yardstick when accepting those sorts of roles. Also in 2005, he played Mr Sesseman in an adaptation of Heidi and Dottore Massimo in The Thief Lord. 2006–present In 2006, he played Mark Thatcher in Coup!, a dramatisation of the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. He also starred as Adrien opposite Nicholas Tennant in the UK premiere of Members Only at the Trafalgar Studios. He accepted the part because it was "funny, plausible, plausibly absurd and cruel" and he liked that it was a translation from an original French play. He enjoyed working on it, telling What's on Stage: "Nick is a really good actor and really good to work with in that you can have completely frank discussions about tiny issues and it's totally ego-free. We're all just discussing the point and not playing games with each other. It does make the working practice easier. If there's only two of you in a play, you are equally responsible – there's nobody else to blame if it goes wrong. So its a greater risk and there's no hiding". At the end of the year, he appeared opposite Richard Wilson in Whipping it Up, a play about whips in a fictional David Cameron government. To research his role, he watched more Commons debates. In 2006, Bathurst also appeared in an episode of Agatha Christie's Poirot 2005 where he played Gilbert Entwhistle in After the Funeral. After a season at the Bush Theatre at the end of 2006, Whipping it Up transferred to the New Ambassadors Theatre from March to June 2007. The tour coincided with his appearance as the titular character in Alex, based on the comic in The Daily Telegraph. The play ran at the Arts Theatre between October and November 2007 and featured Bathurst interacting with other characters projected onto a screen behind him. He was attracted to the role because of the "duplicity and guile" Alex uses to get himself out of tight situations. The role won him a nomination for Best Solo Performance at the What's on Stage Awards. He reprised the role in an international tour from September to November 2008, playing in Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. As Alex he presented a ten-part series on Classic FM, which won a Gold Award at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2012. He now performs Alex as a corporate after-dinner entertainment. 2007 also saw Bathurst perform