A short attention span, little tolerance and an all-consuming desire to work… the curious case of Martin Freeman’s secret love split

EACH gives a newspaper interview. Both claim an amicable split.

But is the break-up of Sherlock stars Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington really quite so elementary?

Observe, if you will, testimony from their inner circle which now reaches us — and it seems this showbusiness case may be infinitely stranger.

Curiously, it seems that as Dr Watson actor Martin’s career has taken flight, his general disposition has grown a lot less like his mild-mannered screen character — and far more like the dear doc’s spiky boss Sherlock Holmes, played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

One friend let it be known to us last night: “The Martin we all know on screen is not the same man he is in private.

“He’s very tightly wound, super-quick and sharp. He’s intense, complicated and doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

"He has way more in common with  Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes than he does with the affable Watson.”

To the millions who sit down to enjoy the return of BBC crime drama Sherlock next weekend, Martin and Amanda’s parting of ways will seem like a cruel case of life imitating art.

Just as Dr Watson and his wife Mary’s relationship begins to fracture in the TV saga, so Martin, 45, and Amanda, 42, have called time on their own 16-year bond.

Announcing the news in separate interviews this week, the couple, who have been together since 2001 and have two kids, insisted it is “entirely amicable”, though both hinted his overseas filming commitments have played a part.

But both blamed the demands of his soaring career, which has transformed him into a Hollywood star worth £10million.

Since his breakthrough as nice guy Tim in TV sitcom The Office he has taken the lead in movie trilogy The Hobbit and major parts in superhero flick Captain America and US TV series Fargo.

Post-split, Amanda now looks after their kids Joe, ten, and eight-year-old Grace in the family home in Hertfordshire, while he has moved into a flat in North London’s fashionable Belsize Park.

She said: “You can’t be away from people too long, because you start to function on your own and get used to being separate from the person you’re supposed to be with. You lose that connection.”

But examine the evidence and clues to the breakdown have long been there, as admitted by the couple themselves.

By his own confession, Martin is grumpy, vain and difficult to live with — much like the consulting detective of Baker Street.

Amanda, on the other hand, sees herself as a natural carer who “just wants to look after everyone all the time”.

For a long time, Martin has kicked against his image as the likeable everyman.

In 2012, as he made his debut as the unassuming Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, he insisted: “I’m not particularly affable in real life, I have to tell you.

I’m not particularly affable in real life, I have to tell you. I became lovable Tim and a long shadow was cast.

Martin Freeman

“I became lovable Tim and a long shadow was cast. I’m happy with it, but you can only do what people will allow you to do.

“I know I have other aspects to me, but the more I say it, the more it sounds like I’m protesting too much.” But he has continued to protest. He dislikes being seen as approachable by fans and says he envies “other actors who have different reputations”.

Maybe he would prefer the arrogant demeanor of Sherlock, who puts off everyone with his  frosty intellect and haughty sense of his own brilliance.

Martin added: “Any pigeonhole is something to be rebelled against. When people say, ‘You’re a normal everyman’, I go, ‘Well, you f***ing find five of me in the street then!’ There aren’t many of me walking around.”

Not unlike Sherlock, Martin describes  himself as “a narcissistic p***k”, explaining: “I think about myself a lot and I think about how people see me a lot.”

He also admits he is fashion-obsessed and said: “I can’t leave the house unless happy with my appearance. It’s a sickness. It’s a nightmare for Amanda.”

In private, Martin swears a lot — like Sherlock — and he admitted: “If you ask my children and Amanda, they will say I am pretty grumpy and hard to live with sometimes.”

He also confessed, “I’m angry and defensive about everything” and that he is “not brilliant at being happy”.

Asked what makes him angry, he answered: “F***ing name it! Some of it is a sort of light-hearted anger that I know will pass, but some is pretty deep-seated, a fundamental part of me that I think people often don’t understand.”

The Sherlock TV series drops dark hints about Holmes’ childhood traumas which made him who he is.

Similarly, Martin’s dark side can be traced. His parents split when he was just one and he lived with his naval officer dad, who then died of a heart attack when Martin was ten.

When he was 15, he discovered acting, and found it a release for his churning emotions: “If I didn’t have this outlet, this valve, God alone knows what I’d be.”

While Martin likes to see himself as a troubled genius, friends say Amanda was his calming influence.

They first met in the make-up truck while filming Channel 4 drama Men Only in 2001, and moved in together six weeks later.

She said: “We just hit it off and I looked at him and thought, ‘Oh, it’s you . . . you’re the one I’ve been waiting for’.”

That was before The Office, which made Martin a household name. Amanda has since watched as his career soared, while hers remained modestly successful with parts in ITV’s Mr Selfridge and BBC police drama Cuffs.

By the time she was cast in Sherlock as Watson’s screen wife Mary, she had married Martin three times on screen.

So they felt no need to do it in real life. She said: “There’s no point. I’ve got photographs of me in three different wedding dresses with him.”

Martin has been asked to move to LA numerous times but Amanda insisted they stay in their “cute and quite shabby” £900,000 family home in Herts, near where she grew up.

Hardly the existence Holmes would crave. Indeed, the pair are clearly different. She has described how he thinks her “a nutter” because she is into astrology and the supernatural, and has told how he “said he’d leave” if she added more animals to their cat and three rescue dogs.

In 2013 she declared herself bankrupt over a £120,000 tax bill. Many critics claimed Martin — who has done a party-political broadcast for Labour — should have helped her out rather than pass the debt on to the state. For her part, she described it as “deeply shaming” and “the worst year of my life”.

Another low was the three years Martin spent filming The Hobbit series in New Zealand, when they relied on Skype.

Last October, she said: “At one point we didn’t see him for four months, which really took its toll.”

A short attention span, little tolerance for the domestic and an all-consuming desire to work.

To Sherlock fans, it will be familiar — and despite best intentions, it seems Martin was unable to settle into family life.

On New Year’s Day, Sherlock fans will see cracks in the Watsons’ marriage after the arrival of a baby.

Filming began two weeks after Martin and Amanda split. And fiercely private Martin will dread the parallel.

Asked last December if he planned to wed Amanda, he snapped: “Mind your own business. We live in an age where you have to know everything and that’s tedious.”

An answer so barbed, Sherlock Holmes would be proud.