Alan Titchmarsh

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 July 2002

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Alan Titchmarsh was drawn to gardening from an early age in Ilkley, Yorkshire, making his first polythene greenhouse at the age of twelve and deciding he was going to be a gardener when he grew up. He left school at fifteen and became an apprentice gardener in the Parks Department of Ilkley Urban District Council, going on to horticultural college at the age of 18. His interest in English literature and writing prompted him to apply for a job as assistant editor of gardening books at Hamlyn Publishing and he began to write gardening books of his own, publishing his first in 1976. Alan experienced his first taste of television when there was a plague of greenfly on the south coast and he was approached to report on it in Margate for Nationwide. He says, "I suddenly tasted blood. It was wow!, I like this. I want to do more." He became a presenter of Daytime Live, a Birmingham-based chat show, interviewing stars like Placido Domingo, Barry Manilow and Julia Roberts. He also presented Songs of Praise but never forgot his gardening, and took to the screens as a gardener with the amazingly successful garden make-over programme, Ground Force, in 1997. As well as presenting the more 'serious' gardening programme, Gardener's World, Alan recently took viewers back to basics with the series How to be a Gardener and, having written a grand total of thirty-seven gardening books, he remains the UK's premier gardener. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Lark Ascending by Vaughan Williams Book: One of the 'Blandings' novels by P G Wodehouse Luxury: A box of watercolours

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive for rights reasons
0:06.0	We've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in
0:10.6	2002 and the presenter was Sue Lolley
0:13.2	My cast away this week is a gardener. He's probably thanks to television the most famous gardener this country has ever known
0:33.2	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
0:40.2	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
0:50.2	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
0:59.2	I felt squashed all the time at school he says because I was so much of an eager puppy
1:04.2	Well, every dog has his day. He's the presenter of ground force and gardeners world. He's Alan Titchmarsh who would of course do marvelously on a desert island
1:13.2	I mean you'd have a little shack knocked up in no time
1:15.2	I would I think yes and the row of beans
1:18.2	Should I find seeds there and a little Edwardian rail around it a kind of Victorian feel to it
1:24.2	But nothing painted blue
1:26.2	What is this about blue? I use blue paint a couple of times on ground force
1:30.2	I think I've been rather labeled with it that decking. I think they're probably going to deck over my grave
1:35.2	You revolutionized the decking market I read
1:38.2	Amazing, put millions of pounds on it
1:40.2	And would there be grasses around or you know around this little?
1:44.2	I'd be very happy to work with what was there. I mean I'm a great believer in
1:47.2	Although gardeners of course introduce plants from everywhere to their gardens
1:50.2	But a 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
1:57.2	And finding out probably the hard way what I could eat and what I couldn't
	...

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