Alan Titchmarsh

Alan Titchmarsh0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is a gardener. He's probably, thanks to television, the most famous gardener this country has ever known. His knowledge of plants, flowers, and hedges has seemed on occasions to be a bit of a sideline as he's popped up in many different roles the chat show host, the newspaper columnist and the novelist. This remarkable success has flourished in a man who, by his own admission, was useless at school. Nature was his consolation, and in the end a brilliant disguise for a man who was determined to prove he knew a lot about gardening and much more besides. I felt squashed all the time at school, he says, because I was so much of an eager puppy. Well, every dog has his day. He's the presenter of Ground Force and Gardener's World. He's Alan Titchmarsh, who would of course do marvellously on a desert island. You'd have a little shack knocked up in no time, wouldn't you?

Alan Titchmarsh1:15

I I would, I think. Yes, and a row of beans in um should I find seeds there.

Presenter1:18

You see that?

Presenter1:21

And a little Edwardian rail around it, a kind of Victorian feel to it.

Alan Titchmarsh1:24

But nothing painted blue.

Alan Titchmarsh1:27

What is this about blue? I use blue paint a couple of times on ground floors, and I think I've been rather labelled with it. That and decking. I think they're probably going to deck over my grave.

Presenter1:35

You've revolutionized the decking market, I read.

Alan Titchmarsh1:37

Yeah.

Presenter1:39

Amazing, put millions of pounds on it. And would there be grasses around or or you know, round this little

Alan Titchmarsh1:44

I'd be very happy to work with what was there. I mean, I'm a great believer in in although gardeners of course introduce plants from everywhere to their gardens, but I'm great believer in working with what you got, and I'd really quite relish the task of getting to grips with a new foreign flora and finding out, probably, the hard way, what I could eat and what I couldn't.

Presenter1:57

Mm.

Presenter2:01

Exactly. And I I mean, quite seriously, it it would be a good setup for you, it seems to me, from what you do, that that you like your own company. That's essentially gardening is quite a a lonely task, isn't it?

Alan Titchmarsh2:11

As is writing, yes, I think I've ended up in a way with two of arguably the loneliest pursuits, but I I enjoy my own company very much, in that I do need peace and quiet now and again. But equally I'm very gregarious. I'm a you know, great family man and a group of very close friends that I've had for many years, without whom I would be very lonely. But I like the ability to switch from rabid, gregarious company to solitude and silence. Um I'm very much one for for quiet. I get up in the morning, I don't have anything on, no radio, no Teddy. Um just for the first hour, just the sound of the birds.

Presenter2:47

And the the gardening itself is, it seems to me, for you both therapy and exercise, isn't it? I was reading your your first novel, The Eponymous Hero, Mr MacGregor, Rob MacGregor, who, when he's got a problem, goes out and digs, and he does it beautifully, and he turns over each clod very evenly, and his dad comes along with his pipe on, looks and says, Ah, you know that's What? Is that you? Is that is that what you like doing?

Alan Titchmarsh3:11

Yes, and there's a lot of me in Rob McGregor. I mean, there are bits of him that are not me. And he does one or two things that I haven't done. And he's.

Presenter3:18

And he's tall and he's tan and he's handsome and

Alan Titchmarsh3:19

Those tannins. One or two attributes that I haven't got as well. A brilliant lover, it has to be said. And one or two attributes I have got.

Presenter3:23

He's a brilliant lover, Rachel said.

Alan Titchmarsh3:27

Good with his hands. Very good with his hands, that's it. Yes, I find great solace in practical work, which I think is why I fell into gardening so readily from a relatively unhappy school life. Because I I I've always been pretty good with my hands. Um enjoyed nature, enjoyed the outdoors, enjoyed working with plants and animals and just being a part of of the great outdoors. So I'm a natural gardener, I guess.

Presenter3:52

Let's hear about some of the music you're going to dig to on your desert island. Tell me about the first one.

Alan Titchmarsh3:56

Well the first one I suppose is very evocative of the great outdoors and when I hear it, it's one of those pieces of music of high emotion. Uh you can listen to it in a car, you can listen to it in a room, anywhere you like at any time and it will transport you to a high field and a clear blue sky and it's Form Williams the lark ascending.

Presenter5:18

Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending, played by Pinker Zuckerman and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barrenboyne. Tell me about your own garden, Alan. It sounds like a complete nightmare. It's north-facing, steep sloping, flint and chalk, and overlooked by neighbours on both sides.

