Of course we've all loved seeing another side of the chirpy 53-year-old Martin Roberts in the jungle on I'm a Celebrity this year. An unsung hero of the daytime TV schedules, we may not often talk about it but a little bit of all of us loved Martin before he even entered camp.
Martin has enjoyed a varied career in the media, which began on BBC Radio Manchester after which he moved into telly, presenting Wish You Were Here? and Hole in the Wall: Martin’s TV career goes back over 25 years.
He also currently presents a weekly property radio show - Home Rule - on Talk Radio, covering all aspects of the property world with hints, tips, advice and competitions, often from his treehouse (pictured below).
Where is Martin Roberts' House?
Martin lives at his home in Somerset with his family, and from where he broadcasts his weekly TalkRadio show from his treehouse which can get chilly:
Who is Martin Roberts’ wife?
Martin Roberts is married. He got hitched to his wife Kirsty in 2010 and they have two young children, son Scott, nine and daughter Megan, six.
Martin Roberts on Masterchef
Martin already had one reality show under his belt when he went into the jungle – in 2010 he went for it in Celebrity MasterChef, but was eliminated in the first round, so we didn’t get to see much of Martin under pressure then – although we did obviously learn that he’s not much of a cook.
Martin Roberts on Homes Under the Hammer
Of course the real reason so many of us love Martin is for his ongoing marathon stint presenting Homes Under The Hammer. Martin’s been guiding us around mysterious, crumbling properties which are up for auction for an incredible 14 years now - and long may he reign as king of the unloved house!
He told tv.bt.com earlier this year: "I worked out that we must have done around 1,000 programmes, I will have visited around 2,000 properties, travelled around 180,000 miles up and down the country and done 10,000 pieces to camera."
"That’s saying 10,000 different things about houses. Hopefully I am still coming up with new things but occasionally I arrive at a two up, two down, and wonder what on earth I’m going to say, but there’s always something."
What is Homes Under the Hammer?
If you haven't seen the programme, each episode follows the transformation of three properties which were bought at auction – and are ususally in a terrible state. One of the presenters will view the property prior to going up for auction giving their opinion on it and its potential problems as well as attractive features.
Then we meet the buyer – sometimes they are businesspeople accustomed to renovating and selling properties on, and sometimes they are just an average joe on the street who has NO IDEA what they’re in for – these episodes are clearly the best ones.
Usually the inexperienced buyers breezily say they’ll do most of the work themselves, with a bit of help from their mates, that they only need to spend £1000 and they’re going to reconfigure the whole entire house in a couple of weeks.
Three months later, Martin returns to find out how they got on - and often they're traumatised wrecks who have spent three times what they had intended to! That'll teach them!
Homes under the Hammer also has some unexpected A-list fans:
We hear you Mark! We Brits do have a strange obsession with property shows: in a country where homeownership is a badge of pride, and increasingly difficult to achieve, Martin is there to guide us through the process.
Who else could drum up such consistent enthusiasm for an endless number of semi-detached three bedroom homes in The Wirral/Cumbernauld/Bradford/York?
And Martin can also clearly count fellow TV presenter and Kevin McCloud as a pal who's on his side.
Here they are cosying up together; and so they should. They have similar jobs, it's just that Kevin gets to present a Channel 4 evening show about middle-class couples getting overambitious trying to build carbon-neutral bamboo huts in Shropshire, instead of single men in their 20s trying to rewire a 1950s purpose-built flat in Stoke-on-Trent.
Homes Under the Hammer is a British institution. There is even a Tumblr Blog dedicated to his sterling work on the show, which takes pictures of Martin hard at work and captions them.
Martin’s also appeared on CBBC in riotous morning show Justin’s House, where he has a brilliant time playing with all the characters in front of a studio audience of screaming tots, proving he’s a pretty brave guy, and willing to do almost anything to entertain us. Thanks Martin!
Before he left for Australia this year Martin was already having nightmares about the challenges which lay ahead:
When Martin entered the jungle later than the other contestants, along with Danny Baker, we were all a little bemused. But Martin clearly wants to shake things up a little in his life – let’s face it visiting rundown houses can’t be all there is to life – and we applaud that.
He befriended Adam, which was touching, and had some incredible highs and lows. He was a trooper in the bushtucker trials, stuck his nose in everywhere and we learned that when nobody’s editing Martin’s words for him, he's got no ability to edit them for himself. He quickly turned into a 'marmite' campmate.
Martin also learned a lot about the world of modern social media while he was in the jungle. Campmates were talking about how many followers they had on Twitter, when Scarlett commented that she’s spends more time on Instagram, and that she has around half-a-million followers.
"I’m not being funny but why would half a million people want to look at pictures of kebabs and your dog?," asks a clearly confused Martin. A fair question, we say.
Larry Lamb is just one of the campmates who found Martin hard work in the jungle: "I think he means well," Larry said when Roberts’ name was brought up in his exit interview – Larry was obviously trying not to say anything mean. Then Dec tried to get more out of him: "He just irritated you?" and Lamb immediately replied: "Yeah."
Incredibly, at the time of writing Martin is STILL in the jungle. Here is his pitch for you to vote for him, to keep him there this weekend until he's crowned King.
Martin we love you – and we hope you find new horizons, and get an Instagram feed set up as soon as you get home so we can see pictures of your dinner and your treehouse.
Thanks so much for keeping us entertained when we’re off sick from work and all we can face doing is lying down on the sofa and let you give us a full tour of that pebbledash fixer-upper in Hove.
Larry summed Martin up for us really, when he was asked to describe Martin:
"[Martin’s] a different, different, different... vibe entirely."
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