Remember Inspector Alleyn’s spunky girlfriend, Troy?

Remember Poirot’s dashing sidekick Hastings?

Ladies and gentlemen: Troy and Hastings - otherwise known as Belinda Lang and Hugh Fraser. They’ve been married since 1988, but it is incredible news to me. And it’s all incredibly romantic:

Her father walked out when she was four. Her step-father left after years of high-voltage screaming matches fuelled by alcohol, and her mother spent weeks at a time in bed with depression. So it’s not surprising to learn that as Belinda Lang grew up she had little faith in marriage and fully expected to spend her life on her own. But that was before she met Hugh Fraser.

Hugh, a fellow actor, has given the star of the hit BBC sitcom 2point4 Children what she always needed but never found - stability. And she says her marriage to him, now in its 11th year, is a dream come true.

“It’s what I hoped marriage would be but there was no evidence of it in my life,” she says. “I didn’t expect to get married…I didn’t trust it as an institution. But when I met Hugh I knew we wanted the same thing, something much more than just hanging out together. That was a feeling I’d never had with anyone before.”….

“Hugh’s got everything that keeps me interested. He’s very bright and extremely funny, which is a big thing for me. I have to have that,” says Belinda, 45. “He has a very clever, sideways humour, a sophisticated take on life just like my mother had, and I really like it. It keeps me going. Hugh’s a truly good man and we still have romance, more than I would ever have expected, and our love has grown and deepened. 

"I hate to say I feel safe in my marriage. It’s tempting fate - rather like appearing in Hello! magazine - but I do and I feel we give each other strength….

"There’s no competition between Hugh and I - quite the opposite. He’s very keen for me to progress, keener than I am. He’s always saying, ‘This isn’t good enough for you, you know’. 

"He’s doing another Poirot this summer. I’m quite old-fashioned and rather like my husband going off to do his TV series." 

I guess this explains why Poirot and Alleyn got together.