Karen Koren: Busy week

I’VE had a very busy week. My Norwegian cousins have been visiting, which was lovely as we hadn’t been together for more than 25 years. It’s so very nice to catch up.

We did the whole tourist bit. I took them to the Castle, drove them around our beautiful city and had dinner in the Witchery. Exhausting, but they loved it.

Then I had to go up to Inverness to check on how our Happyness sales and venues are doing - all good so far.

Although everyone at the Gilded Balloon is very excited at getting a comedy Festival in Inverness, it is creating the new work at the Fringe in Edinburgh that is the most exciting and I have commissioned a few plays this year.

One is for a very good friend of mine who just happens to be a brilliant actress, Janet Prince. The play is called Murder, Marple and Me, and of course I am an avid Miss Marple fan. What could be better?

Philip Meeks, a playwright I know - you may remember that he wrote a play called Twinkle Little Star for Tim Healy a few years ago - got in touch this year wanting to bring another play to the Gilded Balloon. We got to talking about lots of various ideas and he told me that he had been thinking of writing the life story of Margaret Rutherford, who played the movie Miss Marple in the 1950s.

Agatha Christie hated Margaret Rutherford because she thought she was too much of a lightweight character to play Miss Marple.

Margaret Rutherford also hated Agatha Christie because she did not like murder stories because her father murdered his father by battering him to death with a chamber pot. I kid you not. It is perfectly true. However, as they began working together they developed a great respect for each other and a friendship.

The first draft of the script arrived today - I’m very excited to read it.

I have been feeling very fluey since getting back from Inverness and I just want to curl up into a ball in bed with a hot toddie - with my Miss Marple script. Hopefully it will be a big hit.