From Tuesday, Mr Martin will spend the week in his former state raising funds for the Humour Foundation’s Clown Doctors. 

“I think the support the clown doctors give is invaluable,” he said. “I’ve been on a couple of the clown runs and you just see the reaction of the children and their parents.” 

This year, the charity hopes to raise more than $100,000 which will directly fund the program in Tasmania. 

Launceston General Hospital’s Lou Partridge said the hospital is the only one in the nation that helps fundraise for organisation. 

“My understanding is that there is no other hospital in Australia that does that, but we value the clown doctors so much that we’re willing to put our money where our mouth is,” she said. 

Television presenter Jo Palmer is the charity’s ambassador and spoke at Tuesday’s launch about her experience with the clowns in 2017 after her son spent time in hospital. 

“One day we were sitting there and he was complaining about the wadding up his nose … and in walked the clown doctors ... within five minutes there was toilet paper thrown all around the wards and all hell was breaking lose,” she said. 

“There were gross smells coming out of the clown doctors and Charlie forgot about everything that was going on and the whole reason he was in hospital.” 

She said the “real magic” started after the clowns left the ward. 

“For the next hour all the parents and kids were talking about the clown doctors. The whole memory of hospital had changed, it was no longer about the operations or the needles it was about toilet paper and the fart machine and the clown doctors that made them laugh,” she said.

“We were talking about how the laughter stopped the pain, how the laughter stopped the boredom and how the laughter took away all the stress the parents were feeling on the ward.”

The fundraising will start on Tuesday on the West Tamar Highway where the organisation raised more than $10,000 in 2017. On Thursday, fundraising will happen in Campbell Town, before moving to Hobart.