West Dorset television personality Martin Clunes is to recreate one of his best loved roles.

The actor, who lives in a former vicarage in the village of Powerstock, near Bridport, with his wife and daughter, is to play Gary in Men Behaving Badly when it returns to TV screens after a five-year break.

Three BBC1 specials are to be filmed next year with Clunes and Neil Morrissey reviving their memorable roles as the laddish former flatmates Gary and Tony.

Caroline Quentin and Leslie Ash will be returning as the long-suffering Dorothy and Deb and the shows will once again be written by Simon Nye.

The popular sitcom, featuring two boozy, oafish 30-somethings who refuse to grow up, propelled Clunes to stardom in the 1990s.

But the final series saw Gary finally settle down and marry Dorothy and in the last episode, part of a trilogy shown at Christmas 1998, he became a father.

First shown on ITV in 1992, the sitcom featured Harry Enfield as Tony but he was replaced by Morrissey in the second series. Later dropped by ITV and subsequently snapped up by the BBC, the show became a huge hit, but a US version failed to catch on.

Clunes moved to Dorset in 1998 with his second wife, the producer Philippa Braithwaite, and has a daughter, Emily Kate.

He has said that he is in reality nothing like his counterpart in Men Behaving Badly and very much enjoys domesticity and fatherhood.

Soon after his daughter's birth, he said: "No matter how many preconceptions you have, nothing really prepares you for the second your baby is born."

The award-winning comedy actor and his wife also run their own production company Buffalo Pictures which keeps him busy when he is not filming.

London-born Clunes has told the Echo that he enjoys a quiet country life.

He said: "You don't get too much hassle in Dorset.

"I've only ever really known London and since we got the house in Dorset the country is becoming more and more like home."