Roger Lewis: 'Lesbian' Agatha Christie, death threats and a new book

What Am I Still Doing Here? My Years As Me by Roger Lewis.
Cover by Ronald Searle, 91

I had no idea that Roger Lewis had wondered aloud (in the Mail) whether Agatha Christie was a lesbian. The very mention of dread sexual practice in conjunction with one of the treasures of English heritage and TV sleepathon drama was enough to elicit death threats, presumably from a few of the cock-cunting or cunting-cock readers of Britain's leading family qualitab.

As a seasoned recipient of past death threats myself, mainly from anonymous journalists and other people purporting to be writers, I am familiar with the exquisite pleasure that greets such communications of terminal promise. One just knows that such incited fury will probably activate a cancer in one's crazed aspiring killer, a few years down the line.

Anyhow, Christiegate is one of his many experiences exhumed and dramatised  in new memoir (or 'self-portrait') What Am I Still Doing Here? I have not read it so I can't say it's brilliant. Yet. But I can say that his last memoir Seasonal Suicide Notes made my Christmas 2009: the book is a darkly comic and mischievous counterblast to the otherwise infernal jolliness of the genre. It reads like a rave at a crematorium. Roger tells me the new book is 'far madder and darker' - this I can believe. I can't wait to review it.

I'm only sorry that Lewis' publisher Coronet has seen fit to use a customised testimonial from Stephen Fry: ordinarily I would avoid anything this simperingly wet lump of ubiquity recommends. But on this occasion I shall make an exception.

What Am I Still Doing Here? is published on October 13. To buy click here.