Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Gardener and broadcaster, regular presenter of Gardener's World, Chelsea Flower Show Gold Medal winner and RHS Horticultural Hero.
On the island
Eight records
I love it because it's all about freedom and I love her, I love her voice.
I can remember this time when I was supposed to be doing homework at Elaine Pottersmith's house, but instead I went round the corner to Rogue Green and we had a shed called Charlie's Shed and we'd sit round and gamble three card brag and everything in there was a penny.
I love this song. It's very sad. You know, it nearly always makes me cry.
Me and Neil went to see Al Green in Hammersmith and it was lovely. And we've always played his records.
Me and Neil went on lots of picnics, both before and after. We changed our friendship into a something of a more romantic nature. This track just always reminds me of that, and happy times.
I used to drive the girls to school first of all when they were little, before Alice could go on the bus. And I used to sing them Little Richard songs.
Song of the SkylarkFavourite
It was the most beautiful and the most optimistic thing in the world. And then it's seven years ago, because it's nearly Hampton Court time now, isn't it? My next brother down, Bill, he died.
It's quite rebellious and it's um you know even though I'm fairly ancient now I think it's really important not just to take everything you've told and just to find out for yourself and forge your own path and be yourself.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:04What did your garden at Glebe Cottage look like when you first arrived?
There was no garden there at all. Our cottage was built for the gardener-come gamekeeper for the rectory next door, so it wasn't really a garden at all. And then over the years, it had just become somewhere really to turn the car around and get out.
Presenter asks
4:20You've said that you don't believe in 'green fingers'. Please talk me through this theory, because there'll be listeners thinking they've killed everything they've ever tried to grow.
Well, they haven't killed anything, it's just that they perhaps haven't given things just the right conditions. But what I mean is, once upon a time, when people started roaming around and depending on hunting and foraging, they would have had to garden, they would have had to grow things once they started to cultivate and stop in one place. So it's something that everybody can do. I mean, it's only common sense. And if you just follow natural laws and don't try and defy nature, then everybody can be successful with it. And a bit of experiment is a good thing.
Presenter asks
13:27You were awarded a scholarship to a prestigious school. How did that fit with your tomboyish ways and your love of nature?
The keepsakes
The book
Richard Mabey
It's a sort of modern day, up-to-date version of all the old floras. So it's not just compiling a list of all the plants that grow in the British Isles, because that's what I'd love to be reminded of, of course. But it's all the tales of their connections with human beings. He did the most incredible amount of research on this book, and he's also the most wonderful writer. You know, you read one of these things, it's also illustrated, but you read one of these descriptions and you're right there. You know, you can see that field of oxide daisies. So even though I'm on the tropical island, I'm still going to be able to think about the plants and the people.
Well, it fitted brilliantly, really. My dad went to Manchester Grammar School. He was a scholarship boy and he left earlier than he would have liked because my grandad chopped off the fingers of one hand on a circular tore. … Manchester Grammar didn't accept girls then. So the next best thing was Bolton School, which is a very good school. So I passed the entrance exam and I went and I was 10. So most of the time was spent making sure I'd passed my 11 plus.
Presenter asks
15:59Your time at [Bolton School] came to an abrupt end during a very difficult time for your family. Tell me what happened.
My father was called into the school. And towards the end of that year, I'm told that the catchment area for scholarships had changed. And um I'm afraid y you know your scholarship no longer exists. If you want to come any more, then we would have had to pay, which we couldn't never have afforded to do anyway. But the whole reason I think … was that m they found out that my father had been in prison for a year.
Presenter asks
25:20You took one of the earliest sex discrimination cases to court. You'd been teaching for quite some time. What happened?
They gave the job that I should have had to a bloke who was less qualified than I was, so I took the Inner London Educational Authority to court. … I applied for the job, and I knew I could do it. Um I'd been doing it, in fact, for quite a while before that. I took them to court under the Sex Discrimination Act. Neil was my Mackenzie man in court when we we fought it, I explained what had happened. The judge reserved his judgment and then they came out weeks later with a decision that the Act didn't apply because it was when we had the interview it was before it came into … operation. It didn't count because it predated the kind of legal mechanism.
Presenter asks
37:52You went through a difficult time last year. You were diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery. How are you feeling now?
I'm feeling terrific. Yeah, feeling really grand. I was very, very lucky because I had a double mastectomy which they decided we decided. … The thing that I've derived from that altogether is that it's hugely important to me to tell everybody right from the word go, and I think kids in school ought to be taught about it, girls and boys. I think it'd do a lot of good in other ways too, to check their breasts, to do it regularly, what it means, how much it's going to help. Because first of all, I was just incensed that when you be when you're over seventy you don't get invited back and you have to arrange yourself for a scan.
“I just love the way it's so alive. It's just r reached its peak now. In the spring all the leaves as they're coming out are all different colours and you can see through them. But then by the time you get to July, August, everything's become the same green, but right now, everything's still looking fresh and yet full.”
“I can remember us going to Pothali, to Butlin's holiday camp, with um my brothers and my mum and dad and our uncle Lynn … and then my dad disappearing on the first day and then I didn't see him again until we went to visit him in Preston prison.”
“It was horrible being without my dad for a … for a year. We did a huge welcome home sign and um I kept it under my bed rolled up for most of the year. And we got it out the day it was coming out and and my mum had cooked him something splendid. She was a brilliant cook. And um he didn't come home so he he went to the proper … But he he came home eventually, but was a bit of a downer really.”
“I think it it'd benefit them right across the board. You know, just putting your hands in the soil, actually doing that, growing things, just connects you to the earth. I mean, literally. But, you know, as far as you cerebrally too, I think. If we're expecting our kids to make less of a mess of looking after the world as we've made … Then I think we've got to teach them about the earth and teach them to respect it, love it, and want to help it to get better from what we've done.”
“It just came out over that period. It was sort of April and into May when I was recovering. And then I read about it because I was doing some research, I was writing about it, and I found out that in China, where it comes from, it's used medicinally. And it's used to heal wounds. And I just thought that was so so apt. But just going out there as soon as I could and growing seeds and knowing that the whole thing just goes on is the most sort of reassuring and magical thing.”