For a veteran
politician, he seemed surprisingly stiff, to the point of
haughtiness, before the camera. I wonder if it was simply that he
knew his family were going to be involved, breaking a tabu we should
all subscribe to: nobody's children and grandchildren deserve that.

But that was his (very experienced) choice. His extended family were
featured on TV, not by accident or chance, but because he chose to
parade them, their ponies, their homes provided by him, and an entire
stable of garden machinery, like stage props. Similarly, he could have
declined the inclusion of any political questions, and didn't. It wasn't
live or impromptu or real time, we were being shown what MH chose to
reveal.

Self-styled emperors often fail to appreciate that public exposure
reveals the nakedness of their vanity :-)

Earlier in your post you said

I'm still not entirely clear what I thought about the prog. It left
me with an an uncomfortable feeling, and I'm still not sure why.

I agree. I think it's because the programme (supposedly about an
arboretum) was being used as vehicles for two quite different agendas
by Heseltine and the director.

Janet

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeooooooooooooooooooo owwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww