Luke Harvey: 'I don't mind playing the giggling idiot - but I can hold my own'

There's precious little glamour about the scrawny figure at the bottom of the driveway in the muddy waterproofs and the yellow woolly hat. It's a damp and chilly morning in the Cotswolds, very much time for a log fire and a cup of Bovril, but he's out among the elements, scooping horse eggs into a big wheelbarrow, cheeks red from the wind, bald pate cowering from the cold. It's no way for a TV star to live.

Luke Harvey's default position on life, though, is not to grumble and gripe about it. If you love horses, after all, mucking out is part of the deal, and while the stables may be a bit rudimentary, they'll soon be knocked down, like everything else on the 26-acre site, and transformed into another little part of his dream home.

Once the hedges are up and the bungalow has been bulldozed, the house and barns have been built and the gigantic pile of tarmac scrapings in the corner has been turned into hardcore, it'll all be just dandy, so a bit of shovelling s**t in the cold and wet is hardly the end of the world.