Jude Law as Watson?

This is an interesting article. My mother was an enormous Holmes fan and I grew up thinking of Watson as a sort of Captain Kangaroo shaped fellow and Holmes as the whip thin greyhound type, quivering at the lead, ready to chase clues. Sort of the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt of the detecting world.

If I'd first heard that Jude Law was going to be in a Sherlock Holmes film I'd have thought he'd play Holmes, not Watson. I heard it the other way round, at another site and was quite surprised. Casting against type can be invigorating so I'm quite curious to see how this one turns out.

I'm also wondering if Conan Doyle described Watson as a plump fellow or if that's just something I got stuck in my head. After all Watson was a soldier, injured in Afghanistan, so perhaps he was lean, trim and fighting fit, at least until his injury.