David Belcher | 06 November 2007 | The Herald

We always knew the world's angriest, most socially disabled GP, Dr Martin Ellingham, would never stalk awkwardly down the aisle beside Louisa Glasson, schoolteaching's creamiest clotted Cornish dessert, in Portwenn's wedding of the century.

We can't say the mismatched twosome didn't try on the big day, though. Well, Doc Martin did. Consider the obstacles (most of which the hapless curmudgeon had fashioned himself, admittedly) that he overcame en route to not making it to the church at all, let alone on time.

First, three hours before the ceremony, the doc disabled the vicar by breaking his leg (accidentally). He'd already offended the sozzled old cleric, of course, by undiplomatically diagnosing his alcoholism and then bashing his head against a door (yes, yes, it was another accident).

Next, he bravely secured a stand-in vicar by submitting himself to an unspeakable veterinary ordeal, digital in nature, with a sow suffering from a rectal prolapse (many's the bridegroom who would have drawn the line at that). Martin also made up for being cold and grumpy on initial introduction to his impending wife's heavily pregnant bridesmaid and best pal, before swiftly ordering her to commit a major wedding-day style faux-pas: he told her to wear a piratical eye-patch (to treat an eye injury which, thankfully, turned out not to be a ruptured anterior chamber). So how did he make amends? Only by delivering the bridesmaid's baby in a world-record time for a first labour - about 25 seconds - that's how.

But the Ellingham-Glasson nuptials were never meant to be. All the omens were agin' it, from odd intimations of divorce and impotence to the reception being scuppered by flooding and a collapsed marquee (and the dry cleaner losing Martin's trousers).

The sudden arrest of Portwenn's florist severely endangered the wedding bouquets. Martin's receptionist, Pauline, did the most damage, ridiculing her boss by calling him "Prince Charming with a stethoscope", thereby prompting the locals to widespread cackling.

It was Portwenn's communal scorn that crucially awoke Louisa to her looming marital error. That and the fact that Martin's never spoken a civil sentence to her. Or touched her tenderly. Prince Philip with a stethoscope, more like. She'd only be marrying him for his professional status, she realised. His bedside manner is distant enough: his in-bed manner defies consideration. I'm not sure Louisa will be around when - or if - Doc Martin returns for its fourth season. The doc's wholly typical last words, bellowed at a hobbling patient, lacked promise for the future: "Shut up, and go and wait in the consulting room!"