Last updated at 12:46 AM on 23rd October 2011
Morning in Moscow and we were outside the headquarters of Russian intelligence, the FSB. Amazingly, we had permission to film as we retraced the footsteps of the fictional young Belgian reporter in Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets.
In the book, written in 1929, Tintin is continually being followed and plotted against by shadowy Bolshevik figures, evil-looking men with spike beards and long coats, clutching a ticking bomb destined to finish off the nosy reporter from Brussels.
We were given a rather more subtle reception. Slowly, quietly, almost imperceptibly, a limo with blacked-out windows emerged from the building that houses the modern-day equivalent of the KGB.
On the trail: Frank Gardner tests an original 1929 Amilcar, a model used in the Tintin books
With a purr of its engines, it crossed Lubyanka Square, synonymous with the infamous jail where political prisoners were taken for interrogation in Soviet times, and drew up next to us. we braced ourselves for Russian officialdom, a demand to see papers, perhaps, or passports.
But instead, the black limo remained beside us, motionless, for several minutes.
‘They’re probably taking pictures,’ said our cameraman. But no windows slid down, no spies stepped out, it was just a none-too-subtle message: ‘we know you are here and we are watching you.’
Not that we had anything to hide. Our mission was simple: to unravel the mystery of the hidden first Tintin book, the prototype that went on to spawn the comic-book phenomenon and the new movie, The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn, that comes out later this week in the UK.
Modern treatment: an image from the latest incarnation of the boy reporter, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn
Tintin is now the world’s most successful cartoon character, with his books translated into 70 languages.
Like many others growing up in Seventies Britain, I devoured Tintin books as a boy. Flight 714, The Blue Lotus, The Black Island – these were all adventure fantasies that took me far away from the classroom and my overdue Latin homework. I loved the description and detail of far-off places drawn by Tintin’s Belgian creator Herg
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