I’m a private detective & celebs pay me to expose cheats – once I was bundled into van.. but used my quick wit to escape
Share:
ASK someone to name a fictional private detective and they’ll probably think of Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Philip Marlowe. Their stories are often adventurous capers, and they’re usually characterised as brilliant but cynical anti-heroes able to unpick tightly webbed criminal plots.
![[Private detectives are shadowy figures in film and literature]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/silhouette-detective-night-376327.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
All while working outside of the cops and the felons - and dodging danger at every turn. The archetype of the gumshoe - whether they’re in a trilby or a deerstalker - is well engrained into our psyches from hundreds of books, TV shows and films. So much so that many people would assume they are not in fact a real thing today and maybe never were.
![[Basil Rathbone in 1939's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/NINTCHDBPICT000949998364.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
But that’s not the case. And away from the likes of Humphrey Bogart brooding in smoke-filled offices in San Francisco or Chicago, they do actually originate in Europe. In 1833, Eugène François Vidocq founded the first known private detective agency in Paris.
![[Humphrey Bogart as private detective Phillip Marlowe in 1946's The Big Sleep, with Lauren Bacall]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2bwnh4h-lauren-bacall-vivian-rutledge-893601209.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
Not too long after, similar agencies began popping up in London - and the profession is still going strong in the Big Smoke now. The Sun was able to track down the elusive Tim Boyd, a senior detective for PDL (Private Detective London), an agency based in Mayfair - and he agreed to give an insight into his job.
![[David Suchet as Agatha Christie's sleuth Hercule Poirot]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/itv-plc-reproduced-editorial-purposes-858601090.jpg?strip=all&w=815)
The 45-year-old is a former civil servant and initially laughed off comparing himself to the hard-as-nails characters seen in old movies. But then went on to describe a career of enthralling espionage, from covertly tailing subjects on the London Underground and the Eurostar to taking pictures of cheating spouses from blacked out cars.
![[Tim Boyd would covertly tail subjects on the London Underground]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/camden-town-london-united-kingdom-944854402.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