Alan Titchmarsh5:32

Well, there you are. You have it in a nutshell. It's north northwest slope. The soil is vile. When people say, you know, it's all right for you, I say, Jolly well, isn't it? You know. And if you watch Gardener's World and and that every Friday is filmed in my garden, what you see there is is is my lump of my bleeding piece of earth, if you like.

Presenter5:49

So it's always in your garden garden as well.

Alan Titchmarsh5:50

Yeah, my lumps.

Presenter5:52

And so it's a series really of different little stage.

Alan Titchmarsh5:55

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh5:56

Because that was the challenge, I think, was to make it all knit together as a a unified whole.

Presenter6:01

But don't you long for one of those beautiful gardens that we would all expect you to have a kind of broad, expansive, dreamy, herbaceous, bordered, beautiful thing that you could meander around, and surrounded the house, and no neighbours gawping over the fence?

Alan Titchmarsh6:16

Yes, partly I do. Um but the neighbours don't go up over the fence. I've got very good neighbours, I have to say. Um and I I feel sorry for them sometimes. I mean, living next door to th the kind of gardeners world garden

Presenter6:27

But what would you have if you could really have your ideal garden? Forget what you've got.

Alan Titchmarsh6:28

You have

Alan Titchmarsh6:31

I'd have an old house. My house isn't old. It's seventies, early seventies. We've built on bits here and there. I'd love a historic house, I guess, with a garden around it which um was sympathetic to it in terms of its period. Perhaps Georgian.

Presenter6:44

So we're what, Delphiniums, Gladioli?

Alan Titchmarsh6:47

You don't like gladiators. Oh no. Daemedna's welcome to that.

Presenter6:51

What else isn't in your favorite garden, then? What do you hate?

Alan Titchmarsh6:54

Um pampas grass I'm not mad on, and gladiola. If you look at the things I don't like, they tend to be kind of unbending, stiff, starchy sort of plants. I rather like I like good lines in a garden, really s strong edges to beds and borders. But within them I like sort of gay abandon, you know, plenitude and billowing banks of flowers.

Presenter7:15

They say that gardens, rather like the clothes we wear, say a lot about us. I wonder what your ideal garden says about you.

Alan Titchmarsh7:18

Don't wonder what your

Alan Titchmarsh7:21

No, probably that I'm not a regimental sergeant major, not too many things in rows. Echo number two. It really shows back this one a bit to childhood and up to date. To childhood, it's the band of the Royal Marines playing Sunset. And my dad, of whom I was very, very fond, bought a dancette gramophone. He had two LPs. The first LP was Mendelssohn's Finkels Cave and the second LP was the band of the Royal Marines and he used to love Sunset. And so it reminds me very much of him. And I had a great treat recently. I was asked to become a deputy lieutenant for Hampshire, which gives me a uniform and a sword, which is ever so exciting. And I met Princess Alexandra last week in my uniform. It's Alan Titchmarsh. And she peered at me closely and said, not the gardener, you know, underneath the uniform. And we had a do down in Hampshire for the Jubilee, which is wonderful. And the Adjutant General's band were there. And from the top of the Great Hall in Winchester, one of their number played Sunset. And it reminded me so much of my Dad. And I thought, oh, he would so have loved this.

Presenter8:50

Band of the Royal Marines, conducted by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Neville, playing Sunset and thoughts of your dad, Alan Titchmarsh, and brass bands, Ilkley Moor, where you were born.

Alan Titchmarsh8:59

He was a f he was a fireman as well and he used to take part in the uh annual remembrance service and my sister and I used to go and watch him in the in the parade with the Hammond Sauce band. I remember the play but they never played Sunset like that.

Presenter9:12

But he was a plumber by trade and he hated gardening. Why?

Alan Titchmarsh9:13

I mean

Alan Titchmarsh9:15

Yeah.

Presenter9:15

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh9:15

Passion. Both his father and his grandfather had been professional gardeners. And then my his dad made him weed when he was little. And as a result of which he hated it. Uh but my mum was quite keen and she I suppose later on nourished nourished the seedling. And do you still

Presenter9:28

And you still use grandad's spade?

Alan Titchmarsh9:30

I do all the time on telly. The T handled spade. I it says on it James Potts Cherry Tree No. One. And I used it my grandfather used it on his allotment. My dad used it for mixing concrete. It took me ages to chisel it off. And I've now put it back to the soil. So it's it's still being used. I wouldn't be without it.

