I could never master the raised eyebrows of Roger Moore but was still a big fan of The Saint TV series. Even so, a number of clues had me scrambling around in my pea brain, after recently picking up Mr Moores autobiography in a Tenerife charity shop. The recent death of Val Kilmer, added more mystery, Kilmer had turned down another Batman outing to add his own saintly chapter to the franchise, with a poor muddled story partly filmed in Oxford in 1997. When Roger met Val at a later film festival, the “lively” Mr Kilmer was remorseful of his part in the Saint reboot – and admitted that finally reading the books long after the film had flopped, he saw the true quality of the adventures.

A few years ago, a poster for the annual Santa Cruz Crime Noir festival, referred to a 1935 Saint story originally called Thieves Picnic, writen by Leslie Charteris set around Tenerife. It set my brain cells reeling like a rampant Volvo P1800. Maybe the crime solving seductor, created by author Leslie Charteris could make a good companion to the Agatha Christie bust at La Paz viewing point above Puerto de la Cruz. Agatha penned a short tale in The Enigmatic Mr Quinn, in 1927, whilst on a short health break to our lovely island.

Could this spark a revival for  the cool, debonair Mr Simon Templar. At the time of the Val Kilmer version, The Saint´s halo had been hung up after a run of attempts to revive the role. Kilmer was reported to have bought the rights to the character, but the modern remake was a flop, but in this world of cinematic reboots, anythiong is possible. Maybe The Saint will shine again, but in the meantime you can see the old classic stories on line, or pogo up and down to the Splodgenessabounds ska version of the theme tune.