Off Air... with Jane and Fi - But what if we can't share anecdotes from the same Olympic Games? (With Monty Don)

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

Jane has brought some interesting dating adverts with her to discuss with Fi. They also talk bikini lines, their ideas for the King's Speech, and Barbra Streisand. They're joined by the nation's favourite gardener, Monty Don, to talk about 'The Gardening Book', which is available to buy now. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfi Assistant Producer: Megan McElroy Times Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

VoiceOver describes what's happening on your iPhone screen. VoiceOver on. Settings. So you can navigate it just by listening. Books. Contacts. Calendar. Double tap to open. Breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11. And get on with your day. Accessibility. There's more to iPhone. We ended last night's podcast with Dolly Alderton's plan that men should be told that they cannot have children

with people younger than them. Do you remember? Which, by the way, should have been in the King's speech today, and I don't know why it wasn't, because I've been mulling it all over, and it's not such a bad idea. But just as an illustration, I mean, there's always been a theory, hasn't there,

that whereas a lot of women give up or think life's given up on them, men have always got a glad eye and always think it's worth having a pop. There is some evidence to suggest that might be true. So let's just have a quick glance at the personal ads. And let's be honest, this is the lady we're talking about here, which is a very respectable mag.

And on the cover, it's details the contents, precious plants, preserving the nation's flora. Princess Anne, the fearless royal. That gives you an indication of what we can look forward to inside. Anyway, in the personals, retired gentleman, early 80s. I mean, he's anxious to make that clear. Would like to meet a lady. What age of lady do you think this gent is after me?

Well, I know because we discussed it earlier, but it's not a lady who can look him straight in his glad eye. No. He's looking out for somebody between the ages. I mean, to be fair, he does have a 20-year span. A lady 35 to 55. London preferable. No time wasters.

Well, he's not got a lot of time left. So let's say he's 85. Well, he's early 80s. Let's say he's 85. He's 88, isn't he? And he meets a 35-year-old. Yeah. And I would just ask that 35-year-old to just maybe have a think about that too.

But no, it's not great, Jane. It's not great. And on the dating apps, that's one of the things that goes wrong, is you can choose the age range of the people that you want to meet and you just know from the people who then contact you that they're in their 70s and 80s and they wanted to meet someone 20 years younger than them whereas I just wouldn't have dreamt of saying I'd like to just meet men who are 28 to 34 yeah I mean you could say that but I didn't because I didn't want to meet someone

with whom I couldn't share anecdotes from the same Olympic Games. I think that's a really important point. Yeah. Just what would we talk about? Because, you know, I want to share music. I want to share TV programmes. I want cultural references that make sense. There have to be.

But this is always the great mystery in relationships between older men and younger women. What do they talk about? What do they actually talk about? What are their points of reference, as you say, their cultural wallpaper? What is it? Well, it's not there, so they're doing other things, aren't they?

But let's be also honest about that, because they can't do other things 24 hours a day, seven days a week yep even with chemical assistance yep i find that so strange because if you just think about so if you think about our friendship it is absolutely fueled stop it it's fueled by uh you know references to the same people that we know or things that we've done or places that we've been. And even in our friendship, the age gap can be an issue. I was just about to say, yeah. But it's five years, four years at this time of year.

It's very much my favourite time of year. Yeah, I remember the moon landings, Fi. I'd only just been born. Yeah, literally. No, you hadn't been born. No, February. I was born in February. Oh, I always think it's October. God, really? I always think, I woke up in February. Oh, I always think it's October. God, really?

I always think... I woke up in the middle of the night a couple of nights ago thinking, shit, I missed a birthday. So you gave me a really nice vase in February. And it wasn't cheap. No, I might bring it back in. You can just give it back to me next February. Do you remember that terrible, terrible ad

that you found in the back of Private Eye, which was an older man asking for a woman on HRT? Oh, God, I do remember that, yes. She had to be on HRT. She had to be on HRT. I turn down anyone who's not on statins. I'm just not interested. But isn't that ridiculous?

Anyway, there's so much to discuss. Now, we wanted, slightly bizarrely, to have a brief word tonight about Barbara Streisand. Now, this is because she's got a new memoir that she's dutifully plugging. Nothing wrong with that at all. She's not actually someone I know a great deal about. Is she someone whose career you've invested in?

No, so I like her music, but I've always thought that she was a very, very private person, incredibly deliberately, and actually had that rather mystical kind of air of Hollywood privacy about her. So I'm delighted she's written a book, but it turns out that she didn't want to be quite so private. She wanted to have a bit more fun.