Presenter9:49

So even as a little boy you were passionate about all of this, were you?

Alan Titchmarsh9:52

Will you catch it?

Presenter9:52

How early and what did you grow?

Alan Titchmarsh9:54

Ooh, I suppose about nine or ten.

Alan Titchmarsh9:57

And I just grew those seeds that you bought at Woolworths, you know, mister Mr Cuthbert's and bees and those little packets with with pretty flowers on, which sometimes grew to look like the picture on the packet, sometimes not. And I built a little greenhouse in the back garden out of polythene and old wood that my dad had brought back from the yard. Uh and I grew old geraniums and spider plants and things like that in it.

Presenter10:19

And did this add to your being teased at school? Did it make you odd? Did it mark you out?

Alan Titchmarsh10:23

Funnily enough, no, you'd have thought it would've done, wouldn't you? And the kids in the street you know, I used to join in with football and cricket at the bottom against the bus carriage wall with everybody else. But me and a mate across the road uh used to sow seeds and grow flowers as well. No, nobody ever took the mickey out of us for that, which it I you know, thank it I thank them very much for not putting me on. So what were you teased about?

Speaker 110:38

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh10:43

Being small, I think, I was very tiny at school. And the small the i i if you want a vision of me at school, if you remember the film Kez, Billy Casper, that little boy in goal, that was Alan Titchmarsh, that was me to the life, attitude and everything, keen, excited, sit down, that kind of and it was very much that I saw that film and it.

Alan Titchmarsh11:08

It made my blood run cold because I remember exactly how it felt.

Presenter11:11

And you you just felt squashed all the time by the teachers.

Alan Titchmarsh11:13

Teachers really. I don't you know, I can see now why. I mean, they had a heck of a lot on those teachers. I don't feel bitter about it. I mean, it must have been a pain in the bum.

Alan Titchmarsh11:22

Really?

Presenter11:22

You said, I just knew what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, and I knew I had to do it. What was it?

Alan Titchmarsh11:29

I've never been I would say

Alan Titchmarsh11:32

ambitious in that I've never had a singular goal to aim for. I've just always kind of felt the direction I ought to go in when I've been offered something.

Presenter11:43

But it wasn't that you saw Percy throw her on the tellears.

Alan Titchmarsh11:46

Well I did. There was that as well. I did, but never in reality imagined that it would ever come true. I do remember saying to the lad I gardened with, we used to watch Percy every Friday on Gardening Club as it was then. We used to call him Percy Chucker. And I remember saying to I wouldn't mind being Percy Chucker, I'd love to do that. But but that wasn't an ambition, it was a completely unrealistic expectation then. There were fifty million people in Britain and Percy was the only T V gardener. How ridiculous to want to do that.

Alan Titchmarsh12:16

Record number three.

Alan Titchmarsh12:18

I love the human voice. It's become over the years what I work with, as well as my grandfather's spade. It's the tool of my trade. I've been given rather a reedy one, which is not very kind. But one of the best speaking voices I think ever that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end is Richard Burton. And in Camelot, when he was in the stage show, he has that wonderful bit at the very end where he talks about Camelot, and it is that dream, it is the thing you had as a boy, which was the world is really wonderful.

Speaker 212:48

Ask every person if he's heard the story.

Speaker 212:54

And tell it strong and clear if he has not

Speaker 212:59

That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory

Speaker 213:04

Called Camelot.

Alan Titchmarsh13:06

Camelots

Alan Titchmarsh13:11

Can we go?

Speaker 213:12

And the more

Speaker 213:14

I know it gives a person pause.

Alan Titchmarsh13:14

No, it gives a person.

Presenter13:18

Richard Burton and the cast of Camelot from the original stage production of the show. So words were your way out, Alan Titchmarsh, you know, your escape from this school where you were kind of written off, you said. Did your father write you off as well?

Alan Titchmarsh13:31

No, he didn't, bless his heart. He he listened very carefully. He was a very quiet man. There are two kinds of Yorkshireman, I think the kind of broad brush, meat and two veg, two fingers up in the air type, and the the quiet Yorkshireman, and my dad was the the latter variety.

Presenter13:46

Well, you must have worried when you left school. I mean, you left early at fifteen, didn't you? You'd failed the eleven plus, gone to the secondary mod, left with

Alan Titchmarsh13:49

Yeah.

