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?

A change of scene - movies

If you want to change your universe, then surely one of the best ways to do it is to sit in a dark room, devoid of distraction, and watch adventure, excitement, action, romance and drama unfold in front of you in spectacular technicolor, to a rousing soundtrack, eating popcorn. People have even started sporting glasses to allow them to see things in three dee and immerse themselves even more. And buying larger sizes of popcorn. With the 'bucket' now the standard size, can the 'barrel', 'bin' or 'skip' be far behind?

Life on the screen, even in two dimensions, can be much more attractive than life in the aisles, especially if you have just run out of popcorn. Glamorous and heroic types leap into action, fall in love and step in time with the plot, the music or the werewolves depending on your taste in flicks. Even if the film is unrelentingly dire, the will be something about the way the hero wears a sweater while staring moodily out of a window into the rain that makes you think 'hummn, nice chunky sweater'. Even 'the horse whisperer', a film so without merit that when having to sit through it I was rather hoping that the vet would turn up and shoot me, has pleasant scenery.

It is captivating, to gaze into an oblong of excitement where people have adventurous and glamorous lives, seemingly unencumbered by the fits of rage that grip any normal person whenever they accidentally see one of those BT adverts on the telly.

And it's quite right and proper to be transported somewhere else for the length of the film, this is, after all, an escapist media. It's when people take the movie home with them that things start getting interesting, and sometimes a bit weird.

It can be as simple as using your iPod to lay down a soundtrack to your life, complete with theme tune and specific sounds for particular activities. Who would not, given the opportunity, want to have music composed for them to accompany, for instance, a montage of images of squeezing veg and deliberating over wine while on a visit to the supermarket. And would that drive to the garden centre not be a bit more interesting with some bespoke chase music? I once drove through the centre of London with the theme to 'The Professionals' on a loop and it was bloody terrific.

The worst offenders, even worse than the sort of people who like to talk about continuity errors on Internet message boards, are the sci if and fantasy fans who dress up as characters from their favourite movie and go to conventions. What strikes me as odd is that you get loads of different characters from loads of different franchises all mingling together, it's like the ultimate crossover event.

The problem is though that the bar has been set incredibly high. Ever since Carrie Fisher put on that gold bikini, there has only been one acceptable choice of costume for anyone at least half decent looking at a science fiction convention. The problem is that Carrie Fisher was indulging in quite a lot of drugs back when they shot Return of the Jedi, the sort that keep you thin. She was not indulging in quite a lot of cake, the sort that result in comments like ' are you sure you are on the right end of that 'slave Leia' chain.

But at least plump Leia's make the effort, and this is appreciated. On the other hand, painting yourself blue head to toe and repeatedly correcting people that you are from Pandora, actually, will not stop them yelling 'smurf!' at you at every opportunity.