Well, this is where I think she's on slightly thin ice, bearing in mind that she's plugging her memoir. So she's saying, I've not had much fun. Buy my book about my life. I'm not sure those two things... I mean, she'd be better off saying, I've had so much fun, you wouldn't believe it, and I'm going to tell you all about it in my new book,

out now. Whereas I think Babs has been a bit too truthful. But she's currently married, so it's not a huge compliment to the actor James Brolin, to whom she is currently married, that she's saying she's not had much fun. It does sound as though some co-stars were pretty horrible. But they haven't been married forever, have they?

Are they forever sweethearts? Isn't that a late-in-life marriage? It might be a late-in-life romance, I don't know. Anyway, talk about how she's got a great back. Oh, gosh, yes. Well, the book lists the famous men who were infatuated with her. What do you have a chapter on that in your memoir? More than one, I would have thought. The actor Omar Sharif wrote long, passionate letters begging her to leave her husband.

The king. That's our king yeah that's our king jazza the king yeah described her as devastatingly attractive with great sex appeal while marlon brando introduced himself by kissing the back of her neck you can't have a back like that and not have it kissed he told her i think my heart stopped for a moment, she recalls in the book. What a line. I think it's a slightly pervy line. It's a bit weird, because I don't want to be I don't want a man to just come along and kiss my back. I don't, I mean, they've

got to, I need to see the whites of their, back to the glad eye. Would you make an exception for the late Marlon Brando? No. No, I wouldn't, but I tell you what, he was about the same height as us. There is that amazing picture of him in the leather jacket. It's a right bloke, isn't it?

Yes, I think so, yeah. I know there's one of Steve McQueen as well, which is possibly the ultimate sexy man image of a certain era. Around the time he did The Great Escape and Steve McQueen sitting, white T-shirt, leather jacket. Black jacket, yeah. A stride on a motorbike. I think there's a similar one of Marlon Brando.

Yes, I think you're right. In that film, what was it called? Not From Here to Eternity, that's Pert Lancaster. Oh, God, what was that film called? Wild One? Somebody will know. Help us out. It'll come to the menopausal brain

Just keep talking, keep talking, keep talking Well I'll tell you one thing I need to get off my heaving bosom And this is another It's a joke being played out on the British public at the moment When you go to the supermarket And there are small bags of what they have the audacity to describe As mixed chillies

Yes And this has been making me rage for the last couple of weeks They're not mixed chilies. They are seven green chilies and one red chili in a bag for 90 pence. Sort it out. Right. What's the name of that film? Well, hang on. I'm just making sure that I get the right. The Wild One. Thank you very much, Megan. I just want to hang on. I'm just going to get the picture. Have you got the plot of The Wild One? What's it about? No, but... Well, that was him in later life. I don't want to see that.

That might have been his ad in the back of The Lady. Well, of course, he's not actually with us anymore. Can I just tell you one final thing about Babs? Yes. Well, she got a little bit upset at the continued incorrect pronunciation of her name. How would you say her surname? Well, I've probably got it wrong. Streisand.

So it's Streisand. Streisand. Like sand on the beach. How simple can you get? Asks Babs. I haven't got it right. And she took to phoning the Apple chief executive, Tim Cook, to complain that the iPhone was pronouncing her name wrongly. And he obviously took the call and he had Siri change the pronunciation. And Babs says, I guess that's one perk of fame.

So it's not been an entirely dumb life. No, I mean, that's a good story. Come on, don't be hard on yourself, Babs. She's had a back kiss by Marlon Brando and Siri correctly pronounces her name. Yeah. I think I might seek this book out. She's not actually on the show, is she?

She's not. One of the few people who's written a book who hasn't been on the show. I don't know. Well, give it enough time, evil booker. I would love to interview her, wouldn't you? Well, I nearly did. I went to Television Centre on a Sunday afternoon, must be about 15 years ago,

spent four hours waiting in a basement dressing room for Babs. She never showed. Oh, I'm sorry. I've been promised 15 minutes with Babs. What would your opening question have been? Have you had a dull life, Barbara, or have you had lots of fun? No, do you know what? I wasn't actually, I pretended to be really disappointed,

but I wasn't that bothered. Because the kids were quite young and I just had a lovely afternoon sitting around. Got some childcare and I just read a book while I waited. And let's call her a diva. I think that would be all right. We can, I think. I think she is a little notorious in thata. I think that would be all right. We can, I think. I think she is a little notorious in that department.

I think so, just a touch. So they are so difficult, aren't they? And you do approach all of those interviews, I think, with quite a bit of fear in your belly that somehow you're just going to trip yourself up before you've even said hello. And they decide what mood they're in, don't they? They're not swayed by you at all.

So you probably got let off lightly there. I think you're probably right. But, I mean, it might have been that our eyes had met and she'd just decided to throw James Brolin to one side. And that this was what the fun was all about. The fun was right in front of him. You just don't know, do you? Parallel universes.