Presenter13:52

1-0 level, I think, in art, hence those very nice little plans you do on ground floors. And you went to work for the Parks Department and also. It was a good job, isn't it? Did he?

Alan Titchmarsh13:54

And so

Alan Titchmarsh14:00

He was a part time fireman, as I said, and um

Alan Titchmarsh14:03

He um was talking to Wally Jell at the fire station, who worked in the Parks Department. After I'd said I wanted to leave school, I had enough. And he came back home and he said, Wally Jell says that there's an apprentice's job going if you want it And I said, Wow Um so I said yes, please and I went to work at the local nursery uh as an apprentice.

Presenter14:21

And you put your apron on and went down the main street of Ilkley and watered the hanging baskets.

Alan Titchmarsh14:24

I loved everything about my job except that. Can you imagine, you know, fifteen, d the most sensitive period in your adolescence, and I had to walk along the Grove, which is Ilkley's smartest street, while all my friends who were still at school doing their O-levels and going on to do their A's, were walking past, and there was me with a watering can and a large water butt on wheels, up a ladder, watering hanging baskets. That is not cool, is it?

Presenter14:50

Is it humiliation?

Alan Titchmarsh14:51

Shin was humiliated on the grand scale, but I got through.

Presenter14:54

You got through. You went and did a certificate, I think, in horticulture in in uh Herefordshire, and then you went to Kew, to the Royal Botanic Gardens. You had your own key to the gardens, you had ER embossed on your briefcase.

Alan Titchmarsh15:07

Yeah, I was a student there for three years and got my diploma. Then I became supervisor of staff training, which was organising and running basic gardening skills courses for the members of staff. And I became a civil servant and signed the Official Secrets Act and was given for my trouble, terribly proud of it, a glossy black briefcase with ER stamped on it in gold and a very large key which said on it Royal Botanic Gardens. And an amazing office. And an office which was part of George III's dining room, I think, originally. And a bike. That was the best thing because you could cycle round Kew. Goodness me, the privileges of office. But you got bored.

Presenter15:29

And an amazing

Alan Titchmarsh15:41

I did. I didn't want to get bored. I didn't think I ought to get bored. It was m most wonderful.

Alan Titchmarsh15:47

Job in the most wonderful establishment. I still go back there, and Q is stunning. I thought I wanted to teach, because I enjoyed sort of putting over this passion for gardening, which is why it was fun to start these courses. But after two years, I realized that they were rather repetitious from my point of view. I found myself one day standing in this, it wasn't a particularly imposing room, it was only an attic room in this rather grand house.

Alan Titchmarsh16:09

banging my head against the sloping wall of the ceiling and

Alan Titchmarsh16:13

I was suddenly brought up short and I thought, What on what on earth am I doing? I'm bored. Well, get out, kid, I can't, it's a good job. It was one of another of those experiences where

Alan Titchmarsh16:22

your true feelings will out and there's no way you can suppress them and you just have to say, Move on, go.

Presenter16:28

Where did you go?

Alan Titchmarsh16:29

I went to become an assistant gardening books editor for a book publisher. And the the love of words that had started at school, I thought, oh, I can join the enjoyment of words and the gardening together and edit and hopefully maybe eventually write about gardening. It's Stephen Sontime. He wrote a musical called Little Night Music and it has a song in it called Remember. It was about the time I was courting with a view to getting married and I did eventually get married to the girl I was courting. And there's a line in this song, Remember. They're all remembering that ribbled youth they had and what they did. There's a line in it about a a bed with a canopy in red needing repair. And on our honeymoon night I looked up and I saw a canopy in red needing repair.

Alan Titchmarsh17:18

Benende!

Speaker 117:27

The old deserted beach that we won't remember.

Speaker 217:30

Remember the cafe in the park where we talked. Remember.

Speaker 117:35

Remember.

Speaker 217:36

The tenor on the boat that meets on her belching of autumn bride.

Speaker 117:40

Oh we are

Speaker 217:42

Oh, we broke! Yeah.

Speaker 117:44

Ah, how you promised, and ah, how I lied.

Speaker 217:44

Oh how are you?

Presenter17:49

Remember, sung by Benjamin Rayson, Terry Ralston, Beth Fowler, Jean Verone and Barbara Lang from Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music. So, Alan Titchmarsh, you went into publishing, you wrote a book'cause an author didn't get it in on time and so you knew you could write. You went on then on to amateur gardening magazine, rising to deputy editor. When did the call come from the television?

