>One of those 'Did I dream it?' questions:
>
>Was there an episode of Have I Got News For You where Paul Merton maliciously revealed the murderer in The Mousetrap? I'm sure he did. And the audience momentarily gasped in a way that suggested he wasn't bluffing.
>
They change the ending all the time anyway.
>Does anyone know if he got a bollocking for it, or whether it affected ticket sales in any way? And generally, does anyone know what the legal situation was/would be in that situation - could the theatre sue the programme for sabotage?
>
>
>

I'm pretty sure that that did happen.
But I don't think that the murderer in the Mousetrap is a massive secret. I certainly knew it and have never seen the play. And unless Paul Merton had for some reason signed a contract saying he wouldn't reveal the murderer then there is no way he can be sued. I think in cases like this the media (and the sixth sense etc) the media generally operate a policy of not spoiling the show for people.
But it would certainly not have affected ticket sales. I'm quite surprised at the naivety of the question, unless I've missed out on an in joke of some kind.

I remember that, I think it was on Paul Merton doing stand up, not Have I Got News For You, though.

The Points of View audience were very upset.

i thought everyone knew who the murderer was. it's like knowing what Rosebud is.

I heard a rumour that Richard Herring isn't really that funny-or am I just being ludicrously naive?

well if you've only seen TGP...

I thought it was a good point myself :) It does seem to be rather a stupid question.

Shouldn't Mike's name be in red?

>well if you've only seen TGP...

Looking forward to the one on Christmas Eve... I bet it's better than anything Paul Merton has done.

Paul Kaye did something similiar - not as Dennis Pennis, but as another character, standing outside the theatre with a speakerphone, telling the passers by to stop complaining because they've had 40 years to go see it, a la Paul Merton.

I think that was on the Sunday Show.

Certainly one of my fave 'I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue' lines is in Good News/Bad News, where the Good News is that the Mousetrap's been running for 40 years & Willie Rushton's Bad News is whodunnit!

eddie izzard gave the same thing away in 1992/1993 at the ambassador's, although they masked it with a bleep on the video release.

It's hardly a secret, it's been showing for 40 years!

Everyone knows it's the policeman!!

>It's hardly a secret, it's been showing for 40 years!
>
>Everyone knows it's the policeman!!


I was going tomorrow and you've ruined it!!!

The big giveaway is when you sit down in the theatre before the show begins and read the programme, which features lobby cards from the various manifestations of the production through the ages. In each and every cast, the only recognizeable actor is the one playing the murderer. I think it was Richard Attenborough in the original run.

>Shouldn't Mike's name be in red?

Blimey, where have you been Ken? SOTCAA is no longer anything to do with NOTBBC, so that's why his name isn't in red. They are supposed to be running their own forum at some point, but I've no idea when that would be...

Mike isn't using his account anyway, hence the '' round his name.

And yes, the Merton vs Mousetrap thing is stupid.

Lots of comedians have "given away" the secret of The Mousetrap.

Hugh Laurie did a newsreader sketch for one of the earliest Comic Relief nights in which the running gag was he kept making gaffes ("...if you don't want to know the result of tonight's match, look away... yes, great result for Manchester...") and the end of which he congratulated TM for its long run and said it was "because the audience are asked not to tell their friends that the detective did it".

I hope LF Barfe calls me stupid and naive next. I'm going for the hat trick.

The original 1950s film version of one of Christie's other plays, "Witness For The Prosecution" also ends with a request to the audience not to spill the beans. Things were more civilised in those days.

As it happens, yesterday I read that Christie's biographer is currently employed converting her stage plays into novels. When he's finished, I suppose she will become another of those writers who are such a successful "brand name" that publishers, relatives, accountants, etc. try to keep the books flowing out after the author's own death. Other examples: the US horror writer Virginia Andrews, Raymond Chandler (his last, unfinished Marlowe book was finished off by another American crime writer). Ian Fleming handed over the Bond legacy to the film makers when he died as well.

The publishers have to take care to show that the "star name" didn't actually write the words, because a few years ago Alistair Maclean's publisher was successfully sued by a fan who bought a book actually written by Alistair Macneill that was billed as a Maclean (it was a story idea found in his papers, used as "inspiration"). So the posthumous fiction racket has had to be a bit more explicit since then.

There have also been "sequels" to various Jane Austen novels, working the same trick.

One day the music industry will notice all this, and then we will see a whole new wave of Beatles albums.

Re - has Richard Herring ever been funny
Well I haven't been nominated for a British Comedy Award in any capacity since 1992 (and then only for On The Hour, which had lots of other talents that could have masked my own inadequacy) so I guess that proves that I am not funny.

Sorry Mike. Didn't mean to be rude. To be honest I didn't think it was really you who'd made that post.

I don't think it was a *particularly* naive question, apart perhaps about the bit about affecting ticket sales. I imagined the Christie estate to be a bit Yoko One-y, that's all. You still can't get permission to put on an amateur production of it.

I'd forgotten the Hugh Laurie sketch though.

Or even Yoko Ono-y.

