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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\u201cAl takes the plunge and proposes to Morwenna in this series, which is brilliant,\u201d he says, \u201chowever it is a weak proposal. Chippy Miller, a returning character, overhears Al talking to Morwenna and says \u2018what a lovely proposal\u2019. Morwenna thinks it is a proposal, and says yes. It wasn\u2019t something he was thinking about, but he makes up for it by throwing a surprise party at the pub, and proposing to her again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sort of a weak moment for Al, and then he goes with it, as he often does, then suddenly he\u2019s engaged to be married. But he never wants to talk about the wedding plans. He is always trying to steer away the conversation. Much like people who are getting married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI felt very similar when arranging our wedding. I was not as responsive to some of the questions as I should have been. My fianc\u00e9 Liz and I decided to get married in Cornwall in real life. I didn\u2019t know when we planned the wedding that Al was going to get married in the script. We got married on June 8 this year, and just like Al I too have avoided many questions about the wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In real life too Joe found it tricky to find the right moment to propose to girlfriend Liz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI had the engagement ring for ages. At one point all her family came to stay with us in Cornwall, and I had a discussion with her dad about asking Liz to marry me and he said \u2018yes I think Liz would like that\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo I had his blessing. It was New Year\u2019s Eve and I had the ring on me all night and I was waiting for the moment to propose. Then I heard all these cheers. I looked round and saw Liz\u2019s dad on one knee asking his girlfriend to marry him. I thought \u2018I can\u2019t steal their moment\u2019 so I kept the ring, and I had it for another year because I couldn\u2019t think of how to propose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou hear of people putting so much effort into proposing and I am not particularly good at planning. It was Christmas Day and my girlfriend had got this red hand that you put on the wall for the kids. You put your hand on the red hand, you say your worry, and when the hand goes green you take your hand away, and it takes the worry away. So I thought \u2018this is a good moment\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI put my hand on the red hand and said \u2018I\u2019m worried Liz would say no if I asked her to marry me\u2019. The red hand turned green, I took my hand away, turned to Liz and said \u2018will you marry me\u2019. She said yes. It was impromptu. I knew something would come up but it just took a year for that to come up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joe and Liz have been together for 17 years, since meeting at a bar in London, and have three children, Lyla, Caspar and Daisy. When he started filming Doc Martin in 2004 Liz went to Port Isaac to visit him, and loved the place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCornwall is now our home because of this programme. We have lived here for five years. Our youngest child, Daisy is proper Cornish, she was born here. But the older two, Lyla and Caspar have more memories of Cornwall than anywhere else. Lyla, our first child, has had half of her life here. They all go to the surf clubs and have surfing lessons. We think it was a good move here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe wedding was at Pencarrow House in Bodmin, a place we filmed at in an earlier series. It is a beautiful location with rhododendrons and wisteria in full bloom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe got married under this archway, with the guests on the lawn, and thankfully it didn\u2019t rain. I have never thought about the weather so much in my life. It was a lot to arrange. We had 150 guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt feels like the most grown up thing we have ever done. We have had children, we have moved town, houses, mortgages, all this stuff you do, and you don\u2019t know how you\u2019re doing it, and then you\u2019re getting married and it feels like a big responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The actor says that Ian McNeice who plays his father Bert in the series did a reading at the wedding, and Martin Clunes and his wife Philippa were among the guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the start of this ninth series Al is running the Crab and Lobster, with Bert, for Ken, the owner who has gone away to recuperate after being unwell. Ken returns to tell them he\u2019s selling up. Al and Bert persuade Ken to let them continue to run the pub on a lease, but Ken dies before he signs the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAl and Bert are in limbo. They have put all this effort into the business and suddenly it is going to be sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat they don\u2019t realise is that Caitlin, the woman who has been working in the pub \u2013 and also runs the grocery store \u2013 who Bert has been very short with because she has a bit of a fancy thing for him \u2013 she then becomes the surprise person who buys it. She is the boss. It is quite scary for Al and Bert because they don\u2019t know what she is going to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe first thing she does is to send Al out of the pub to work at her grocery shop, which Al likes. He is quite restless in any one place. Al starts working in the shop and makes his own street food pop up shop out of the left-over food that would usually be thrown away. So he is already thinking of another business and another opportunity to make money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not sure it\u2019s a business I could get into because it\u2019s a lifestyle. My view of pubs has always been as a punter. But when we film a lot of stuff behind the counter it is a completely different perspective. I\u2019ve spent years drinking there, and now I\u2019m suddenly behind the bar and there\u2019s bits I\u2019ve never seen. It\u2019s a bit like a newsreader standing up with no trousers on!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Joe\u2019s eight-year-old son Caspar and elder daughter Lyla both appear in the new series of Doc Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doc Martin is broadcast on ITV CHOICE (DStv 123) on Mondays, starting September 30, at 20:00<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Absolom was in the midst of his own wedding arrangements when he read the scripts for the new series of the hugely popular Doc Martin, which returns to ITV CHOICE this month, and discovered his character proposes to long-term girlfriend Morwenna Newcross. \u201cAl takes the plunge and proposes to Morwenna in this series, which… Continue reading Doc Martin Returns To ITV Choice This Month<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[195],"class_list":["post-9085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television","tag-itv-choice","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}