Death by Gardening (BBC1): SEVERED limbs, infernos and electrocutions don't sound like subjects for comedy but according to presenter Tommy Walsh, accidents in the garden should have us roaring with laughter.

The problem with Death by Gardening was that it didn't know what it wanted to be. One minute is was a real-life reconstruction show giving us a glimpse into the freak accidents that can happen in the potting shed, then there was tired-old archive comedy clip with a very loose gardening theme and finally there were interviews with D-list celebrities explaining what hilarious, but potentially lethal, things they had done in the garden.

According to the show, 50 people a year are killed doing the gardening but luckily, despite the title, we didn't see any of their stories in this show.

Instead we met a man who tried to clean his lawnmower while it was still on; the little girl, who like 400 people a year, put a fork through her foot, and the woman who fell over in the greenhouse landing on a cactus and severing an artery in her arm.

One lucky gardener who decided to wield a chainsaw while wearing no protective clothing almost cut off her foot but was bizarrely saved by the metal on her brown moccasin which deflected the blade.

And it's not just the amateurs who cause chaos in the garden - Charlie Dimmock showed us how she drove a sit-on lawnmower into a lake because she was mesmerised by the water and Tommy admitted doing a himself a very personal injury with a spade.But the medal for the most incompetent professional has to go to Martyn Cox, a journalist who writes for Gardening World magazine.

Martyn was lighting a bonfire in a client's garden but was getting impatient when the flames wouldn't get going. So, in his great wisdom, he grabbed a petrol can and decided to throw it onto the fire, hitting the fence behind.

Needless to say, the whole garden was burnt to the ground, leaving Martyn with a lot of explaining to do but somehow a clean enough CV to get a job in the gardening world.

That was a prime example of why some people shouldn't be allowed to leave their beds never mind trespass into the dangerous world of gardening.

This is just one in the series of 'Death by...' - next week we have killer pets to look forward to. The mind boggles.

Published: 26/06/2003