I’VE GOT A FAN CLUB: THE BERT LARGE LOVERS GROUP!
As he prepares to film the final series of ITV’s Doc Martin, Portwenn’s roly-poly jack of all trades tells JAMES DESBOROUGH how he’s lost 50lbs and become an unlikely sex symbol
and muck it out. And I thought to myself, ‘I can’t get any lower in the theatre than shovelling the **** ’.
“And it was true. From then on, it went up and I did theatre, television, a series called Edge Of Darkness, which was a BAFTA success. And then, of course, my big American break was with Jim Carrey, Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls.
“Only yesterday, a 15-year-old came up and said, ‘Hey, it’s you from Ace Ventura. All righty now.’ And I thought to myself, ‘You can’t have been born when I made this in 1995’. It’s incredible.
“Most recently working with Tom Cruise on Valkyrie, Michael Keaton on White Noise. I’m hugely fortunate, hugely lucky to have had such a career.”
It’s clear working with Martin Clunes on Doc Martin has been a highlight.
“There are a lot of outtakes of us just cracking up on the show, Martin plays practical jokes as well.
“The other incredibly funny thing about it is, I swear to God, people must be hiring out dogs because you see these people bringing dogs into the village as Martin will stop in the middle of filming and go, ‘Oh, hello. What’s your name?’ And he’ll pick up a dog, he’ll kiss it, he’ll hug it and all the rest of it. And we’re left there waiting 15 minutes while he now is in love with a pooch of some sort. It’s just phenomenal.” Doctor Who and Doc Martin fans might have noticed that Ian’s looked a lot less cuddly recently. He lost 3st 5lb after a doctor said he needed to lose weight before a much-needed knee replacement operation.
Ian says: “I ran into a problem the last few years with arthritis in my knees and this last year I took a year out as I reached a point where I have to deal with this. As you get older and things get harder and certainly you get less mobile, which is what I was when I was getting too big.
“When I went to see the surgeon about my first knee replacement, I said to him, ‘Can you operate? Am I too big?’ He said, ‘No, but I’d like you to lose 50 pounds before I operate on you.’ I did take that into account and did the normal thing with this, I went to Weight Watchers and lost weight.
“So December one year ago, I had one knee fully replaced and then in July, the other one done. I’ve been in rehab since then trying to get things going again.”
Ian admits that his life and health has vastly improved.
“Totally. Absolutely. Less breathlessness, being able to walk further. And a lot of rehab: going to the swimming pool, and walking up and down in the pool and stuff like that.”
No doubt Ian’s female fans will be very glad to hear it.
INTERVIEWED on stage this week by Prince William at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sir David Attenborough, 92, has long enjoyed a warm rapport with the royals.
Normally friendly relations with the Queen only became frosty on one occasion, when Sir David was producing her annual Christmas broadcast for television.
Her Majesty took exception to being awkwardly informed by Attenborough that she needed to change her dress, due to it clashing with the wallpaper.
TOUCHED by pictures of two young boys clearing the snow off the court in order to play at Rutherglen Lawn Tennis Club, near Glasgow, Judy Murray fondly recalls of champion sons Andy and Jamie: “I know two little boys who used to shovel snow off courts in Dunblane.”