Martin Clunes: the 'Clunatics' still love Doc Martin

On Fridays I try and make sure I get home to our farm in west Dorset at all costs. Even when we start filming the next series of Doc Martin down in Cornwall in a few weeks, I’ll be back on Friday night by about 8.30pm. The journey is 100 miles but after six series, I can do it in my sleep now. There’s only one set of traffic lights.

Once home, we roll up the drawbridge, light the fire, have a glass of wine and eat. My wife, Philippa [Braithwaite, producer of Doc Martin], is on the BAFTA jury so we’re currently watching all the latest films at home, which is fantastic. We have a room full of beanbags with a drop-down screen, and all four dogs – the Labrador, Jack Russell, Jackahuahua (the Jack Russell- Chihuahua cross, who can walk under the other Jack Russell) and the eight-month-old cocker spaniel – come to watch with us. I find that a lot more fun than going into Yeovil to the multiplex.

On Saturdays, I’m up at 8am to start the animal feeding. When my daughter Emily was a baby she was in the row of mouths too, but she’s a teenager now so she gets up when she wants. I generally try and do all the farm maintenance at the weekends and I like it because it keeps me in touch with everything.

The first thing that happens is that the two cats and the dogs get fed. The kettle goes on just before I start this, and it takes about the same amount of time to boil it as it does to get the food. So then you put the tea in the pot, add the water, put the cosy on and give all the horses their breakfast. We’ve got six in the stables at the moment so they take quite a bit of maintenance – we have help mucking them out at the weekends, but we do everything else. They get a big bowl of lovely stuff and a fresh hay net and I check their water, then I come back in and the tea is perfectly brewed. Then there are also the sheep to feed and the cows to water or let out or feed, or just annoy.

After that, the routine depends on who I can talk into going riding with me. I’m a big embarrassment on my giant Clydesdale horse but I usually coerce someone into coming along. The more the merrier. If I can’t persuade them, I’ll ride one and lead the other – something I’ve just started trying. It’s a bit like wrestling, but quite good fun.

We take the dogs out with us to give them some exercise too, and go along the bridle paths that cross over our farm or down into Beaminster to get the horses smart with traffic. It’s beautiful riding country where we live and the Clydesdales are hysterical – it’s like riding underwater because they’re so long-legged and hairy. Everyone who rides them just smiles because they’re so big. If they’re going to do anything vaguely silly you always get a bit of warning in advance. My two are 18 hands and 18 hands one, and I’ve had them since they were six months old so we’re buddies.

After all that farming we’ll have a casual lunch, and then supper that night is always a roast chicken with cauliflower cheese, roast potatoes, parsnips, peas and carrots. We all cook together but I’m in charge of meat and gravy, that sort of thing.

^{Martin's Jack Russell and Jackahuahua, two of his extensive four-legged brood}

Then – it sounds like really overdoing it with the horses – but we often play horse Monopoly on Saturday nights. It’s just normal Monopoly but with horse names instead of places. Either that or cards, or some of those Christmas quizzes that keep you going for weeks. Or another film. Emily is less and less interested in doing all this, however. She begged us to go to boarding school because life is obviously so bad at home, so we’re lucky when we get her these days.

She is usually studiously uninterested in watching anything I’m in, either, although we recently went with a party of cousins and nephews to the Nativity 3 premiere [Martin plays the main role, Mr Shepherd] and she was really embarrassed because I sing and dance in it. So that was quite a triumph for me.

On Sundays, the routine is similar but we get up earlier and do everything a bit faster, especially if the dogs have to be walked separately. Emily is competing with her own horse quite a lot now and the competitions always seem to be somewhere freezing on Sundays. She jumps at the pony club but has just joined British Showjumping as well, and I love going to watch. My wife drives the lorry, though, because I bounce it around too much – I’m slightly banned.

^{The Jurassic coast where TV drama Broadchurch is set, near Martin Clunes' Dorset home}

Otherwise, we’ll just be at home relaxing. Or I will be, because Philippa is working flat out at the moment getting the new scripts ready for Doc Martin. I’m not much use early on but I’m just starting to be introduced into the process and I like that. It’s nice to put my oar in to a tiny degree. We find that the people who like Doc Martin are really potty about it, and the series has a whole new fellowship in America who call themselves Clunatics. They come over in groups to watch filming and get saturated in it all, which is really sweet.

On Sunday nights there’s more quizzing or Monopoly, and always loads of television. We absolutely love Would I Lie to You with Rob Brydon, and of course Broadchurch, because it’s set where we live. In about six weeks’ time, my new show Arthur and George, based on the Julian Barnes novel about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is taking over in Broadchurch’s Monday night slot – blimey. No pressure.

IN SHORT

Herbal tea or stiff drink?

Stiff drink. A whisky from Islay.

Dream role?

My next one. I just keep busy – I don’t have a plan.

Favourite weekend away?

Paris or Gleneagles. We love Gleneagles.

Worst habit?

Mess. I always make little piles that I’m intending to get around to.

What are you reading?

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It’s So Hard to Think Straight About Animals by Hal Herzog.

Five favourite things?

My wife

My daughter

My horses

My dogs

The farm

Martin Clunes is President of The British Horse Society and a keen supporter of Hoof, the British Equestrian Federation’s participation programme, which aims to get more people riding. Find out more information at www.hoofride.co.uk