Ahead of his much-loved Buckham Fair, Martin Clunes invites Claire Bowman to his Dorset farm to talk heavy horses, unruly Jack Russells and why there’s nowhere quite like Dorset
They say that if you want something done, ask a busy person. But with a new book just out, guest appearances seemingly every time you switch on the telly, three stellar film and TV roles already this year – not to mention running a farm, charity work, presidency of the British Horse Society and now the small matter of organising a country fair – even Martin Clunes might be wondering where he finds the time.
From playing Mr Earnshaw in Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights to a darker turn in Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards and an altogether jollier role in Mother’s Pride, Clunes is enjoying one of the busiest and most varied spells of his career.
‘Yes, someone talked about it being a bit of a Cluneaissance and I quite like that… a Clunami of projects,’ he chuckles over a cup of coffee in his farmhouse kitchen near Beaminster when I remark that he is rarely off our screens nowadays.
Starring in this year’s feel-good movie, Mother’s Pride (Image: Fred Films)
‘Sometimes the right project is simply too good to turn down. Wuthering Heights was a fantastic job – I loved every minute of it, and Margot and Jacob and everyone on that production were lovely. I’m lucky that I still get offered work that interests me. The moment it stops being enjoyable, I’ll stop doing it.
‘I’m up in London three days a week at the moment and about to start work on a new project, but I’m always glad to get on the train and come home.’
Despite his packed schedule, Clunes seems remarkably relaxed and chipper on this gloriously sunny spring morning. The upcoming Buckham Fair – which he founded in 2009 on ‘a magical spot of land’ – appears to be a source of excitement rather than stress as it returns in early August for the first time since 2018.
With a small but slick organising committee, including his producer wife Philippa, once again springing into action – and the indispensable Rosemary, who Martin says is ‘brilliant at organising dog shows and has her own army of volunteers’ – it is full steam ahead, the line-up as packed and crowd-pleasing as ever, including dog shows, a fun fair and local food stalls.
Martin Clunes (Image: Katharine Davies)
Originally conceived as a modest way of raising money for charities Clunes supports as patron (‘Each one has had two bites of the cherry over the years, including Weldmar Hospicecare, the Air Ambulance and Julia’s House – this year it’s the turn of the Dorset County Hospital Emergency and Critical Care Appeal’), Buckham Fair has grown into something far larger than anyone ever anticipated.
‘The first one was small – just a local pony club and a companion dog show really – and then somehow it just kept growing and growing, and the scale of it now is extraordinary, although it never gets ugly,’ he notes with a grin. ‘People have really taken Buckham Fair to their hearts. It has that proper old-fashioned country fair feel. There’s a lovely madness to it!’
Case in point is the hilariously named Lamb National, which – as the name suggests – involves racing sheep over jumps and is, according to Martin, ‘exactly as ridiculous as it sounds’.
Martin Clunes (Image: Katharine Davies)
There will also be a ‘Dog Most Like Neil Morrissey’ class, judged by his Men Behaving Badly co-star (I tell him I’m tempted to enter my salt-and-pepper miniature schnauzer Badger – he says: ‘Yes, do it!’).
Then there’s the dog fancy dress competition, one of Clunes’s personal highlights. ‘Some of the fancy dress entries are absolutely inspired,’ he beams, clearly relishing the prospect of pinning a rosette to something fabulously bonkers. ‘One dog came dressed as Sherlock Bones one year and even had a pipe in his mouth.’
Alongside plenty of other more serious judging, there is, for the first time, a Festival of Heavy Horses, with Clunes’s own beloved Clydesdales Patrick and Bruce among the equine stars.
‘I’m really excited about it,’ he says, a little misty-eyed at the mention of what he calls these ‘honest and steadfast’ creatures. ‘Usually at shows the heavy horses are tucked away behind the old tractors somewhere, but everybody wants to see them. There’s something about them that gives people a real gut punch emotionally. I’ve seen grown men cry watching them. There’s a reverence people have for them – a majesty that really affects people.
Shetland pony Billy with the now impeccably trained canine twins, John and Murray (Image: Katharine Davies)
‘In America everyone knows what a Clydesdale is because of Budweiser, but in Britain people don’t always realise how magnificent they are until they see them up close. To ride them is like riding underwater.’
It is easy to see why Dorset suits Clunes, Philippa and daughter, Emily. More than 30 years after moving down from London, he speaks of the county with the affection of someone who has long since stopped feeling like a newcomer.
