On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 10:57:16 +0100, "Drakanthus"
wrote:

~ I'll wait and see.
~ Not that I think R de T and CB are real gardeners anyway. All the more
~ reasone why they really shouldnt be there.
~
~
~At least R de T is pleasant to the eye. I can't help wondering though if her
~selection was more for her looks than her gardening knowledge?

My thoughts entirely. I tend to refer to her as Rachel de useless.
On the other hand my Dad thinks she's lovely. But then he's a bloke...

I'm not terribly fond of Mr Overacting Beardshaw either, however! :-)

The one thing a lot of folk haven't commented on in the "Oh good MD is
much better than AT" postings is that the entire old production team
has gone and it's been taken back in-house by the BBC.

Alan Titchmarsh was not to blame for the format of recent seasons -
the director has that responsibility, and so the independent TV
company were the ones responsible for the flashy angles, flowers
being shown in black and white (er, why?) and the production quality.
And in my experience of the BBC gardening message boards, they took
not one bit of notice of the complaints and wishes of the viewers.

Now filming is back with the people I pay my licence fee to, and they
seem to have gone back to Geoff-Hamilton-like basics as the majority
of people on the boards seemed to want. Hooray.

Pity Alan T had to put up with the flak generated by the terrible
production values of the independent company :-(
I think he'd have been heaps better in the last two or three seasons
if it had been in-house.

(Postscript to one of GHs old soapboxes while I remember: he always
advocated cocoa shell mulches for acidifying alkaline soils. The RHS
has just completed a long-term survey of mulches and found that most
of them do leave the soil slightly more acidic in the first season but
more alkaline than initially, after 3 or so years!)

I'll get off mine now :-)

--
jane

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone,
you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain

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