Egan discovers there's no play like Holmes

Equally, there was a time when there was no Holmes without Basil Rathbone, no Watson without Nigel Bruce. That was then. This is now, three years on from the acclaimed West End production of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, which revealed that today, without Peter Egan and Philip Franks playing the roles, there is no Holmes and Watson.

Next week, the pair are reunited in The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes at the King's Theatre and Egan, still fondly remembered as Paul in the BBC sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles, is happy to be once again donning the deerstalker of the master detective.

"People seemed to like us a duo when we were teamed up for Hound Of The Baskervilles," the actor recalls, as he explains how the pair come to be reprising their roles.

"During that production, an old friend of mine, a director called Patrick Garland, asked if I had read The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes, which he had developed 21 years earlier for Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke as a vehicle for them at the end of their ITV series.

"They actually played it for a year and then it lay in a drawer for another 20-odd years because a suitable duo hadn't emerged who he thought could carry it."

Enter Egan and Franks (best known as Sergeant Craddock in Heartbeat) to take on the challenge of following TV's famous crime-busting double-act.

"Jeremy Paul, who wrote the piece, had seen it many times, as had his four daughters. They all loved that original production and admitted that they came rather hesitantly to this one. Afterwards however, they agreed that it was so different that they could put the original production to one side and love this as a new production," reveals Egan, who believes that was partly due to the "different energy" he brings to the role.

"Jeremy was a very fanciful, self-destructive Holmes. He played the role with great theatricality. I bring a different kind of intensity to it. I think to play Holmes you need to have the qualities of presence and cool intellectualism as well as a dry urbanity. The audience must believe when they are watching Holmes that he is capable of solving anything – when he is around you are in a safe pair of hands."

The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes is a thrilling journey into the mind of the greatest detective of all time.

Following a seemingly deadly encounter with his nemesis, arch criminal Professor Moriarty, at Reichenbach Falls, secrets and betrayal are slowly revealed. And as Watson finds his loyalty tested to the very limit, Holmes is forced to turn his unswerving powers of deduction upon himself.

"It was a pleasant decision to return to the role from my point of view, because this play is so entirely different to Hound Of The Baskervilles," confesses Egan. "This piece is a much more intriguing cocktail of events. Rather than just dealing with a sleuth and his magnifying glass, you are dealing very much with the relationship of these two guys, their interdependence. It's both very, very funny and rather moving at times.

"What is remarkable about Holmes and Watson is that they have been played by so many people, yet nobody has copyright on them . . . other than perhaps Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, because they were the first. They set the trend in terms of the dryness of Holmes and the total waffledom of Watson. Of course, through time one realises that Watson isn't just the bumbling foil for Holmes, but is in fact a very serious man."

The secret of the pair's longevity, however, is more obvious, believes Egan. "They are possibly the two most famously loved characters from fiction ever, and that is to do with the fact that they retain the old fashioned qualities of good over evil and right over wrong."

The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes, King's Theatre, Leven Street, Tuesday-Saturday, 7.30pm (matinee 2.30pm), 14-26.50, 0131-529 6000