Or Yoakumesque.

It was when Paul Merton played the Palladium, with Neil Mullarkey and Richard Vranch. One of the shows was taped for retail and also broadcast on BBC1.

At the end of a little murder mystery sketch, Paul playing the policeman says "It must have been me... Just like The Mousetrap then...". After some appalled gasps from the audience he says "It's been going 30 years, I think they made their money back by now!"

I saw that there was a production of (the novel) The Secret Adversary at Edinburgh this year. They made a big fuss about it being the first time the Christie estate had allowed an adaption to be performed. I wonder why they chose such an obscure and not-very-good spy thriller to start with, rather than leaping straight in with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or something.

(By the way, isn't that a great title. 'The Murder of Roger Ackroyd'. Does exactly what it says on the tin. I bet more people would buy 'London Fields' if it was called 'The Murder of Nicola Six'. Or, come to that, Hamlet, if was called 'The Murder of King Hamlet, and then just about everybody.' I'll stop talking now.

>Or even Yoko Ono-y.
>
>Or Yoakumesque.

If Yoko Ono married Jim Yoakum, she'd be called Yoko Yoakum. Go on, do it Yoko.

"The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd" is unadaptable - as proved by ITV's adaptation a year or so back.

That's very true. I remember the film, and without the one crucial element to it that I won't mention in Mertonesque style, it was just a creaky and fairly obvious whodunnit. Well done, Leo, for picking practically the worst example to illustrate your case. Kudos.

>If Yoko Ono married Jim Yoakum, she'd be called Yoko Yoakum. Go on, do it Yoko.

Allan Klein owns the rights to both of their names. And is currently fighting a high court battle with Roger Hancock and Lin Cook over that very fact.

And for the record, I don't regard it as a particularly naive question, and certainly not a stupid one.

>And for the record, I don't regard it as a particularly naive question, and certainly not a stupid one.

Can you get your tongue any further up Mike's arse, TJ?

>Can you get your tongue any further up Mike's arse, TJ?

Goal!

>>And for the record, I don't regard it as a particularly naive question, and certainly not a stupid one.
>
>Can you get your tongue any further up Mike's arse, TJ?

I don't regard it as a particularly naive question, and certainly not a stupid one.

Anyway, the comment was aimed at the people who described it as 'naive' and 'stupid', not at you.

The Mousetrap's still going, but Agatha Christie's dead.
I'm sure she'd rather have it the other way round.

>I saw that there was a production of (the novel) The Secret Adversary at Edinburgh this year. They made a big fuss about it being the first time the Christie estate had allowed an adaption to be performed. I wonder why they chose such an obscure and not-very-good spy thriller to start with, rather than leaping straight in with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd or something.

I went to see this and it was great, by far the best-rehearsed, best-paced thing I saw on the Fringe. Prosaic story, yes, but extraordinarily well adapted, and with a great live jazz score.

Well let's look again at exactly what Mike said...

>Does anyone know if he got a bollocking for it, or whether it affected ticket sales in any way? And generally, does anyone know what the legal situation was/would be in that situation - could the theatre sue the programme for sabotage?

Sued for sabotage?! C'mon...

The idea is rediculous as it would be far too easy for someone to accidentally reveal the ending of a book/film/play/whatever. How would you define what was acceptable to be given away? Would a reviewer be allowed to give a brief plot synopsis without fear of prosecution? Would George Lucas be able to sue Matt Groening for revealing the twist from 'The Empire Strikes Back' in 'The Simpsons'?

Anyone else remember Angus Deayton giving away the ending of a Harrison Ford film (was it "Presumed Innocent" I thinsk it was)on a sketch on Alexei Sayle's Stuff?

>Anyone else remember Angus Deayton giving away the ending of a Harrison Ford film (was it "Presumed Innocent" I thinsk it was)on a sketch on Alexei Sayle's Stuff?

There were a few sketches in one of the shows in the third series (I think) which gave away endings of films. One sketch had the continuity announcers on BBC1 and 2 giving away the ending of programmes as they introduced them.

>I hope LF Barfe calls me stupid and naive next. I'm going for the hat trick.
>

Arrogant enough to think I give a toss, evidently, young Michael. And paranoid enough to think that there is an evil triumvirate out to discredit everything you say and do. Nit.

Can't see in a million years how the executors would make a legal challenge of this kind stick. It's just a question of fair play. The Christie estate is run by a hard-nosed intellectual property group called Chorion, so if they knew of a way to clamp down on this sort of thing, you can be pretty sure they'd have done so by now.

A far more interesting question is "why has the Mousetrap run for so long when most people who have seen it describe it as being like a night out at a very bad provincial rep in the 1950s?". I keep meaning to go to check how accurate this oft-made criticism is.

Is it unethical to mention that they all get into a helicopter at the end of "A Hard Day's Night"?

Sorry, Mike.

For the record, I still think it's a stupid question :) Are you wanking now, Mike?

Is the demographic of people who plan to see The Mousetrap and people who watch Paul Merton's Stand up really that close then?

I suspect not....