Somewhere, because if we do believe that space is infinite, somewhere in the infinite universe, I am living in harmony with Barbara Johnson. In a remake. And indeed, so are you. Of the film. It's now called Sliding Bores.

And indeed, so are you. Of the film. It's now called Sliding Bores. Oh, God. Talk about pleasing yourself. Right. This is from Andre. Jane of Feet.

I've lived with tinnitus for a number of years, and that isn't funny. It helps to dull the sound if I have the radio on when I go to bed. Your show, along with The Archers, are my programmes of choice. Although unlike The Archers, you make me laugh out loud. Yesterday, Fee asked for pictures of dogs in coats. Now, I live in the west coast of Scotland and often have a wet dog. However, my nine-year-old cocker spaniel, Moragag just doesn't like a coat. She tends to walk like she has wet her pants and looks as though she's feeling very uncomfortable. As a compromise, she has a house coat, which although not obvious from the photo, she absolutely loves. Andre, thank you very much for that. And yes, I can see that in the

photo, Morag is looking is looking well somewhat ambivalent about about the house coat but as long as it keeps her safe and relatively dry that is a good thing and tinnitus is an absolute pain in the what's it so um i'm sorry you have to put up with that yeah um that's really really tedious in the extreme that certainly is and i wonder what helps it um because people a lot of people find very different things incredibly calming, don't they? I remember a friend of mine saying that actually

there's something about the atmosphere deep inside a forest that really really helped him. It was the only place that he could go where it didn't stop it completely but there was something about the air pressure that just really diminished it. Isn't that weird?

What do you mean? So because there was the sound of silence, total silence. So I don't know what it was, because that was the bit that didn't make sense, because I know that lots of people find some kind of relief in white noise, don't they? So you raise the level of noise and you simply can't hear your own tinnitus.

But he absolutely swore by the silence of a forest and it being something about the different air pressure underneath the canopy of the trees. Who knows? I'd love to hear from other people who maybe have found a way to get on with tinnitus. I do know that white noise, you know the old static between radio

stations, which isn't so common these days with digital radio. It's not there at all? No, that can help to soothe newborns, can't it? Can it? Yes, it's like, I tried it in the old Moses basket. And I think it did make a bit of a difference. Yeah, I think it can act as a soother. And do you remember Wayne Rooney?

Well, he's not dead, darling. That's a bit rude. Do you remember Wayne Rooney used to always sleep with the hairdryer on? I didn't know this fact about him. I'm now struggling to remember why I know it. But anyway, gosh, it was a noisy night, that. OK. No, it's true, that.

But I honestly don't know where I read it. Right, OK. If you're thinking of going into journalism, my one tip would be check your sources. We don't know whether or not that's correct, but it's unlikely that he'll sue. He's had bigger things on his mind recently, so I think we've got away with it.

Hello, Rebecca. Now, this one comes from Jeremy, who says, Hi, Jane and Fi Vardy, by the way. Yes. I'm a long-time listener, male, who says, hi, Jane and Fee Vardy, by the way. Yes. I'm a long-time listener, male, aged 55, who's listened to every show since the start, back on the other channel, brave man. I have my hair cut at a local Turkish barber,

and they ask if I want my hairy ears done, which they then burn off with a naked flame. Oh, my God. Also, my wife and I used to live in Camberwell in south-east London, and a local beauty salon had a price list for bikini line small or bikini line large. It used to make my wife and I giggle thinking of someone being told that a bikini line is large.

Love the show. Love the show. Thank you, Jeremy. That is quite odd. I've seen high bikini line and, you know, there are all kinds of fractions being used now, aren't there? A three-quarter bikini line and all that kind of stuff. What's a three-quarter bikini line?

Well, I think it depends entirely on your bikini waxing therapist and you to decide where the other quarter is. I don't really know, Jane. Good grief. I'm more of a two-sixths myself. Yes. You are a woman who we know in recent past has changed her sheets. So that's... Britain can relax. Sandra says, this is on the subject of weight,

which we will return to in our email special next week. Your discussion about weight and death reminded me of my mother-in-law's death. She'd been a healthy, sometimes slightly overweight woman who very sadly died of cancer in her late 50s. Now, the cancer had caused her to lose a lot of weight. And when we were talking about this after her funeral, her weight had dropped from nine stone, her weight had dropped to nine stone from 13.