Alan Titchmarsh18:11

Oh, I was doing bits for radio. Then Greenfly invaded Margate. As they do. Thank God for Greenfly and Margate. Um and I was asked to go and do a bit on the Today programme on radio about what should people do with all these invading Greenfly. There were swarms of them. And I did a bit on the radio and I got a call that afternoon in the office at Amateur Gardening from a television programme called Nationwide.

Presenter18:16

They do.

Alan Titchmarsh18:35

Saying, could I go on and do a piece about Greenflower on there? So I did, and I went, and I met you.

Presenter18:41

And we planted many window boxes together on the roof.

Alan Titchmarsh18:42

We did indeed on a roof garden and in a studio had a studio shed.

Alan Titchmarsh18:48

I was. Something sticked at me. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I've seen no cause to change.

Presenter18:53

But the point about it is, when you did that television for the first time, you know that the Green Fly and Margaret is

Presenter18:59

It was like

Alan Titchmarsh19:02

It was live T V, yes, it was it was a stra I remember going home and saying to to Alison.

Alan Titchmarsh19:08

It was like tasting blood. I remember these cameras homing in on you and and being able to explain to them something. It's the old sharing thing. It sounds terribly altruistic, but it is sharing the passion. It's passing something on. It's you can't keep it to yourself.

Presenter19:21

But it was all about gardening. You talk about sharing, you mean sharing your passion for gardening.

Alan Titchmarsh19:24

Yeah.

Presenter19:25

But then at some point in his television career

Alan Titchmarsh19:25

Uh

Presenter19:27

In a way, the gardening became a sideline because you became a a sort of chat show host, really, Pebble Mill you did for ten years, the lunch time.

Alan Titchmarsh19:34

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh19:35

It was a T V executive who said, Have you ever thought of doing anything on T V other than gardening? and I said No.

Presenter19:35

It was a it was a T V exec.

Alan Titchmarsh19:41

And he said, Well, you should and it was he who got me to do open air, the feedback, and from open air I went on to Pebble Mill, which was then called Daytime Live.

Presenter19:49

And it has been said that Steve Coogan based Alan Partridge on you. Do you think that's true?

Alan Titchmarsh19:54

Supremely flattered, but I can't believe it's entirely based on

Presenter19:56

But really the point of that is, it seems to me, that if you are as you are, it seems to me straightforward, amiable, decent, then you can't get away with that in the cynical world of the media, can you? Somebody's always going to say he's too straightforward, he's too amiable, he's too nice.

Alan Titchmarsh20:12

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh20:14

You learn to be thick-skinned. I mean, no not everybody's going to like you. You have to be ready for that. And you take the flack. I mean, Victor Lewis Smith has said dreadful things about me, which I now laugh about. They're wonderfully phrased. I mean, the five most debilitating words in the English language are Ladies and Gentlemen, Alan Titchmarsh. And the other one thrown at Pebble Mill was If you have half a mind to watch Pebble Mill, you will have made ample intellectual provision. Beautifully crafted. You've got to admire them.

Alan Titchmarsh20:42

But did they have

Presenter20:42

What you've resisted is becoming, it seems to me, pretentious in all of this because, you know, the pressure is, as I say, if you don't quite know who you are, then you're going to pretend to be something that you're not or something that you feel you ought to be. And that's has it not been your great strength that you have not changed from who you are? You've learned Titchmarsh from Ilkley.

Alan Titchmarsh21:05

No.

Alan Titchmarsh21:06

Very much so. I remember somebody saying once, I don't know anybody who's been improved by fame and uh certainly I know an awful lot who've been spoiled by it. I don't intend to go that way. That would be the ultimate failure.

Presenter21:20

Extra code.

Alan Titchmarsh21:21

The great thing about being at Pebble Mill, well there were lots of great things about being at Pebble Mill, interviewing all the people you've ever wanted to interview, from Alan Bennett to George Schulte and Placido Domingo. It was just you know, I used to wake up and think somebody would tap me on the shoulder and say, Come out of there, thank you very much. But I got to know a lot of music that I wouldn't otherwise have have got to know and watched a lot of musicians and leaned on George Shearing's piano when he played wonderful stuff like that. And there's one piece of music that kind of sums all that period up for me, which we didn't have him on the show, but it I listened to a lot of music when I was up there and this one piece has always stuck with me by a guy called Pat Mutheny with a harmonica player called Toots Tielmans and it's called Always and Forever.

