Stuck in the muddle
By Victor Lewis-Smith, Evening Standard
7 February 2003


Regular readers of this page (who can, incidentally, be counted on the
fingers of a mitten) will be familiar with my sensational revelations
about secret celebrity relationships. I've already exposed the way
that the Sassoon brothers - Siegfried and Vidal - led the Allies to
victory in WWI with a morale-boosting mixture of patriotic poetry and
bouffant hairstyling, but now I have an even greater tale to tell.
Ladies and gentlemen, I can exclusively reveal that dysfunctional rock
star Ozzy Osbourne is the offspring of John Osbourne (not the famous
one, but the author of a play about the poverty of literature in Essex
libraries, called Book Lack in Ongar), and I can also disclose that
General Norman Schwarzkopf was secretly married to diva Elisabeth
Schwarzkopf, shortly before they made their legendary recording of the
Bellini opera, Stormin' Norma.

What's more, I've discovered that the famous gardener Capability Brown
once tried to explain the mysteries of "soil" to his slightly deaf
brother, James, who mistakenly thought he was talking about a type of
music, and went on to make such an appalling racket that he became
known locally as Incapability Brown. See, it all dovetails. Or so the
voices in my head tell me.

Despite lengthy searches, I've only ever been able to locate one
Titchmarsh, yet somehow there still seems to be a surfeit of them on
my screen. Over the years there's been Titchmarsh the self-effacing
chat show host, Titchmarsh the cheeky chat show guest, Titchmarsh the
steamy novelist, and finally Titchmarsh the laid-back
horticulturalist, who is currently fronting How To Be a Gardener
(BBC2).

The opening scene of last night's programme caught Alan trying to
combine all four of these personae, as he sprawled lazily yet
suggestively on a lawn and asked "how was it for you?" in a shameless
attempt to seduce his target audience, whom I imagine to consist
almost exclusively of bluerinsed octogenarians in Pinner. It made for
gut-wrenching viewing, and anyway, he'll fail in his task, because KY
jelly and Steradent just don't mix. There's also something jarring
about flashy action shots of plant pots because, let's face it,
gardening isn't meant to be sexy or exciting. No, depending on your
viewpoint, gardening is either the renunciation of worldly ambition,
or (in most cases) simply life switched off at the mains.

"You need planning ... or your garden will be bitty," he told us, as
he addressed the question of design, but unfortunately he hadn't taken
his own advice when mapping out the programme.

Without logic or coherence, he spewed out a bellyful of disconnected
and frequently self-contradictory decrees, advising us to divide our
garden into small sections, then to leave it open so we could enjoy
the view, and declaring that "the first rule of garden design is
practicality", then minutes later saying that "rule one is, don't
judge by first impressions" (we never heard a rule two).

"I know what you're saying," he added, "it's all right for him with
his qualifications," and I wondered if this could really be the same
man who began his horticultural career in the parks department of
Ilkley Council, after securing the grand total of one O-level (in
something like Budgie Hygiene).

Whatever else one might think of him, one could hardly accuse him of
being over-educated, and I thought back to the last series, where he
defiantly told us that "the sun moves around the earth," thereby
consigning 500 years of Copernican theory to the astronomical dustbin.

In order to convince us that he really was improving the gardens he
worked on, all the "before" shots were filmed in poorly-lit and
washed-out tones, while the "after" shots were bathed in bright
sunlight, making any objective comparison impossible.

Worse, some idiot producer had dubbed their "easy listening" record
collection onto the backtrack, with Windmills of Your Mind
accompanying a spinning camera scene, and Cherry Pink and Apple
Blossom White laid onto footage of a flowering Prunus avium and Pyrus
malus.

"You could be forgiven for finding all this talk of design and plants
completely overwhelming," insisted Titchmarsh, as he went on yet
another pointless walk through a garden, but personally I've seldom
been so underwhelmed in my life. Indeed, this wasn't really a
gardening programme at all, it was a rambling programme, and long
before the end I was ready to throw in the trowel and start racking up
the zzzzs.

Good soil and lousy presenters have one thing in common - they're both
full of crap - and it's a pity that BBC2 has seen fit to commission
another series from Mr Titchmarsh, thereby depriving a village
somewhere of its idiot. But a lot of blame has to go to the director
and series producer, Kath Moore, for the inaccuracies and the
not-so-special effects (sepia tints, fastmotion camera techniques,
rapid MTV-style cuts) that were ludicrously unsuited to such a
peaceful subject.

Admittedly, I'm no haughty-culturalist, and the only things I've ever
grown in my own garden are tired and bored, although I did attempt
once to make a wooden trellis, which fell apart only seconds after its
erection. My neighbour, a rabid Christian, leaned over the fence,
smiled beatifically, and told me: "Don't worry, things will improve.
After all, Jesus too was a Carpenter." "So was Karen," another
neighbour shouted out, "and look how she turned out."
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