Martin Clunes: I can’t afford to retire – I’ve got too many horses
The Doc Martin star on farming, family and reuniting on screen with his Men Behaving Badly pal Neil Morrissey
As someone who owns a working farm, actor Martin Clunes well understands the hardships of farmers and says that the show Clarkson’s Farm has really struck a chord with him.
“Farming is largely overlooked and as much as I’m grateful for a change of government, I’m not sure how focused this government is on matters rural, or ever has been,” says the Doc Martin and Men Behaving Badly actor, who runs a 100-acre farm with his family in Dorset.
“Traditionally farming has not been that important to Labour, even though I’ve never voted Tory in my life but they did have half an eye open on the countryside before they went wrong.
“They (farmers) have already had a big knock with inheritance tax. I wonder what’s to follow. To be honest, Brexit was the worst thing to happen to farming in a long time.”
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Clunes, 62, is a big fan of the hit Prime series Clarkson’s Farm, which has demonstrated the hardships of farming, the weather dependency and how small the margins can be. Clarkson, however, has not inspired him to expand his farming empire.
“We used to have a lot more. We had about 200 ewes and over 50 cattle but it was mental, crazy and too much hard work and it wasn’t really working. I thought I could make the farm wash its face (pay for itself) but I couldn’t.”
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Clarkson’s Farm strikes a chord, he says. “I mean, his farm’s 10 times the size of mine, but it really resonates with all those costs that keep coming, when it’s going to cost too much to leave it (crops) in the ground and you’ve got to take it out of the ground even though there’s nothing you can do with it – I know all that.”
Clunes, who with his wife, TV producer Philippa Braithwaite, organises Buckham Fair, a traditional family event held on his land, helps out with farming jobs when he’s not away filming.
He has a menagerie of animals at home and in his fields, including five dogs, two cats, six horses and a miniature Shetland pony, nine hens and a handful of cattle.
The household at the moment is fairly chaotic as they have two sixth-month-old Jack Russell terriers who he and his wife, are training.
He bought them in the wake of the death earlier this year of Jim, his beloved Jack Russell, from liver cancer, and he writes movingly about their bond in his new book, Meetings With Remarkable Animals.
“He was totally my soul mate. We knew Jim had cancer when a vet diagnosed him with liver cancer and said, ‘Don’t leave it too late’. That registered with me, which was when I made his coffin, but actually he lived another six months.”
When the time came, he filled the coffin with his dog’s favourite tiny tennis balls and buried him at the end of the garden.
“It’s enabled us to smile when we remember Jim without sobbing too much. I miss him every day but I feel we did him proud.”
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The book charts the wonders of creatures he’s either encountered or researched, from mine-detecting rats to cancer-sniffing dogs, life-saving dolphins, war hero carrier pigeons and valiant horses.
Clunes agrees that animals have helped him through hard times in his life.
“I mean, I couldn’t give you an instance where I thought ‘I need help here’ and reached for a parrot,” he says dryly, “but I know I’m lucky that I get to share my life with all these animals and I think I’m a nicer, better person for it.”
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His father, Alec Clunes, also an actor, died aged 57 when Martin was eight and soon after, he was packed off to boarding school which he hated, throwing himself into plays and making people laugh to avoid being whacked by classmates. He was later put in charge of the school menagerie, feeding and tending the animals, which he loved.
“It was a remarkably good choice by that teacher to give me that responsibility at that time, because I was quite isolated. I mean, I still go wandering off, I’ll take one or two dogs with me and go and do a job somewhere on the farm. I like that.”
For much of his adult life he has been around animals, working with them on set and looking after them at the farm. He has lost two dogs and two horses in the past 12 months.
Clunes at Buckham Fair
“I have a theory that we allow ourselves to grieve over our pets and our animals in a way that we don’t necessarily do (for people). Nobody says, ‘You’ve got to be grown up about this’ when your pet dies, but when your father dies they all say ‘You’ve got to be grown up and you’re the man of the house’ – to an eight-year-old.
“When you grieve the loss of an animal these huge channels of grief get opened up.”
He says working with animals, whether at home or on set, has been joyous. As the irascible, dog-hating Doc Martin, he loved working with Dodger, who played Buddy in the series.
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“Everybody loved Dodger. I’ve lost more time to actors and actresses than I have to Dodger. Children are another matter. We used to have 12 babies on Doc Martin and rotate them when they start crying or don’t start crying – and you can’t win over a baby with a bit of sausage.”
More recently he’s been on a road trip to France with his Men Behaving Badly co-star and good friend Neil Morrissey to film the three-part series Neil & Martin’s Bon Voyage, in which Morrissey shows his pal all the joys of the country he has made his second home.
It’s the first time they have been reunited on screen in 26 years, as cameras follow the pair travelling from Normandy, through the Alps to Neil’s home and cider apple orchard in the southern region. The series is due to air on Gold next year.
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“That was a laugh. We’ve always stayed in touch. It was great complaining about our aches and pains and what we can and can’t do. We did some amazing things, but we instantly fell back into that very easy pattern of just trying to make each other laugh all day long, which is what we used to do. It was about Neil and I reuniting.”
They may be older, but there’s a “disappointingly small amount of change or progress”, he chuckles.
He’s also in a new upcoming ITV thriller, Out There, in which he plays a farmer with a teenage son, played by Louis Ashbourne Serkis, who finds himself fighting county line drug-dealing and an escalating crime wave sweeping the British countryside.
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“I’ve not personally come across it but I know it goes on in Bridport and West Bay and all along the coast. The drama is about boundaries and land and all the threats to farming that we know are there. It’s not like Doc Martin – it’s pretty dark.”
Viewers will also see Clunes presenting a travel series on the islands of the Atlantic in 2025 and starring in a comedy drama with James Buckley called Mother’s Pride, about a failing pub, a divided community and a grieving family whose lives are changed by brewing real ale and entering the Great British Beer Awards.
He’s certainly not been typecast or pigeonholed in his career, but he says that wasn’t intentional.
“I’ve never really had a plan or a design, I’ve just bimbled into the next thing to come along. And self-employment keeps you going. I can’t afford to retire – I’ve got too many bloody horses.”
Meetings With Remarkable Animals by Martin Clunes is available now
The Press Association
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