Presenter22:34

Always and Forever by Pat Matheny, with Toots Thielmans on the Harmonica, with members of the London Orchestra conducted by Jeremy Lubbock. So Gardener's World on BBC Two, Alan, eventually got you back outside, and then in 1996 you took it over as the sort of front presenter when sadly Jeff Hamilton died very suddenly. It remains the most serious gardening programme on television. I would have thought its fans would think that ground force was really, you know, not what you do. I mean, to sort of revolutionise a garden in two days flat, not what the seriously green-fingered think should be done.

Alan Titchmarsh23:07

No, I think a lot of eyebrows were raised, but I quite like raising eyebrows really. I've always thought passionately more than anything else that gardening is for everybody. Snobbering gardening irritates the pants off me. I I hate it when people try and make it some kind of exclusive pursuit for those with rather smart gardens. And we don't grow that, you know. All right, I hate gladioli, but if you want to grow them, fine. And the ground force, it struck me, I was asked if I could do this programme which would transform a garden in a couple of days. And I said, of course, as every gardener does, I'm sorry, you can't make a garden in two days, it can't be done. So they said, well, what could you do?

Alan Titchmarsh23:44

I said, well, I I don't know. Will you have a go? All right then. So they it was conceived very kindly as a vehicle for me and it was called Over the Garden Fence. And it the pilot consisted of me sitting in a Wimbledon umpire's chair, straddling a fence between two gardens, where two families in competition with one another made a patio and then leaped down every now and again and helped them. And they they did the pilot and they said, Well, it was all right, but it really only came to life when you got off your chair and went down and got stuck in. We'll build a surprise element into it and we'll get a builder in to do the building and we'll get you another gardener so you can sort of have help with that.

Presenter24:21

Questions everyone wants to know about ground force. Are there in reality more people at work in those gardens than we get to see?

Alan Titchmarsh24:23

Mm

Alan Titchmarsh24:27

Yes.

Presenter24:27

Oh

Alan Titchmarsh24:28

1.

Alan Titchmarsh24:29

Her name's Kirsty and she's our researcher and you will see her in one programme this year when I leap off to do something else. She does all our research.

Presenter24:35

So she rolls her sleeves up and

Alan Titchmarsh24:37

Yes, yeah, but that's all. Nobody else. And we use the relatives and friends, you know.

Presenter24:37

Yeah, but that's

Presenter24:40

How great is the stress factor? It often I mean, you seem, you know, always to be smiling, but nevertheless, when it never stops raining or the neighbor next door complains'cause you've put the fence up higher than they thought, or the person in fact involved comes back unannounced too early.

Alan Titchmarsh24:53

Well you see it all. I mean you see the reactions. It can be incredibly frustrating. It's it is shattering. Um but I'm I'm packing it in at the end of this year. I've done s o I don't know sixty sixty six programmes that I've done at the end of this year. And I'd I'd rather go while it's still being enjoyed.

Presenter25:08

And is that'cause you and Tommy and Charlie don't get on as well as you as if you get on?

Alan Titchmarsh25:11

It's look as if you get on. You'd love it to be, wouldn't you? No, it isn't. No, we get on very well. I don't need to do everything. I don't want to do everything. And I love it when somebody else comes along, honestly, and does well. Because, going back to that thing, it gets gardening out there, gets more people interested. And Ground Force has got so many kids into gardening, and I think that's so important.

Presenter25:13

No, it is

Presenter25:29

More music.

Alan Titchmarsh25:31

I I said earlier that the bit of land at the top of my garden was owned by Jane Austen's niece and I love reading Jane Austen. She's so funny. I was sitting on a ship once, a cruise ship, reading Pride and Prejudice and laughing out loud and somebody walked past and came back and looked at the title of the book and raised their eyebrows thinking what on earth is there to laugh at in Pride and Prejudice? She's a wonderfully waspish writer with a great sense of humour. And I generally speaking the problem when her novels are made into films is that you lose her voice. But there was that wonderful Emma Thompson screenplay for Sense and Sensibility, which worked a treat and the music for it by Patrick Doyle is delightful.

Speaker 126:13

Just hold on.

Speaker 126:16

All to me.

Speaker 226:21

Just with the swords in sun.

