Caroline Quentin is ready to embark on one of the biggest challenges of her career – competing on Strictly Come Dancing. And no-one will be cheering her on quite like her loving family. The Men Behaving Badly star, 60, is a proud mum to two children with husband Sam Farmer, but how much do we know about her marriage and home life? HELLO! takes a look...
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Caroline Quentin's first marriage
Caroline was famously married to comic Paul Merton, from 1990 until their divorce in 1998. The former couple first met on a train on the way to Edinburgh Festival, with Paul throwing the book Caroline was reading out of a window.
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"I was sitting opposite him, reading, Alec Guinness's autobiography, I think," she previously told the Independent. "I said I thought it was terrible. He said he had read it and agreed. I said I didn't think I'd manage to finish it. He took it from me and threw it out of the window. 'That'll save you the trouble,' he said."
Caroline and Paul were married from 1990 until 1998
Caroline later admitted she was completely blind-sided by their split. "I didn't know my marriage was going wrong till it ended, really," she told the Guardian.
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Paul later found love with Sarah Parkinson, who had served as Caroline's understudy on the couple's three-month London leg of The Live Bed Show. Tragically, Sarah died from breast cancer in September 2003, just 12 weeks after officially marrying Paul.
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Caroline Quentin's lasting love
It was while Caroline was working on Men Behaving Badly in 1998 that she first laid eyes on showrunner Sam Farmer. She has described their meeting as "one almighty stroke of luck".
Caroline and Sam met on the set of Men Behaving Badly
"There's no mathematical reason for it, nothing clever that I did except that when I met him I thought immediately, 'Ah, there you are.' And fortunately he thought the same. Every year, it seems to us, our relationship gets stronger." The couple were married in 2006.
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Caroline Quentin and Sam Farmer's children
Caroline and Sam - who is 11 years Caroline's junior - share two children together: Emily, 21, and 17-year-old William.
The couple are the proud parents to two children
Sam decided to be a stay-at-home parent, with Caroline previously telling MailOnline: "We've swapped roles in the sense that Sam stays at home and runs the house - it's just the way it works for us."
Sam added: "Being a stay-at-home dad is liberating. I have a good relationship with Emily and William, and they get a male perspective."
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Caroline and Sam's home life
The family live together in Tiverton, Devon, where they own a farmhouse and 35 acres of land. Having been raised in suburban Surrey, Caroline feels privileged to have been able to raise her children with so much space around them.
They also have a menagerie of pets, including dogs, cats and a tortoise, grow most of their own fruit and vegetables, and have even raised their own animals for meat.
The couple live in a farmhouse in Tiverton, Devon
Caroline told Devon Life in a 2011 interview: "My links, heart and family are with this part of the world. We moved on an absolute whim.
"I was living in Suffolk at the time and my husband turned to me and said, 'If I don’t see a hill soon, I'm going to absolutely go out of my mind.' I said, 'OK, we'd better move.' We are now in our eighth year and I'm not going anywhere else.
"I've found it a very non-intrusive and accepting place. I've made so many friends. The people are very easy going and non-judgemental, which I think is extraordinary."
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