One of her friends piped up, it wasn't like Pauline at all. And honestly, it always makes me smile when I think of this. Sandra, thank you very much. I know what you mean. Sometimes it is, without sort of being really, really serious about this, sometimes severe weight loss is in no way a good thing. It's a really, really bad sign. And clearly your late mother-in-law was 13 stone in her real life and when she was with the people who cared about her and it was

the cancer that made her drop to nine and um yeah it's um i don't know i mean as i've said yesterday we just we just need to be sort of less cruel less cruel on ourselves and less harsh on everybody else, don't we, really? Yes. Just let people be whatever suits them and whatever they can do. But I tell you what, there are some really amazing emails that we've had about this, and especially from people who've experienced what our original emailer was talking about

from the daughter's perspective. So daughters who have felt that kind of scrutiny from their parents about their weight, and those are really fantastic. So that comes your way at the end of next week, doesn't it, the email special? Yes. Oh, I tell you what, we're a bit backed up, aren't we?

We've got specials all over the place. Book Club special, November the 24th. This came in from Jane Matthews, who says, I live in Sydney and I just went to a charity literary lunch last week. Ooh, where Trent Dalton was the guest speaker. And speak he certainly did. So he's the author of the book that we've chosen for this month. He had the audience enthralled. The lunch was to raise money via Barnardo's to help women who had been released from jail. And it's a topic close to his heart.

It's also a theme in the book. He's articulate and doesn't hold back. He makes Geoffrey Archer look like a shrinking violet. I think he would be so tickled to know that he's your book club pick and if you want a guest who polarises, he's your man. So we are in contact with his publisher actually and we're just trying to fix the time that we can talk to him.

And Jane goes on to say say I've been meaning to contact you over the months about different things for example Australia's PC answer to Barbie years ago was a doll called Feral Cheryl complete with underarm and pubic hair. Do you know what Australia just ever ever

stopped surprising me. Don't go changing I know so many Janes and Fiona's here. I'm a similar vintage to you. That we have a Jane and Fiona club who meet for dinner every so often. The best evenings. You're invited. Absolutely fantastic.

Well, we're never going to get to Australia, are we? I mean, not unless I could only do it, Jane, if I if I left in if I did a journey across a year. So I just went tiny, tiny amounts across the globe. Could you cruise there? No. No? No, because the things that happen on cruises, Jane, are terrible. There was a terrible incident on a saga cruise overnight in the Bay of Biscay. I mean, seriously, I think quite a few people were injured.

Everybody's OK, I think. But nasty weather, and they've had to come back. No, I couldn't cruise to Australia. Could you? No. I mean, I've only been in the Mersey Ferry three or four times. What was I going to say? Oh, yes. Lovely. This is going to annoy Kay, whose email I'm about

to read, but there's a particularly lovely picture here of a dog in a coat. I appreciate this is a little visual, but you'll enjoy it it just with the words trust me it's from lou who says see attached a picture of my puppy beans in his new rain jacket now beans is a name i can get i can get on board with i love that name beans yeah he isn't a huge fan of the jacket but needs must i rather think it makes him look like he's ground crew for a budget airline, overseeing the loading of bags or similar. He's almost five months old now and entering his teenage challenging years,

but I love him so much and I can't imagine life without him. He's a sweetie. Bare as beans. He's absolutely gorgeous. Kay, on the other hand, says she understands the benefits of dogs and cats in relation to loneliness and for children with social anxieties but however she says there's a however here i know so many people who bought dogs and cats seemingly without any real thought and often regretted their decision as they found it limiting or because

it's actually had a bad effect on their social life or cost them lots of money in vets fees and other expenses as other other of your listeners have pointed out it is possible to go for a walk without a dog and you may even enjoy it more i also do find that cat and dog owners will often dominate conversations exchanging stories about their pets it's boring for non-pet owners and i suspect that other people's pets may not even be that interesting to other pet owners it Yeah, it is quite boring. Good point. And also she says, on my street, there's dog poo everywhere. Kay, sympathy there.

I cannot stand it. It's infuriating when stupid, irresponsible owners let that happen. Yes. No more talk of our pets now. No, never. Never, never. Shall we talk about Monty Don? Oh, yes.

Yeah. So Monty Don was our guest this afternoon. He's got a new book. It's out in time for Christmas, never. Shall we talk about Monty Don? Oh, yes. Yeah. So Monty Don was our guest this afternoon. He's got a new book. It's out in time for Christmas, kids, and it's simply called The Gardening Book. It's Monty very much going back to basics and explaining how to make a garden. And actually, it's a really good thing, isn't it?

Because I find it a little bit intimidating. I'm an absolutely hopeless gardener, but there are some quite good gardeners in my family, and i always think they're just so far ahead of me with all their knowledge jane i would never be able to catch up in a month of sundays with a bank holiday thrown in i would i would it's another of my regrets in life but i just can't i don't really i'd love to know more yeah i'd love to devote time to it but But I went out into what passes for my back garden this morning because I was sorting out

the... I'm just doing a little hand. I'm not sure what that charade is. What were you doing in your garden? I was getting the... What? I was getting the hosepipe to give a thorough going over to the litter tray. Sorry, Kay, I've just mentioned the cat. And poo as well. Well, no, because mainly we, she does. Oh. You know, you need to. And poo as well.

