Bullies made my life a misery

Martin Clunes leans forward in his chair, tugs at one of those famous ears and fixes his eyes at a point over my shoulder. "Did you order a boy?" he says in mock astonishment. I turn to find a small, young waiter has entered the hotel room silently behind me. Clunes, his first joke of the day safely delivered, decides on a ham sandwich and tea, "brewed in a pot", before apologising for his hunger and explaining he has just come to London by train and "had no time for lunch".

Looking comfortable in a brown jumper and grey cords, the Men Behaving Badly star is deferential and warm as he settles back to talk about his latest project, a lavish television adaption of the classic film Goodbye Mr Chips. The story about the public school master who becomes a wise and cherished influence in the lives of many vulnerable young boys has certainly struck a chord with the actor.

Although normally reticent about his own childhood, he speaks frankly about his gruelling time at boarding school and it quickly becomes clear why the story touched him.

When he was aged nine, his father, the respected theatre actor Alec Clunes, died of lung cancer. It was felt the young Clunes would benefit from a more masculine environment, so he was packed off to Barfield School in Farnham, Surrey, where he suffered severe homesickness, bed-wetting and bullying.

"It was agony going away to school," he recalls. "Even though I was allowed home at weekends, I would cry all the way there when mum dropped me off and she would cry all the way back. It broke mum's heart as well." He could have been crushed and cowed after such an experience, but he wasn't. Indeed, as he recounts his schooldays he refuses pity. "It wasn't all bad and I certainly didn't snivel my way through school as an outcast or anything like that," he says.

"I was bullied because I had come from a state primary and all these posh Surrey boys were a bit ahead of me in terms of confidence. But it's character building. Kids are barbaric - especially boys. I was called names, Big Ears, Dumbo - children will pick on anything that is different, but not having a father and being a bed-wetter were things which were picked out more."

He says he never asked his mother to take him away from the school. "As a child you are not empowered to question anything. You don't have any control of your destiny at that age - I certainly don't remember having any anyway."

For years he fought to gain that control and admits that therapy helped. "It was years before the bedwetting stopped. I went to see a shrink - it was all tied in with my dad's death and a sense of low selfworth. The shrink did work, but look at what I do for a living - I seek approval on a grandiose scale."

He left school at 16 with one O-level and a CSE and attended the Arts Educational Drama College in central London. From there he went into repertory and television. His first TV appearance, at the age of 19, was in a blue satin dress as the sinister Prince Lon in Doctor Who.

He went on to appear in Inspector Morse and played Shakespearean roles, including a highly praised Mark Antony. As a theatre director, he won the 1990 Charrington London Fringe Award for his production of Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. That approval he first sought in his teenage years has been more than heaped upon him as he has finally won control of his life and career. Comedy, with Men Behaving Badly, brought him fame, but for a while it seemed those rubber features were to be pigeonholed for ever.

To make matters worse, his marriage to actress Lucy Aston ended after less than three years. He admits this failure left him " resistant" to matrimony. He chose to change career direction with a lowbudget 1994 film, Staggered. Sliding Doors producer Philippa Braithwaite also worked on the project and when she lost her director, Clunes agreed to direct and star.

The couple have been together ever since, marrying in 1997. With typical self-perception, Clunes acknowledges that his jaundiced thoughts on matrimony were "crap". "Philippa and I were quite resistant to marriage because we were both walking wounded. You do think that 'it's the word marriage that doesn't work for me', but that's rubbish - it's down to individuals and I had to relearn that."

The success in his personal life has been reflected in his career with a
string of triumphs, including Neville's Island, Shakespeare in Love, A is For Acid and a critically acclaimed Tartuffe at the National.

Obviously Clunes's childhood experiences must have left a mark, but he doesn't appear to be mentally scarred. In fact, in a profession stuffed with big egos, he seems remarkably well-adjusted. He carries his 6ft 3in frame with relaxed confidence, and there is something very attractive about his self-deprecating humour.

Clunes places much of the credit for his contentment with his wife. "I instantly recognised it as the relationship that was going to sustain me for the rest of my life."

And, indeed, the role that seems to have sustained much of his working life - the leery, lazy grown-up teenager Gary in Men Behaving Badly - is about to about to be dusted off for another outing. Plans are afoot for three specials next year with co-stars Caroline Quentin, Neil Morrissey and Leslie Ash.

"We did quit while we were ahead," he says, "but I agreed to do it again because it was such good fun. And I suppose they will pay us well, although not as much as the papers keep saying."

Goodbye Mr Chips is on ITV1 on Boxing Day.