Television: How will Poirot pop his clogs?

Poirot is set to be killed off

Sad news, whodunnit fans: David Suchet, the man who has played Agatha Christie's crime-busting creation Hercule Poirot for more than 20 years, has said that next year's ITV series will be his last. The little grey cells, they will no longer be used to catch wife-killers, the moustache, it will no longer be waxed. But most shocking of all is that Poirot is set to be killed off.

So how might Belgium's most famous fictional character (well, after Tintin) meet his maker? Will it be the reckless con woman with the pearl-handled pistol? How about the psychopathic child with the poisoned eye drops? Ooh, maybe it will be the disgruntled muse with the hemlock. Perhaps it will be the boy detective fed up with having to compete with an elderly countryman, letting his dog savage his rival...

Of course, it could simply be the case that the final episode will be an adaptation of [SPOILER ALERT] Curtain: Poirot's Last Case which, as the title suggests, didn't leave much scope for a sequel. But that wouldn't leave mystery fans much to get their teeth into.