Comic Clary didn’t expect to be taken down the aisle
Having just returned from a late honeymoon in the Maldives, after completing a gruelling schedule which included stand-up tours in the UK and Australia, a West End panto and his own wedding, Julian Clary is hoping for a quieter year. “When you’re really tired and can barely speak to each other, the Maldives is the place to go,” the softly-spoken comedian observes. In November, Clary–master of the double entendre, Strictly favourite, winner of 2012 Celebrity Big Brother,and all-round popular funny man – married his long-term partner Ian Mackley, in a small, privateceremonyatCamden Town Hall register office. Now the happy couple are back at their home in Aldington, Kent, and Clary, 57, is busy promoting The Bolds On Holiday, his third children’s book in The Bolds series, about the adventures of a family of laughing hyenas who live in suburban Teddington, disguised as humans. While Clary has no children of his own, he has a brood of great-nieces and nephews to test his novels on. “My nephews and nieces have all now had children. There are about six children around between one and eight, so there’s plenty of scope,” he says. “We’re quite a funny family. We all laugh a lot. They understand my humour.” He and Mackley married last year after 11 years together , and Clary said it was a mutual decision to tie the knot. “I was always interested in marriage rather than a civil partnership, which didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t want a separate thing. If you think gay relationships areonapar with heterosexual relationships then we should have the same ceremony. “I was always a great campaigner for gay marriage, then found I didn’t particularly want it for myself, and then it just came about,” he adds. “We both made our wills and it came out of that, really. We both thought it would be a nice day out. No one popped the question. It was more, ‘When are you free?’ We both looked at our diaries. We didn’t tell anyone, it wasn’t a big thing. We only had two people at the wedding – my sisterandmyPA.”