What's Up Doc?​​​​​​​ - The Magic Of Being Martin

THE ACTOR REVEALS WHY HE HAS THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

- Lara Kilner

We’ve never witnessed anything like the scenes we saw in Port Isaac, the pretty Cornish village that is home to Doc Martin’s fictional town of Portwenn.

It is overrun with ‘Clunatics’ making pilgrimages to the show’s locations and, boy, they’ve travelled from far and wide. There are Kiwis, Australians and Americans galore gathering outside the famous chemist (actually a fudge shop), the Golden Lion pub and the Doc’s house. There are official tours, Doc Martin maps and memorabilia for sale. It’s a bit like being at Graceland, and Martin Clunes is Elvis.

We’re whisked off to a muddy farm on the outskirts of town where all the interior scenes are filmed, and receive the sort of treatment those super-fans would likely surrender their life savings for – a personal tour of the set, including the surgery where the blood-phobic Doc does his curmudgeonly finest on the local patients. It’s a tour given by the doctor himself.

Terribly tall and imposing, surprisingly softly spoken, polite and amiable, Martin is the sort of famous person it’s surreal to meet, given his distinctive look and voice have been such a big part of our televisual lives since his Men Behaving Badly days in the 1990s.

He shows us the gifts he receives from fans on a daily basis, and what’s most impressive is a huge jar of blue M&Ms, where on each one the two Ms have been replaced with ‘DM’, in honour of the show. Fans can now see him starring in a new role as part of TVNZ’s Vanity Fair, a period drama remake of the classic novel.