Speaker 126:29

Of troubling waste of

Presenter26:36

Jane Eaglin singing Weep You No More Sad Fountains from the soundtrack of the film Sense and Sensibility. So you can't get away from it, Alan. It's July. You've got to tell us. Lisa I have to say, surely this is the time when you should be sitting in your garden, not doing

Alan Titchmarsh26:48

Doing anything.

Presenter26:49

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh26:49

Take

Presenter26:49

Exactly.

Alan Titchmarsh26:49

Clear that. Far too many guns. Well, no, well you've got to mow the lawn, but yeah, when you've done that, sit down and look. We're we're bad at doing that, you know. I'm bad at doing it, terrible. Sit down, see a weed leap up and pull it out and get it. And you've got the water.

Presenter26:50

Far too many guns.

Presenter26:59

And it's got a wall

Alan Titchmarsh27:01

Well, yes, you have, but I mean, gardening is about participation, not just a spectator sport, and the doing of it is half the fun. More fun than going to the gym. You far more afford to show for it at the end, you know.

Presenter27:10

Actually you don't have to water in our climate really these days, do you? Uh but the pots need watering. How can you tell? I know you've got a a wonderful way of discovering whether pots need water or not.

Alan Titchmarsh27:19

I was in the parks department way, with a clay flower pot, a terracotta one. You get an old wooden cotton reel if your mum's still got one in a workbasket. Push it on the end of a little bamboo cane. Tap the pot, and if it rings ting ting ting, it's dry, and if it goes clunk, it's damp. It doesn't work on plastic pots, but uh I used to have to do that in parks with hundreds of pots. It was like the percussion section of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter27:42

Now I'm still on that book again, the baddie in the book, who's a great character. He's also a television gardener. He ends up fronting an advertising campaign for insecticide. mister McGregor, our hero, has turned down the big offer to do the big ad, the big commercial.

Alan Titchmarsh27:57

Hmm.

Presenter27:57

That must have happened to you a lot of times.

Alan Titchmarsh28:00

Yes, a few. And it is tempting now and again. I mean, you know, you're a family man, bringing up children.

Alan Titchmarsh28:05

When you're turning down enormous sums of money, you think, well, you know, it would come in very handy, but I have I have resisted it. I mean, not I think it's not.

Presenter28:13

The why can explain why.

Alan Titchmarsh28:14

I think you do have a responsibility not to let them down and I'd I'd rather kind of keep my nose clean away. It's sort of old fashioned thought. I'm not saying I won't ever. Um but I just think when you're fronting sort of flagship gardening programmes you've got to be a bit careful. Got to keep yourself clean. Got to keep yourself clean. Keep your nose clean.

Presenter28:34

Record number seven.

Alan Titchmarsh28:36

I've had a lot of years as a choir boy when I was young. I had a very passable treble. I used to sing once in Royal David's City at Christmas in the back of the church in Ilkley. And then my voice broke and I got a very hardly passable tenor, which wasn't really fair, because I loved singing, adored it. But I had great fun when I presented songs of praise for about five years in going and listening to the most wonderful church music in the most wonderful cathedrals and parish churches all over the country. I'm a quiet churchman, don't make a big noise about it, but I do love good church music and Hubert Parry's I Was Glad's the most wonderfully stirring piece of church music.

Presenter30:18

Hubert Parry's I Was Glad performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Richard Hickox. So you've published thirty-seven books on gardening, Alan.

Alan Titchmarsh30:27

That's a bit careless, isn't it?

Presenter30:28

More to come, I'm sure. Four novels so far written in the winter in the potting shed. This is true, isn't it?

Alan Titchmarsh30:34

I have a little writing shed at the top of my gun.

Presenter30:38

Yeah, and but more more on the stocks.

Alan Titchmarsh30:39

Yeah, a couple more to come. I've I've had a year off this year. I've written a touch of the memoirs this year.

Presenter30:44

And there's magazine columns and newspaper columns on going three currently television programmes.

Alan Titchmarsh30:49

Leak sometimes.

Presenter30:49

Well, exactly. I mean, the squash little boy from Ilkley has not done badly, has he?

Alan Titchmarsh30:55

He's been very lucky.

Presenter30:56

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh30:56

Hm, I think so.

Presenter30:57

Is that all it is? Lot of determination, lot of ambition in that.

