Number One

Precious Ramotswe, who has been keeping her legions of fans enthralled for years, has made it to the small screen at last.

Like millions of others, I will be tuning in to BBC1 on Easter Sunday at 9pm to see if late director Anthony Minghella and co-writer Richard Curtis have been able to bring this iconic literary character to life.

For the uninitiated, Mma Ramotswe is a traditionally-built (for that read XL) African investigator who deals with everything from absent husbands and missing children to curious con men and witchdoctors.

It's about as far removed from the quintessentially English-style whodunnit as you can get.

As one reviewer put it: "Forget the library - the body's in the mud hut!"

When I first heard of plans to make a film about The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency, my first thought was who on earth could play Mma Ramotswe?

I'm sure every reader probably has a different mental image of the redoubtable detective from Botswana who could charm the sarongs off anyone.

Even her creator Alexander McCall Smith is reported as saying that he never held a specific face in his mind's eye.

But it was up to Minghella (who is famed for winning an Oscar in 1996 for directing The English Patient) to find one.

In an interview with The Times earlier this month, he admitted his search to find Precious Ramotswe almost defeated him.

"I spent more than a year shuttling between London, southern Africa, Los Angeles and New York hunting for someone with the necessary brains, beauty and bottom to fit the role!"

It turned out that American soul singer Jill Scott had everything required. Only the bottom was padded!

But the books are clearly not everyone's cup of (bush) tea.

In fact they are - rather like Mma Ramotswe's favourite brew - an acquired taste.

(She drinks gallons of the stuff while reflecting on the tribulations of life).

Perhaps the prose is too simplistic, the humour too subtle or the pace of events too slow for some, but for me that's what makes these tales so refreshing.

The books are a celebration of the simple pleasures in life and contain nuggets of wisdom and intuitive insights into human nature and the ways of the world. Maybe its success lies in a nostalgia for certain qualities - respect, good manners and a sense of community that are being eroded by modern life.

"We have found a country where the people treat one another well, with respect, and where there are values other than the grab, grab, grab, which prevails back home." (Tears of the Giraffe.) The fact McCall Smith achieves all this without appearing sentimental is no mean feat but even more remarkable is that this black, Botswanan heroine is the creation of a white, male, Scottish law lecturer.

For the record, I have just finished reading the ninth book in the series, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, and can happily report that McCall Smith, rather like Mma Ramotswe's kettle in fact, hasn't run out of steam yet!