Garden gang

HE’S the green-fingered mogul of daytime telly who’s even managed to get his hands on Nelson Mandela’s shrubbery, not to mention having his own chat show.

Now Alan Titchmarsh has cherrypicked another prize gig in Highgrove: Alan Meets Prince Charles.

Not long after appearing on ITV’s revamped Daybreak, the Prince of Wales has invited Titchmarsh on a tour of the Highgrove Estate, one of the country’s most important contemporary gardens and his personal retreat and family home.

In celebrating 30 years of royal gardening at the estate, the programme features excerpts from a performance of The Highgrove Suite, commissioned by HRH and composed by Patrick Hawes, whose aim was to encapsulate the essence of the garden in his music.

We’re promised a “remarkably informal, relaxed and candid interview” with the Prince about his gardening needs and aspirations.

“I think the fun is to try things that aren’t normally done. That is what I’ve tried to do here – there are things that amuse me that other people may find eccentric,”

he tells Titchmarsh.

The Highgrove Estate has become synonymous with all things organic, and the interviewer wants to know what inspired the beliefs of this royal gardener, who’s often teased about his passion for chatting to his beloved plants. Perhaps they have better conversation than Camilla.

Titchmarsh and the prince do have one thing in common in that they’ve both been awarded the Victoria Medal of Honour – Titchmarsh in 2004 for his broadcasting and gardening educational outreach, and Prince Charles last year, as the Queen honoured his passion for plants, sustainable gardening and the environment.

Now, nearly three decades since the Duchess of Cornwall bought the grand house and its land, then a featureless blank canvas, Prince Charles has seen to it that the architectural quirks, bursts of colour and intricate topiary arguably make for some of Britain’s most breathtaking views.

But what does Titchmarsh like to see in a garden?

“Good lines – either curved or straight, good proportions and good use of focal points,” he says.

As for his own garden, he says: “There’s lots of grass and stone terraces. I like relatively formal hard lines with lots of billowing planting in between. There’s also lots of topiary, I like clipped things.”

IN River Cottage Everyday, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes his passion for cooking into other peoples’ houses, as he helps the entire family bring simple, tasty food to the table.

His belief is simple – that good food should be at the heart of every kitchen and the kitchen should be at the heart of every home. In this eight-part series, Hugh tackles a different subject each week – from fruit to fish and breakfast to baking.

In the opening programme, he proves it’s possible to afford organic, free-range meat, by buying cheap cuts rather than cheap meat. He visits a butcher who sells him the cheapest cut in the shop – ox liver.

Devilled in a hot and spicy sauce, it proves to be a real winner, leading him to take his passion for cheap, cheerful and hearty stews to a local five-a-side football team, where he manages to set up a communal stew club.

ACTOR and comedian Alan Davies grew up in the Eighties, when it seemed everything – from race relations to sexual politics, jobs and the economy – was going through a revolution.

Packed with archive footage and home videos, Alan Davies’ Teenage Revolution offers his very personal history of the decade.

The final episode, Get Up, Stand Up, charts the end of the Eighties and the beginning of his comedy career.

In 1988, after four years of studying drama at university, he joined the ranks of the unemployed. He traces the beginnings of his desire to perform on stage, and how this eventually propelled him to climb the slippery slope of stand-up comedy – but not the old-style comedy of racist, sexist, homophobic gags.