Alan Titchmarsh31:01

Your aptitude, I think, really. I've been very lucky that I've been allowed to go in a direction where I seem to be able to cope. And you need encouragement.

Presenter31:07

And you're the man most people in Britain would like as a neighbor, according to the polls. And you're the sexiest man in the nation, or according to the nation, after George Cluny. What um what do you make of all this? What's the family make of it?

Alan Titchmarsh31:19

Well, I think yeah, I think these surveys are taken at home for the terminally bewildered. My daughters think it's highly amusing. I mean the fact that your father should be thought sexy, you know. Nothing could be further from the truth. Um I had my waxwork effort you put in Madame Tussaws last year and and a piece appeared in the paper which I proudly showed to my my younger daughter Camilla, she's twenty and Paulie's twenty-two and I said, Look, um I'm the most groped waxwork in Madam Tussaws and she said, Who are you standing next to? and I said, Well, actually, Brad Pitt. She said, Well, there you are, mistaken identity.

Speaker 131:32

Yeah.

Presenter31:51

But these are accolades for a man who says that fame doesn't turn him on.

Alan Titchmarsh31:55

No, it doesn't really. I had an amazing experience actually a few weeks ago. I was Chelsea Flower Show I was at and I took my wife, took Alison on a Monday and we looked round. It's sort of Press Day and all the celebs go then. And we were in one garden and Piers Brosnan was in it. And Alison said, Let's go over there. It's Piers Brosnan. James Brosnan. And she carries herself incredibly well, my wife. She's used to it all, you know. But Piers Brosnan. Just walk a bit closer, a closer look. And as we got close to Piers Brosnan, the woman came over to me and said, Can I have your autograph, please? And Alison said, No, you don't want his. She said, Piers Brosnan's there. Go and ask him. And this woman said, Oh, no, he's not a gardener, you know.

Alan Titchmarsh32:37

It's uh you wouldn't seek it out, but people are very nice.

Presenter32:39

So if you haven't particularly relished the fame, although it's just there as you say and you cope with it, what have you achieved that you really wanted to achieve?

Alan Titchmarsh32:49

I feel very passionate about custodianship of countryside and landscape. And somebody said to me a couple of weeks ago, It's all right for you, she said, but what can I do? I've only got a little patchwork square at the back of my house. You know, what difference can I make by being an organic gardener by doing this and that and the other? I said, well, it's it's a if you go up in a plane, you look down at Britain, it is a patchwork quilt. And if you look after your square, and everybody else looked after their square, then the big quilt would be in good nick. And I feel a missionary zeal about that. I feel a missionary zeal about saying to people, Look, we only get one crack at this. Go out there, look at how things grow. I often muse on the fact that if Osama bin Laden had been shown how to sow seeds when he was a nipper, maybe he wouldn't be doing what he's doing.

Presenter33:37

Last record.

Alan Titchmarsh33:39

Um it's the song of the blackbird, simple as that. Of an evening at the end of a day, when you sit out in your garden and you hear this little chap on the chimney top, you know that all's right with the world.

Presenter34:29

The evening song of the blackbird. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Alan, which one are you taking?

Alan Titchmarsh34:34

Oh, that's fiendish. Fiendish. I think it would probably have to be the Vaughan Williams. The lark ascending. Perhaps with the real lark played over it so that I have the real thing and the violin version.

Presenter34:44

And your book. You've got the Bible, you've got Shakespeare.

Alan Titchmarsh34:44

Uh

Alan Titchmarsh34:48

I love the comic writing of P. G. Woodhouse. I think he's the funniest writer in the English language. I I like the Jeeves and Worcester novels, but my real passion are the the Blandings novels with Lord Emsworth. I want to be Lord Emsworth when I grow up and lean over a pigsty and scratch the back of the Empress of Blandings, you know, with it with a stick. Lord Emsworth was sorted. So the Blandings novels of P. G. Woodhouse.

Presenter35:11

Pigh hooey

Alan Titchmarsh35:12

Pee Hoooey.

Presenter35:13

And your luxury.

Alan Titchmarsh35:15

Um as you've noticed, I paint those watercolours on ground force pretty abysmally. If I could have a good box of watercolours in a watercolour pad I might get better with time to concentrate, so I'll take some watercolour paints and a pad.

Presenter35:29

Alan Titchmarsh, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Alan Titchmarsh35:32

A pleasure, thank you. Yeah.

Presenter35:33

Yeah.

Alan Titchmarsh35:40

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.