Well, no, because mainly we, she does poo outside these days. Okay, yeah. Kay will be riveted. Or not. Anyway, I was in the garden and everything, it's a desperate time of year,

this, isn't it, for the garden. It really is. It's a time of decay. Yes. Come on, let's get back on board with Monty. Yes. So anyway, this is a book that he hopes will take away that kind of fear

and the ignorance that you think will make you a bad gardener. So if you don't know all the Latin names and the soil types and how the wind might affect your herbaceous borders this is the manual for you. It's also classic Monty. There are loads of very luscious

pictures of Monty with all manner of garden tools. Can we just acknowledge that he is something of the older lady's fancy, isn't he? He is. Yeah. If he were a cake in a high-end patisserie, he'd be the older woman's fancy. Yes. I think he'd be the incredibly classic but beautifully made Victoria sponge, wouldn't he?

I see him more as one of those creme pat. The creme pat? He's a creme pat bun. He's a creme pat bun delight. OK. But anyway, the front cover has him secateurs in hand, wearing a stunning selection of blue linen workwear. And he started by telling us the story behind that photograph.

I was walking towards my wife who is off camera and I won't say the word she was using because this is for nice people but she was basically telling me to F off, F off, go away, F off and that's why I'm laughing in that picture. Yes well you are you're having a right old chuckle. I mean is that her greeting to you after 40 years together you have been married a while 43 years she's entitled to swear i guess you'd say whatever she likes yeah um the book is absolutely beautiful and i mean it is stunning some of the pictures they do make me laugh i mean it's gone a little bit monty don porn in places hasn't it there's some lovely luscious pictures of you chucking gourds around at one point. Yeah, I mean,

there's a sort of serious side to that because the book is aimed at people who aren't necessarily gardeners, who don't watch Gardener's World religiously and don't probably haven't ever bought a book by me or any other gardener necessarily. The reason why it's called The Gardening Book is because

we wanted people to say, oh, go and get The Gardening Book, you know, because it'd be the only one or the first one they got. Is it a bit like Delia Smith's cookery series where she taught people how to boil an egg? And I mean that in a good way. No, no, absolutely. And in fact, we talked a lot about food and how you learn to cook

and what sort of cookbooks people use. And that gardening, the problem with gardening is gardening in so much that you're expected to know about how to do it and there's an awful lot of pretending to know about how to do things where there's not quite being sure what's going on. And there is a club that you feel that you join. You jump through certain hoops and you go up

and you're allowed into another inner sanctum of gardening and so on and so forth. And part of that is quite enjoyable because you share things with people, but part of it is very inhibiting and intimidating. Yeah, I agree. And what I wanted to do was write a book fundamentally for my children's generation. They're in their 30s, and they're completely conversant with style

and they travel and they eat well and they can dress themselves and tie their shoelaces and all the things that clever people can do. But they just don't know about gardening. That doesn't mean they don't want it or like it. They just don't know about it. And is part of their reluctance, and I mean that's extraordinary, isn't it, because obviously you have such a beautiful garden

and gardening must have been in their lives. But is some of their reluctance because it doesn't just go like that? You know, you have to be patient, don't you, to garden well? Gardening, you can't... It's a bit like learning a really tricky instrument. You just have to do it badly in order to do it a little bit better and have patience and just accept that it's going to go wrong that's that's the first rule of all gardening is it all goes wrong all the time until

it doesn't a bit and then you build on that and you build on that and you build on that and the musical analogy extends because i always feel that until you have to stop thinking how to do it you can't really do it and and so with if you're playing an instrument if you're remembering where to put your fingers or what the time should be you're not really playing the piece of music you because you're not focusing on so when you're growing something if you can just focus on the plant or what you want from it or how you feel about it all those things then it'll work whereas if you're like now do it is it do i do this in april or in may or where do i take the cutting is it above or below the node what's a node

you know and that sort of thing then that's going to inhibit the result can you learn to garden across the four seasons of one year or no okay how how long what you can do is what you can do and what i hope the book explains is you can both make something that looks beautiful in your eyes and you can have a really good time and you can open doors in the space of one year and you know i've been gardening for over 50 years and i've got loads to learn and and i will have if I do it for another 50 years, God forbid. So that's not the point. Learning isn't getting anywhere isn't the point. And that's another problem with gardening.

Somehow you go to Chelsea or whatever and you see a fantastic garden or you watch Gardener's World and we've made it look as good as we can and it's taken three of us three weeks to prep it up for this one shot. Life isn't like that. Television is television. It's not real life. And I think that what I hope the book will give confidence to people is saying, yeah, it's going to be a bit messy, and yes, it'll be muddy, and the children will break the important thing,

and the dog will do what it shouldn't do, and so on and so forth. But in amongst that is delight and is beauty. When do you think you got the proper gardening bug? Because I know that you started to kind of put your hands in the soil as a very young child, but you didn't. Well, I was I was made to garden along with my brothers. We had a big garden, home counties. My parents had a gardener who then hurt his back and so therefore couldn't do it.

And in a sort of, with hindsight, very honourable sort of way, they kept, I think they kept paying him, but he never came to work. He was basically permanently sick and he was a nice man. And so the obvious answer is we did it. You know, you've got children, once we could lift a trowel or mow a lawn that's what we did and we had to garden in order that we could go and play so I gardened in order that I could stop gardening that was the goal do something in order you could finish doing it god that could have put you off for life. Yeah, it could. It could, and it might have done. But when I was 17, I came home from school one day,

and it's important to put into context, me at 17 was a very disaffected youth. You know, I'd been expelled from two schools. I had basically, it was not a good time, you know. And one romanticises that, but the truth a good time, you know. And one romanticises that, but the truth is, it's an unhappy time. And I went out into the garden, and it was spring, and I remember very clearly preparing the ground in the vegetable garden.

And by then, I knew how to do it. I didn't want to do it, but I knew how to do it. And sowing some carrots, and just for no reason at all, I mean, totally out of the blue, feeling blissfully happy, just overwhelmed with joy, a kind of mystical experience. That sounds almost spiritual. Yeah, it was. And it wasn't almost. It absolutely was. And with hindsight, and I've studied spiritualism a great deal, mysticism and Zen and things, it was the absence of desire

because I had everything there was to have in that moment. It was complete, total contentment with what there was. Which was, you know, I hadn't looked for that. That wasn't what I wanted. It was not looked for in any way. And gradually, I came to realise that my own sense of self and happiness was bound up in the soil and bound up in gardens.

But, I mean, it took me ages to translate that into a life. I mean, I mean ages, years, years and years. Because with my background, which was very home counties, middle class, middle England, you did not become a gardener. You know, you didn't go to private school and university in order to go and work in the parks department. Yeah. And that's pure snobbery.

I mean, you know, there's no reason why you shouldn't, but it was just pure snobbery. Where do you think gardening is now in that kind of prism of snobbery? Well, it's changed and that's fantastic. I think there are many more opportunities for young people now in that kind of prism of well it's changed and that's fantastic i think there are many more opportunities for young people now in gardening not nearly enough but there are more it's sort of socially much more accepted um i mean what's interesting if you go to italy or spain or france it's not at all it's treated like being a road sweeper or whatever gardening is a

very low classclass job, whereas I don't think it is in this country. And I think the other big change, which has happened since my teens and 20s, is whereas I felt like a sort of slightly subversive underground movement, ho-ho, and luckily Sarah, who I met when I was 23, she and I shared the same love of gardens.

I mean, she wasn't a gardener then, but she loved gardens and she loved plants. Um, I had a companion. I had someone to share it with, but I didn't know anyone else. No one at all who did it. Whereas now I think people do. There's a network and, and, you know, schools engage with it more. And I think that, um, the RHS is much better at encouraging young people of all backgrounds and diversity. That has got a lot better. Do you think Instagram has played a part in democratising the beauty of gardens and gardening? I mean, you're big on Insta, as I'm

sure you know. Yeah, I think it's a very good point. Yeah, I think it is. I mean, I think what's interesting about Instagram is that, you know, I will get messages or meet people who say they follow me on Instagram from Brazil or from Taiwan or, you know, bits of the world where you didn't know gardening was a thing. And I sort of have travelled a lot and I do know where it is and isn't. So you did your series, didn't you, around the world in 80 Gardens. Was there any other country or climate

that you thought gosh i could really garden the rest of my life in this one yeah yeah i mean i i have over the last six years been very involved in the garden in greece which a friend a friend sort of out of the blue inherited a house for the garden and when i said what am I going to do and also I should do something extraordinary because this has come out of the blue and I should celebrate it so I've helped her make a garden and sort of been there many many times and that's been a joy I think I would really like to garden somewhere where it was less wet and less cold and less muddy so I could easily adapt

to gardening in the south of France or in Italy or somewhere like that. I don't think there's any other nation that has a fraction of the sort of gardening culture that we have. Someone like Japan has a very highly developed gardening culture but it's much more sort of itemised and selectivised and the rules are much tighter, whereas ours is a much more general, all-embracing gardening culture. So why is that? Well, it's interesting. I mean, my immediate response is that

it's because we industrialised before anyone else and the switch from country to town, or city as it was, came much earlier, basically in the 18th and early 19th centuries. So by about 1830, 1840, you had large cities with big populations, most of which had come not from abroad but from the country. And they came with a rural agrarian background, but they had no outlet for it. So that at the first opportunity, they embraced it,

