#013 - Alan Titchmarsh

Britain’s best-loved gardener Alan Titchmarsh is the definitive voice on all things botanical. Not only an expert gardener and horticulturalist, Alan is well known for his illustrious success as a journalist, author, presenter and television personality. The recipient of four honorary degrees, he holds the title of Vice-President of the Royal Horticultural Society and has been awarded a Victoria Medal of Honour and an MBE in the 2000 New Years’ Honours list. Born and brought up on the edge of Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire, Alan left school at fifteen to became an apprentice gardener in the local nursery. Quickly becoming engrossed with all things botanical, he then trained at trained at Hertfordshire College of Horticulture and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew. His first appearance on screen was in 1979, reporting on a plague of greenfly that had invaded the seaside town of Margate. By 1986, Alan was presenting BBC Breakfast Time and BBC Manchester’s Open Air and since then, his profile as a presenter has taken him from Pebble Mill at One via Gardeners’ World to his own chat show. He maintains his gardening passion with programmes including Love Your Garden and Britain's Best Gardens, and his long-running coverage of the infamous Chelsea Flower Show. His own daytime show on ITV, The Alan Titchmarsh Show, featured a combination of music, the arts and conversation, and he presents his own radio show on Classic FM on Saturday mornings. Aside from his work as a charismatic presenter, Alan has authored over 50 books about gardening including the fastest- selling gardening book of all time, How to be a Gardener Book 1: Back to Basics, along with eight novels, four volumes of memoirs, a miscellany celebrating England and Englishness and a Christmas anthology. He writes for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine, and is the gardening correspondent for the Daily Express and Sunday Express. In 1997 Alan was named “Yorkshire Man of the Year”. He was appointed MBE in the 2000 New Year Honours List, and a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Hampshire in 2001, when he was also immortalised by Madame Tussaud’s. In 2004 he received the Victoria Medal of Honour, the highest accolade in the British gardening world, and in 2009 he was made a Vice President of the Royal Horticultural Society. He is patron or president of over 50 charities. Alan lives in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, with his wife in an old farmhouse with a four acre garden. The music for the podcast is Twiggy's version of "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks and can be found on Apple Music at this link https://music.apple.com/gb/album/romantically-yours/693460953 If you’ve enjoyed listening to “Tea With Twiggy” please give take a moment to give us a lovely 5 STAR rating on Apple Podcasts. It really helps other people to find the show.If you haven’t done so already please subscribe to this podcast so you auto-magically get the next episodes for free and do tell all your friends and family about it too. If you want to connect with me I’d love to hear from you. You can find me on Twitter @Twiggy Or you can find me on Instagram @Twiggy Lawson My thanks go to all the people that have helped this podcast happen: ● Many thanks to James Carrol and all the team at Northbank Talent Management ● Thanks to all the team at Stripped Media including Ben Williams, who edits the show, my producer Kobi Omenaka and Executive Producers Tom Whalley and Dave Corkery If you want to know more about this podcast and other produced by Stripped Media please visit www.Stripped.media or email Producers@Stripped.Media to find out! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices