Martin Clunes: why I no longer travel with my homemade hot sauce
The actor on his passion for Paris, the magic of Madagascar and the essential tea bags that he never travels without.
The actor on his passion for Paris, the magic of Madagascar and the essential tea bags that he never travels without.
While it was his acting work that initially made Martin Clunes a household name, particularly playing Gary in Men Behaving Badly, and later the eponymous medic in Doc Martin, since 2009 he has also presented several popular TV travel documentaries.
Many of us loved watching his journeys around Britain, Australia, America, the Pacific and the Atlantic. But which are the destinations that have won a lasting place in Clunes’s heart?
Paris because I love the wide streets and, as I know it a bit, I enjoy just wandering around. I also love the importance of bread there – it makes it into every meal.
Last year, my wife Philippa and I went to Paris to see the Hockney exhibition in the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne. We just went for the night and it was really good fun going on the train.
The Eurostar is great – it makes visiting Paris so easy, doesn’t it? We got there, had supper, went to the exhibition, had lunch and got the train back again.
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Madagascar. It was my favourite before I ever went there – the mystery of it – and although I’ve been there three times now, I’d love to go back.
It’s just magical, with special, beautiful people. They are literally such incredibly beautiful people – no wonder they have a population problem and can’t keep their hands off each other!
I went into the primary rainforest hiking, looking for lemurs, which was the most incredible experience.
In future, I’d love to go and see the baobab trees in the south of the island.
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I’d love to travel with my Foxwarren Jack Russell dogs, John and Murray, as they are so entertaining. We’d need to pick somewhere for them to have fun so they’d enjoy it and the essential element would be a place with lots of squirrels for them to chase.
Or, alternatively, somewhere with a rodent problem. Not so nice for me, but they would absolutely love it.
Barry’s Tea, which is very strong Irish tea – a dark builder’s brew. The tea comes from Rwanda, Kenya and Assam and it’s rich and absolutely delicious.
When I went to film the programmes about the Pacific Islands, I took some of my homemade hot sauce and it exploded in my suitcase.
Philippa grows these mental chillies in our greenhouse, and I put one of those chillies in with 12 Romano peppers, roast them, and add honey and vinegar.
The sauce is really, really hot, but so nice. My nephew designed a label for it, but it’s so labour intensive to make, I could never make enough of it to sell. I just make a few jars at a time.
It really has the most delicious flavour, but it is something you don’t want exploding all over your underwear.
In his Islands of the Pacific series Martin visited the Galapagos Islands, telling the Telegraph, “The wildlife there was every bit as impressive as I’d imagined, and the lengths they take to protect it is incredible.”
You can visit these incredible islands with Saga.
Training John and Murray by Martin Clunes (Michael Joseph, RRP £22) is out now.
(Hero image credit: Nicky Johnston)
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