whether it be the rise of allotments or the growing middle class that had villas with gardens. And there was a huge growth in gardening in the 1820s, 30s and 40s, in a way there wasn't anywhere else in the world. And that stuck, that's come through. What do you think about class class and gardening in britain now i know you've told you told the guardian that you thought you would be the last white middle-aged middle-class big garden owning presenter of gardener's world do you do you really think that is true and that the bbc quite frankly

wouldn't dare hire another Monty? I think there's elements of truth in all that. I think the BBC would think ten times before hiring another Monty. I mean, what one would like is to feel they'd hire the best person, whoever that was, and regardless, in a truly just and fair society, we wouldn't care what someone's colour or race or creed or sex was. But the truth is that it's much more delicate than that. And I think that you...

I'm absolutely persuaded that in order to include everybody, you have to open doors that either are or seem to be shut. And if a door is perceived to be shut, then it is shut, even if actually you think it's not. I come from middle class, Oxbridge background. Every door is open to me and has been all my life. It's an incredibly privileged class. But if you'd asked me at any stage in my life if I was privileged,

I would have said, of course not. No, no, I'm just like anybody else. And that's just not true. Well, when did you come to this realisation? When did you start checking your privilege? Which I believe is what the young people say. Is that what they say? Yes.

Well, I've not had that experience before. Oh, I don't know. I mean, probably, I hope, quite a long time ago when I was, you know, probably. But I left school with very bad a levels having just rebelled against everything went and worked on a building site for a year and then well a year and a half and then farm for a year and a half so i spent three years working as a navvy well that was quite a democratic sort of experience and i was treated no different to anyone else i then went to night school and got myself into cambridge so when i went to university to the sort of experience and I was treated no different to anyone else. I then went to night school and got myself into Cambridge. So when I went to university, to the sort of Oxbridge elite,

I came through a back door and I didn't know anybody. I was different to everybody. And so I felt an outsider. So I've always felt an outsider. So on one level, I'm being disingenuous. Actually, I feel like an outsider. And most of my life has been sort of putting two fingers up at the world to prove I can do it. So that sort of puts it into a broader context. But I think much more importantly, we live in a world where, you know, I would like to see the main presenter of gardens.

I think there are women who could do it as well as any men that are around at the moment. I think that, in general, women make easily as good gardeners as men, so why don't they have the same opportunities? I think that it doesn't have to be one garden. It could be three people. It could be people from different ages.

You could have someone who's young, someone who's very old. Why not have someone who's 70, 80 it there are plenty of others around it'll be very interesting to see who they do choose but you're not going quite yet no i was going to say you obviously know something more than i do no sorry i i actually well i'm contracted for another year yeah anyway and if they offered me a bit more than that I might well take it but the serious point is I will be 70 in two years time sorry express it you don't look it

we weren't quite quick enough there that's our age go again on that one never I want to go on I like making television programmes I like writing books to have the energy to do that

and not scrabble, always that sense of scrabbling, I think I have to give something up. And I'm not prepared to give up writing and I really enjoy the travel stuff I do. So therefore the logical thing to give up is Gardener's World which is, for all its virtues,

a remorseless treadmill. to open breakfast with Anna from 10 to 11 and get on with your day accessibility there's more to iPhone Monty Don is our big guest today we're talking fire pits outdoor furniture garden lighting and I asked him if he could ever be friends with somebody who has astroturf. First of all, we're desperate to latch on to these polarised views always, you know, astroturf. But the main thing I feel is astroturf is not gardening. There may be a place in your life that desperately needs astroturf, but it's not the garden.

The only thing that I would empathise with is if you've got two young boys, three young boys, hyperactive, desperate to play football, you've got a patch of ground outside which becomes mud between the months of September and May, there is a kind of logic, so we'll put down a false surface so they can play. And that's fine, and I have no problem with that at all. But it's not a garden.

Okay. You've just relieved me of one of my great anxieties in life, Monty, because actually that was our story. We had a north facing bottom end of a London garden surrounded by plane trees, and it was just a mud pit. The kids wouldn't go in the garden yeah so we put the astroturf down problem solved and and it's it to me that is no different to putting down a trampoline or uh you know any kind of of artificial or temporary environment there are two big problems with it one which is practical which is that in order to put the astroturf down you have to clear out the topsoil and because you're excluding light basically you exclude all life and life under the soil is essential to life everywhere

I mean it is part of life it's like having sterile air or sterile anything and that's to me a completely abhorrent thing in terms of a garden you can't have a garden with sterile soil you just can't um the other problem really is there's just too much plastic in this world so you're adding to it and we you know what do you do with your astroturf when it's used up it's it's just more bloody plastic so if it could be a biodegradable surface say or something other than plastic the principle of putting down a surface in order to stop the mud i don't know people use coconut matting for cricket pitches or whatever is not in itself

bad or wrong it's just the plasticness of it i've been absolved by the priest of gardening jane well a temporary absolution, I would say. Does your BBC allegiance forbid you from commenting at all on government policy on climate change and things like that? No, it doesn't. I mean, I can, obviously, I'm not wearing

my BBC hat. I think, and it certainly hasn't stopped me commenting on things like Pete, for example, which I have spoken about very strongly for a long time. What's your take on it? My take on peat is that using peat is both unnecessary and completely vandalistic.

