Former EastEnders Joe Absolom spent more time playing golf than acting in new comedy series Doc Martin, but he's ended up with a Cornish accent to be proud of. The actor talks over Walfoird woes. Steve Pratt reports.

Being away from home for three months, filming in ITV1's comedy drama Doc Martin in Cornwall, wasn't too much of a hardship for former EastEnders actor Joe Absolom. He used his spare time to brush up his golfing skills.

In fact, he almost seems keener to talk about that than the series in which Martin Clunes stars as a surgeon who abandons the big city to become a GP in a close-knit Cornish village. Absolom features as one half of a father-and-son plumbers' business who are constantly on call to sort out Portwenn's plumbing problems.

"I played a lot of golf," he recalls. "I got a lot better after three months. I got my first birdie while I was in Cornwall, and I've improved my swing no end. The more you play, the better you get really. And I played quite a lot. I got a good deal on the golf course.

"I've played for about ten years but haven't played since I got back from Cornwall. I'm rubbish now, so if anyone wants a game of golf..."

Absolom has successfully moved on from EastEnders, which he quit in 2000 after three years of playing mad Matthew Rose, who spent time behind bars after being framed for Saskia's murder by villain Steve Owen.

"I'm really proud of my role in EastEnders. I never thought I needed to shake it off," he says. "I've done a wide range of stuff since. It's a good age for an actor to be, so I can play a broad range of roles. I've really enjoyed coming out of EastEnders and doing different characters."

Most recently, they include a role in BBC2 1960s gangster saga The Long Firm and PoW. He also starred in Servants, an upstairs, downstairs story set in a country house which the BBC axed after just one series. The failure to recommission it left him bitter as he doesn't feel the Beeb gave it a fair chance of succeeding.

"You see other stuff going to two or three series. There were certain things wrong with Servants but it was such good writing and had originality. The BBC looked at their books and we got four million viewers even though we had to compete with I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here," he says.

"They put money into the idea and was different to what's on, stuff like Hell's Kitchen which is nonsense but watchable. We thought we would go again for a second series. Four million is a lot of people. It was one of those programmes where you looked forward to reading the scripts. So it was a shame really it didn't continue."

He's equally vocal about the recent troubles at EastEnders, which has been criticised for poor storylines and has suffered from falling ratings. He rarely watches the soap now and feels its bound to suffer with four episodes a week. "If you had asked anyone in this room, they would have said if you go four times a week, you can't keep that up that every week. I did three shows a week and that was chock-a-block."

The main attraction of playing Al Large in Doc Martin wasn't so much the role - because it's not a particularly large one but part of an ensemble cast - as the challenge of trying to master a Cornish accent. He worked with a voice coach and was expecting to brush up the accent by listening to locals in the hotels, only to discover that a lot of the staff were from New Zealand, who'd come for the summer for the surfing.

"I thought if I could pull off the accent, it would be another string to my bow," says Absolom.

Much of his time in the series is spent with screen father Ian McNeice trying to solve the village's plumbing difficulties. Later in the series shy Al tries to woo the doctor's receptionist.

His last three roles have been in period pieces but Doc Martin wasn't a conscious attempt to escape from the past. "To be honest, you get a script and if you like it, you want to do it. And I thought it would be a good thing to work with someone like Martin Clunes," he explains.

Absolom, who grew up in Lewisham in South-East London, has a good reason to work these days - he's bought his first property, moving out of his parents' house into a one-bedroom garden flat of his own.

"Usually you want to do work that you would watch. Having a mortgage, maybe I'll have to do stuff I don't want to do. But there's not much that I read that I don't like," he says.

He's recently visited Orange County in California, as part of his mum and dad's holiday house swap. "We got a big house with a lot of rooms and the people from LA got a semi in Lewisham," he says.

He has no ambitions to go to live and work in LA. "It's not really my cup of tea," he says.

* Doc Martin begins on ITV1 tonight (Thursday) at 9pm.

Published: 02/09/2004