Down the Nile with Chuck Berry, Agatha Christie and boat called Relax

Well, no one got it. Or was it just that I offered no certainty of a prize? The room arrowed in another image of this hotel - the Old Cataract at Aswan on the Nile - was, or so I am assured, taken by Agatha Christie to inspire her during her writing of Death on the Nile


But Egypt, my Egypt for a memorable nine-day winter break, was about much more than that. It was even about more than the incessant begging, and hassle from street vendors with merchandise that you'd never wish to possess, that dogged us from Cairo airport to the Valley of the Kings to the Aswan Dam and the Pyramids and back to Cairo airport.




Our first guide, Ibrahim, had a great answer to the problem. Just feign deafness, he said; do not on any account engage in conversation, even to say: "No thank you."
It saved us from destitution and handed me a half-decent headline for my midweek column at The National. You can read Deaf on the Nile by clicking here.






About Memphis, I have a little story to pass on. Long distance information, you might say, informs me that many years ago, the excellent folk-rock band Fotheringay were playing a concert in Manchester.

Their first album had included a traditional song, Banks of the Nile. Throughout the concert, a group of fans kept yelling for it. Sandy Denny and the boys clearly didn't want to do it.

Come the encores, Sandy shouted: "Do you want Banks of the Nile?"

"Yeah!" the audience called back. And the band launched into Memphis, Tennessee. Someone suggested at Salut! Live that the band must have known that the city of Chuck Berry's song took its name from Memphis on the Nile, Egypt's first capital. Oh no they didn't, came the reply from Jerry Donahue, who was the band's guitarist. It was just a coincidence.




M and Mme Salut! are not cruise people. They had never been on one, or even thought seriously of going on one.





They have changed their minds. Sailing down the Nile - does the fact that the river flows from south to north make it "down the Nile" when you go from Luxor to Aswan? - was as relaxing an experience as I can remember (the fjords of Musandam, only last month, were certainly soothing, but I knew then that a five-hour drive awaited me at the end of the day's cruise).

There was even a cruise within a cruise. For a small sum, we took a small boat on to the river while berthed in Aswan to get some terrific views from the water of Agatha Christie's hotel, a glimpse of the river birdlife and some stunning locations on the island opposite the port.


The boat was even called Relax. I did, even though the two-man crew encouraged me to take lengthy turns on the tiller, which I rather enjoyed (while suspecting their sanity in entrusting me with such a task).

The Nile cuts through a beautiful corridor of the country. Any visit to the Valley of the Kings, Abu Simbel and the Pyramids is likely to leave a profound impression.




But I have one question, suggested by Billy Bob Z Redneck III and his wife Cindy Lou........



Just why did they go and build the Pyramids next to that electricity pylon?

Caught in a Blue Peter moment

This is one I made earlier. Pressure of work is inevitably creating gaps between postings but I thought it would be interesting to run this piece, written during our pre-launch trial runs but now past its shelf life for an Abu Dhabi audience. Are there cultural/pop culture events you left it late to see, or never got round to experiencing?......


There really was little excuse for taking so long to see The Mousetrap, and equally little reason to suppose that unpaid thespians in Abu Dhabi, performing at a social club built on land donated by the UAE's founding president, Sheikh Zayed, would end up filling my cultural gap.

It is hardly as if the long history of Agatha Christie’s whodunit, and the slightly shorter history of me, failed to offer an opportunity sooner.

First sprung on the public as a radio play, The Mousetrap made its debut on the London stage 55 years ago.

For 23 of those years, I lived in London and for a time nurtured a voracious appetite for all things Christie. I devoured her novels, studied the mysteries of her life and felt honoured to be sent as a young reporter to cover her memorial service in 1976.

And when I think of woeful shows I have paid good money to see, it is strange that I should never have got round to attending one of the 23,000 performances of that extraordinary run. But The Mousetrap remained, to me, a closed area. So now that I have rectified the omission, catching the Abu Dhabi Dramatic Society’s presentation of the play at the Club, I must surely be a satisfied man.

On the contrary. I feel only relief that the seat cost 50 dirhams (about £7), not extravagant West End prices.

This has nothing to do with the quality of the production. Alan Daft, the director, may have been a little, well, daft to suggest in his end-of-run speech that the cast reached standards indistinguishable from those of professionals. But it was a highy commendable effort all the same.

From the splendid set to impressive acting, this was a work of which the company, despite a vast range of experience (including, in the case of Graham Clews as Detective Sergeant Trotter, none at all), can be proud.
Just over 700 people attended the three performances, a hearty endorsement of the society’s reputation for excellence. The source of my disappointment, however, was beyond its power to remedy.

The Mousetrap is not, in truth, a particularly good play. Assuming that the cast stuck closely to the original script, it is a rare damp squib in the sparkling Christie archive. The plot is weak, a few characters are unbelievable and some of the twists and turns lack finesse.

Amid the mutual backslapping and banter of the closing night party, I learned one or two things. For instance, Agatha Christie would not have resented my unflattering verdict too strongly since she never placed the play among her finest work.

And if the Abu Dhabi society suddenly uprooted to Aberdovey or Derby, I discovered, it could not legally present The Mousetrap at all. As long as the play is running in London, copyright law prevents any impresario, rep company or amateur society putting it on elsewhere in Britain; indeed, there are even restrictions on it being published in book form in the UK.

This will doubtless encourage people to flock to St Martin’s Theatre, and the world’s longest running show, for years to come.

Each will want to know, and try to guess, Who Did It. I now know, of course.

But I feel dutybound to observe a noble Mousetrap tradition, also mentioned by Alan Daft to his Abu Dhabi audience.

My lips, accordingly, are sealed.