘The Strand’ when Holmes went over the Falls the first time in 1893.  And let’s be honest, given the choice between visiting London or Switzerland, where would you go?