Growing Talents

Huddersfield Daily Examiner (Huddersfield, England), May 22, 2007

Byline: VAL JAVIN ,

He's an award-winning broadcaster, writer and novelist and one of the best-known faces on our television screens.

It is almost impossible these days though to classify the talents of Alan Titchmarsh.

He's the modern day equivalent of renaissance man, able to turn his gifts to anything in the worlds of radio, tv and the written word with equal success.

His tv programmes, whether telling us how to make our gardens grow or celebrating the beauties of our natural world, bring in millions of viewers. He shares his passion for music on Radio 2 and has become the familiar, friendly voice and face that guides us through big events, from Chelsea Flower Show to the Last Night Of The Proms.

When he sits at his computer keyboard, Alan seems just as much at home. He writes several columns for newspapers and magazines on gardening, the subject on which he is definitely of guru status. And if you had to clear the decks to house all the books he's produced on horticulture, then you'd be building a mini-library.

These days, Alan is also hitting the best-sellers' list as a novelist. In the highly competitive world of fiction, he's raced up the ratings on to the Sunday Times bestsellers' list. And he's just been commissioned to write three more novels.

The least you'd expect is that the man would be just a teeny bit pleased with himself. But not a bit of it.

"I'm very lucky. I continue to be blessed. I was 58 just the other week and so pleased to be doing anything. It's my good fortune to be able to do so many interesting things and things that I enjoy. "

It's the secret of his astounding success. This man is a natural. A born communicator with an innate sense of curiosity, who loves people and has not a single pretension. No airs but bags of grace.

I caught up with Alan who was back on home turf in Yorkshire and clearly enjoying himself.

He'd spent the previous day in Harrogate, signing copies of his book, Love And Dr Devon newly out in paperback, had worked on an environmental project with youngsters in his home town of Ilkley and was now about to face an army of fans in Denby Dale.

He pulled up a chair in Judith Dyson's Orchard bookshop, accepted a cup of tea and chatted.

This is a man at ease with himself, so comfortable in his own skin that he exudes contentment and sheer delight at doing what he seems to do best, meeting people.

Looking at his workload, it's difficult to see how he fits it all, let alone delivers at such a continuing high level and with such apparent ease.

Turn on your tv this week and it will be difficult to miss Alan. He'll lead the team of presenters at Chelsea Flower Show. It's clearly a labour of love.

"I'm there from Sunday through until Saturday. It's part fun, part work. It's a lovely thing to do. It's a beautiful thing, it's a bit like Brigadoon. Once a year, it looms out of the mist and there's a great magic about it. I've been doing it since 1983 and only had four years off when it went to Channel 4. It feels comfortable with the BBC."

So does Alan it seems. He loves the challenge of big events like Chelsea, a hugely complex exercise in logistics for the BBC.

"It's such an enormous operation - and then you're doing it live! It's like Last Night Of The Proms. You sit down with your ear piece in and think, here we go. This is what I do.

"This will be my fourth Last Night Of The Proms. My wife and daughters came last year and sat in the next box along. Polly said to me afterwards. You do what I do. Your feet were going. Apparently it was calmness to here " (he mimes waist level) but the feet were going."

There's the broadest of grins.

His next series sees him firmly on both feet. The Great British Village Show, airs first on June 3 and see hundreds of people across the country enjoying competing in their local village show under the watchful eye of Alan and fellow presenters James Martin and Angellica Bell.

Some of the nation's keenest and most experienced amateur vegetable growers, knitters and flower arrangers used their skills to compete to become national champions. The final heat took place at Highgrove, home of Prince Charles, who was on hand to present the prizes. Having Alan along to calm nerves and make everyone feel a winner was another BBC masterstroke and you can judge for yourself when the programme is transmitted next month.

Still more of a challenge is Alan's next tv project, for which he has had to learn to dive.

"I'm not a good swimmer. I like being on water but not in it. I'm not happy in water,"he says.

Despite that rider, Alan determindedly took himself off to Southampton to start to learn to dive. He's already begun filming a new series, The Nature Of Britain, due to be transmitted in the autumn, which will look at plant and animal relationships in a host of different habitats. That means fields and woodlands, streams, rivers and coastlines.

"There's some underwater diving involved. I've done about four hours so far. I want to be able to look at seaweeeds and marine life. It is a secret world, a world that we don't see."