Martin Dear - History

History

Martin is a house officer at East Hampton Hospital. His mother is human resources director Joanna Clore and his half-brother is Dr. Guy Secretan.

Martin has had a rather unhappy life. He is unloved by his mother, who wants the fact that he is her son kept a secret as it would reveal her true age if discovered, and his parents are divorced. His father was a newsagent called Donald Twatt, but they changed Martin's surname. In an episode of series 2, Martin hires a private detective, and eventually, Martin and his dad meet when Martin accidentally knocks over his father's present for him. He grew up in a very small town, which Martin claims had only one black person in it called Chas, who had spiky green hair. As a result he used to think that black people were, "Just a kind of giant Muppet". He claims to be 'all right' now. At school he was nicknamed "Chuzzlewit", after Martin Chuzzlewit, which was shortened to "Tit", then lengthened to "Titbrain". But Martin still sees this as compliment due to the Martin Chuzzlewit origin.

He is a candidate for the part one examination for membership of the Royal College of Physicians, the first step to promotion to registrar and eventually consultant positions. At the beginning of the series he has already failed the exam an unspecified number of times. His anxiety over the exam and eventual failure are a theme of the first series. He worries obsessively that failure at the exam will prevent him from specialising and end his career with the hospital.

His half-brother constantly bullies him, often calling him "Fartin", and telling him he is the weaker of the two of them. Guy has mocked him verbally, physically and mentally, from making fetch squash balls thrown at him down a hospital corridor, to strangling him around the neck up against a wall. However Mac often comes to his rescue. He was also friends with Dr. Angela Hunter, and during her funeral, performed a mime to express his feelings about her. Although he is unaware of this, Kim Alabaster and Naughty Rachel in HR often call him "Martin Dear, he's so Queer", but this is mainly to irritate Karen Ball another worker in HR who has a crush on him.

He has very little in the way of a love life. He has deep affections for surgical registrar Dr. Caroline Todd, but Caroline sees him as nothing more than a good friend. Martin still does have affections for Caroline, and proposed to her, with the help of Karen, Kim and Rachel as cheerleaders, but Caroline turned it down, after she realised the name they were spelling went, "M, A, R" not "M, A, C". He does however attend Caroline's wedding to Mac.

He has also had an encounter with Karen, however he decided to leave her because their relationship was becoming too physical. However, when he tries to dump her, he always changes his mind. He once left a message on Karen's mobile phone, changed his mind, and in a bid to stop Karen from listening to it, put it in his mouth and swallowed it. The relationship did end however, when she heard that Martin was seeing a prostitute (although they never had sex, he was acting for her as sort of involuntary pimp). The relationship began again when he punched her new boyfriend to win her back.

He also has money problems. He once became a nude model for a hospital painting class, where one of the students, liaison officer Sue White claimed he had a large penis. However, he did once win £10,000 on a lottery scratchcard (£7,000 of which he gave to the cashier after he made a deal with her because he did not pay for the scratchcards upfront). He is also constantly failing his medical examinations to his mother's embarrassment. He drinks Guinness (which he hates) to look cool, and alcoholic drinks disagree with him in general.

Martin has twice been involved in car accidents. The first accident happened when he told Guy that they were half brothers. Guy stole an ambulance with Martin and Mac in it, and drove it over a cliff. Martin was relatively unhurt, but Mac ended up in an eight-week coma and suffered amnesia. The second accident occurred when he climbed onto a stolen camper van with Joanna on board with Dr. Alan Statham, who ended up (almost) driving it over exactly the same cliff. The last scenes show him trying to escape death yet again. Martin however manages to call the AA and rescue them. He soon gets dumped off the van. The last he ever hears from Joanna is from a postcard sent by her and Alan.

In his spare time, Martin likes to ride his scooter, an Aprilia Habana 125. He always rides it to work, despite the fact that lives directly opposite the hospital. He also likes to spend time with his best friend and fellow junior doctor Boyce. Martin is also well travelled, having visited both France and Holland. He is also circumcised, although he does point out he is not Jewish. He claims that Wayne Sleep was the best person he was compared to, the worst one being Dustin Hoffman.