“The phone rang and a weeping voice said, ‘Hello, this is Martin Clunes, I’m in a hotel room.’ I thought, ‘Help!, Do I call the Samaritans?’”
Harriet Laurie, founder of a charity, TheHorseCourse (THC), was relieved when the actor explained that he was crying because he had just looked at a video that she had sent in an attempt to persuade him to become a patron of TheHorseCourse.
“I do cry easily,” said Clunes. “It’s a standing joke with my wife, Philippa, and my daughter, Emily.”
On this occasion, it was inmates of Portland young offenders institution in Dorset who had started him off. Laurie’s video showed THC therapy in action; disruptive youngsters were learning that they could persuade Laurie’s horses to perform assigned tasks only if they changed their normally aggressive behaviour and, instead, became calm and patient.
“It was the little things that got me,” said Clunes. “A boy would persuade a horse to pick its foot up, then look round with a big smile to see if anyone had noticed, as if to say, ‘hey, look at me, look what I’ve done with this big horse’. It was moving to see because no one had bothered much with them; now here they were achieving things.”
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Clunes, 53, who won a Bafta as Gary Strang in the 1990s television comedy Men Behaving Badly, and is starring in the ITV drama Doc Martin, is in demand from charities wanting to pin his name to a good cause. “After I did Heavy Horsepower on TV, horse charities started writing to me.”
If you are looking for an animal lover, Clunes is your man. He owns 14 horses, including two Clydesdales, five miniature Shetlands “and my riding horse who’s retired and lives like a king”, four dogs, two cats, “two huge goldfish who’ve survived going out of fashion”, a flock of pedigree Dorset sheep and a herd of Dexter beef cattle — “funny little things but tasty”.
“It all started with Mary Elizabeth,” he said. “Philippa and I bought Mary Elizabeth, a cocker spaniel, when we got married in 1997. We lived in a flat in London that didn’t allow pets so I smuggled her in and out stuffed up my jumper. It worked until she got too big.” The spaniel suffered ill health as a puppy and nurturing her triggered off a love of animals, which was indulged when the family moved to 135 acres in West Dorset. He was approached by THC in 2011 after their mutual vet told Laurie that “she needed a famous patron and why not ask that Martin Clunes”.
Laurie founded TheHorseCourse, which is based in Dorchester, in 2010. “I’d been a horsewoman all my life. I learnt Parelli horse talk, and thought horses could be used to help people,” she said.
Horses are sensitive and will only be led by those they trust. Participants who adapt their own behaviour accordingly achieve success and a new sense of self-worth. THC helps vulnerable people who have failed to respond to other treatment. Statistics show that it achieves an average improvement rate of 29 per cent in eight skills, including communication, and an 80 per cent reduction in problem behaviour, which is assessed by outside agencies two months after the course.
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Clunes is also a patron of the Fortune Centre of Riding Therapy in the New Forest in Hampshire, which helps disabled people. He takes his Shetlands and his dogs into children’s hospices —“their faces just light up, children are born with an innate love of animals” — and he lends his ponies to the Riding for the Disabled Association. “They’ve just been given a Shetland pony so that the kids in wheelchairs can groom him,” said Clunes. “Yes, more weeping, I’m afraid.”
A master of the one-liner, 6ft 3ins of genial wit and, when he is not crying, the bearer of an instantly recognisable smiley face, he is exactly the sort of person a charity would want as a patron.
At THC, Clunes hears how Eliza Ashworth, 17, and Emma Taylor, 17, were referred for a five-day course by their mental health services for acute anxiety and depression. Taylor said: “Before this, I wouldn’t go out at all apart from to school. After THC, I flew on my own to America to stay with a friend.”
For Clunes, it is proof that he was right to engage with the charity. “I’m lucky, I’m well known from being on TV so I put it to good use,” he said. “Animals can be used to help people. I like Harriet and others reaching out to those who have fallen through every net. You can’t just throw people away.”
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