‘We came down for a wedding in Corfe Castle and just fell in love with Dorset,’ he recalls. ‘Then we spent about two years coming down at weekends looking at houses. Very slowly it turned from, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a little place here?” into something more serious, and we bought an old rectory in Powerstock before moving to our farm. Dorset got under our skin very quickly. There’s a real sense of community and people have been incredibly welcoming. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.’
And it is not hard to understand why. With beautiful grounds studded with topiary, a walled kitchen garden and vistas stretching to Golden Cap and beyond to Exmouth, the setting gives the house the air of a fairy-tale castle perched high above the valley. But while the sun-drenched terrace offers every temptation to sit and admire the view, there is work to be done.
Life on the farm is, unsurprisingly, centred on animals – a menagerie of four dogs, four horses, including an impossibly sweet white Shetland pony called Timmy, a clutch of chickens in, what I discover, is a very boujie miniature shepherd’s hut hen house, and a herd of Dexters, which he sells to Framptons of Bridport.
Martin Clunes in the show ring at Buckham Fair. (Image: John Gurd)
‘There are always mouths to feed one way or another,’ Clunes says, with a smile. ‘Life here tends to be dictated by the animals before anything else. We’re right in the middle of our land, which suits the dogs perfectly. It’s a very happy chaos most days.’
Chief among the chaos makers are two canine ‘Kray twins’ – the stars of his latest book Training John & Murray – which charts the trials and tribulations of training two recalcitrant Foxwarren Jack Russell puppies as they run riot across field and farm.
Today, as we sit and chat – and later head out to the stables to meet the horses, Patrick and Bruce and groom Chloe – they appear the epitome of good behaviour, putting my own rather boisterous four-legged friend back home to shame. But Clunes admits it was not always the case.
Martin Clunes (Image: Katharine Davies)
‘When our lovely old Jim died, whom I loved so much I wished I could stitch him into me, and then our Jackhuahua Penelope two weeks later, the whole animal kingdom began to take the mickey. The badgers came in and ate the roses, the deer came in and ate everything else, and the foxes took the hens. Up until that point the terriers had kept them all away, so in the spring of 2024 we decided to get John and Murray,’ he explains.
‘Foxwarren Jack Russells are extreme Jack Russells – tiny dogs with absolutely no sense of proportion. They have the confidence of lions in the bodies of small lunatics. They would play together all day long, wrestling, chasing, shredding the furniture and causing mayhem, the result of something called littermate syndrome. They are ferocious hunters but also absurdly affectionate.’
So ferocious, in fact, that shortly after Martin and Philippa brought the puppies home, they managed to bring down and kill a deer. ‘Then one got into the neighbour’s field and attacked a lamb, and at that point we knew something had to change,’ explains Clunes. ‘We thought we could cope but we couldn’t. It got to the point where we genuinely thought we might have to split them up, which was heartbreaking even to consider. We had no choice but to get serious about training.’
Admitting that it was ‘mind-numbingly boring – four sessions a day with each dog for about five weeks of really intense work,’ Clunes says the process was as demanding for them as it was for the dogs. ‘A lot of dog training is really training the owners – the discipline is as much for you as it is for the dog. You realise very quickly how much of it is your own fault.’
Looking at Murray now, dozing peacefully on the window seat, and John – who immediately takes a shine to our photographer Katharine and clambers onto her lap – it is hard to imagine the mayhem that once preceded this newly restored calm. With the couple’s two blind but exceedingly lovely cocker spaniels Heidi and Bob Jackson snoozing in their baskets, the whole scene feels like something from a particularly soporific episode of All Creatures Great and Small.
As the interview draws to a close and we discuss some of his favourite local spots (The Fox at Corscombe and Winyard’s Gap Inn among them), I wonder whether people still clock him in Bridport and stop for a chat quite as often as they once did. ‘People don’t really bother me much – I think they’re over me now,’ he says with a smile.
Well, if the last Buckham Fair is anything to go by – 16,000 visitors, including an army of self-styled ‘Clunatics’ who travelled from as far afield as America and New Zealand – I wouldn’t be so sure..
The Buckham Fair is on Sunday August 2 2026. Visit buckhamfair.com for further details and tickets. Training John & Murray by Martin Clunes is published by Michael Joseph, priced £16.99
Training John & Murray by Martin Clunes (Image: Michael Joseph)
