John Moffatt

Although perhaps best known as Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's moustache-twirling detective, on BBC radio, John Moffatt, was a devastatingly clinical and classical stage actor of irreproachable taste and valour. He seemed something of a throwback, but there are very few today who could rival his armour-plated technique, his almost uncanny empathy with comic style ranging from the Restoration to Rattigan - his trademark stillness and decorum on stage was at odds with false notions of flounce and frilliness - or his incisive articulation. He was a beacon in his profession, greatly admired and loved, not least because he had worked with almost everyone of note in the business, from his idols Noel Coward and John Gielgud, to his best friends Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Alec McCowen and Joan Plowright, but chiefly because he was so funny and modest about his own contribution. In his early rep days at the Oxford Playhouse, he played the schoolteacher Kulygin in Chekhov's Three Sisters, a m