Martin Roberts Exclusive Interview: Homes Under the Hammer & New Pub Project

Hi Martin, tell us about the projects that you’re currently working on.

I’m busy with a silly project, I say silly, but it’s an incredible project at the top of the Rhondda Valley in Wales where I’m renovating an old pub for the community.

It’s something that I’ve been working on for a couple of years now, and hopefully we’re going to turn it into a TV show, ‘Oops, I bought a Pub’. We’ve filmed little bits and pieces that you can see on YouTube, but I’m hopeful that it will get picked up by one of the major broadcasters.

Tell us all about the pub

It’ll be a pub, a restaurant and a boutique hotel. I’ve got lots of fun and funky ideas. All the bedrooms are going to be themed around TV shows. We’re going to have a Homes Under the Hammer bedroom with lots of memorabilia and a Doctor Who bedroom, we’re also thinking about having a Top of the Pops bedroom and a Fawlty Towers room – it’s going to be great fun!

Have you had any experience running a pub before?

(Laughs) I’ve never run a pub, I’ve never run a restaurant, I’ve never run a hotel, so what could go wrong (laughs)?

We’re filming everything and it’ll be a load of fun with great characters, but for me the most important part of the project is giving something back to this wonderful community and giving local people, younger people, an opportunity to roll up their sleeves and get stuck into the renovation alongside trades people. We’ve got youngsters learning how to paint and decorate, do carpentry and electrics and plumbing. So really trying to give disengaged kids a chance through working in the pub.

And also, it’s the only thing in the community. So, you know, we’re putting something back to the community, but I’m hopeful it will also be a destination that people want to come and visit. In the meantime, it’s a pile of rubble and I broke every single one of my Homes Under the Hammer golden rules. I didn’t read the legal pack, I didn’t get a surveyor in, and I did visit it beforehand. But oh my golly gosh, a derelict old pub that had not been touched for 150 years.

It has thrown up more problems than I could ever have imagined. But, we’re getting through them.

Homes Under the Hammer is such an iconic show. It’s been on our screens for 22 years – will it be on for another 22 more?

I can only hope so! I absolutely adore working on the show and love the fact that so many people keep watching it. It’ll definitely keep going because we’ve just been commissioned for another 80 episodes! There’s plenty more Hammer yet!

People absolutely love it.

They do! I know we’ve got celebrity fans, and whenever I hear that Meryl Streep always watches it when she’s in the UK. Daniel Craig watches it. Mark Wahlberg, I mean these are bloody Hollywood superstars. It’s quite incredible really.

I met Julie Walters, and she came running up to me, she was like, “Oh, Martin, Martin, lovely to meet you. You know, me and my husband, we sit there watching you in our slippers.”

And I’m like, Julie, I love you. Oh my gosh, it’s wow. And it was just amazing. Those things are always wonderful.

But the day-to-day people I meet, you know, the people I meet in Tesco, the people I meet when I’m at car boot sales, you know, come up to me and say, ‘You’ve actually made a difference to me. You’ve helped me through sickness. You’ve helped me when my wife was terminally ill and I had to nurse her. You’ve helped me when I was an expectant mother…’

All these people who just give me their life stories and then tell me how the show has impacted on their lives. And that is something that I am so proud of.

I’m very lucky to be part of a show that can affect people in such a positive way.