It's still on sale, though, isn't it? It's on sale, retail, and it goes off sale next year. When next year, I'm not sure. However, it is still going to be available wholesale and it's going to be available to growers and as a awful lot of peat is used on wholesale it's actually not the government has fudged it completely and i they i was an advisor to the government about drafting the bill about it so not that it did me or them any use but but you know i did work with them about it and there's a very strong lobby a commercial lobby using there's no reason for it i mean it's completely inexcusable and its its contribution to climate change is unarguable

and the impact of climate change on your garden in heritager what what is the most glaring example of it extreme erratic weather. So in other words, if you'd asked me that question 20 years ago, I said we're going to have a Mediterranean summer, we're going to have warmer, wetter winters, and that's the way. And so therefore we should be planting rosemary and we should be planting lavender and so on and so forth. It's not as neat as that.

I mean, for example, when I left home yesterday, the fields around us were all flooded. Yeah. And that's becoming more common the floods are getting higher um but also last winter we had minus 18 degrees so you get this which which is really cold um and then in the summer we were up to plus 40 so we had a shift of over 55 degrees in the space of six months so we're getting this extreme erratic weather which you can't really cater for and if you know anybody tells you they know the answer

they don't have understood the question it's it we are just monitoring and just accepting that we have to change my own gut feeling is that it's becoming less and less viable to grow plants that need a lot of artificial protection, whether it be from heat or from drought or whatever it might be. In other words, we... And I've been doing a lot of travelling this summer and filming in Spain where they're growing in much harsher conditions, and they're adapting. You're just adapting, and we have to learn from that.

And we have been spoiled. Britain has the best climate of any in the world for gardening. adapting you're just adapting we have to learn from that and we have been spoiled britain has the best climate of any in the world for gardening so we take it for granted as i was talking to someone in spain the other day and they said two interesting things the first was the trouble with british gardens is it's they are ruined by your plants what they meant was is we can grow so many plants that we actually forget about editing. We forget about design. We just chuck everything in.

You know, that's number one. And number two is that we just have to accept that you look around you, what is growing, and just limit it to what will survive. And because we've been able to grow anything we want, they said, you're like billionaires going into Harrods you can buy the whole thing i'll buy the shop you know i'll buy a have whatever i want and that's how we garden i'll grow anything but given that we are a nation of gardeners and there's something of the soil in our national soul uh do you do you get quite

frustrated that that doesn't translate into people being angrier about what's happening and the fact that their garden might be denied to them much sooner than they thought i get frustrated with governments i think there's enough anger in the world without wanting any more um at every level i actually think I wish people were a bit more educated about it. And that's you can't usually blame someone for not being educated. It's usually the fault of the educators, whether it be the government feeding into our system, whether it be schools or whether it be just general general sort of perception that you pick up. But do you put it onto gardeners world? I you could do a you know a very scary this is the plant that you can't have in your garden anymore well i have been saying that i mean for example

i'm you know what i've i said at the beginning of this year was that i wasn't going to protect plants like bananas anymore uh if they die they die um and see what happens they may not die um there's an element of not frightening the horses about Gardner's world. So I can see the producers thinking, oh my God, what's he going to say next? And every now and then they give me a little talking to. We're going to be raising this subject.

We need to be fair and balanced about it. Jane and I have had that BBC tour with you on the course. Jane much more than me. Monty Don and his book is simply called The Gardening Book and it's lush, isn't it? It is, actually. It would make a really lovely gift. Do you know who it would make a lovely gift for? A young couple setting up home together.

That's a nice idea, Jane. Do you know any of those? Suffolk gent seeks mature lady. Oh,, Jane. Do you know any of those? Suffolk Gent seeks mature lady. Oh, mature lady. Are we back to the lady? We're just casting our little eye over the personals. What's this? Oh, hang on. Mature, mature lady required. Male 36 requires a mature lady in her 60s or 70s. Oh, no. What for? It doesn't, well, it doesn't specify. Just to tidy up some cupboards or something.

Oh, my goodness, no strings attached. Oh, lordy. So, you see, it can work the other way. That has completely disproved all of our theories jane and everything that we talked about in the podcast everything i've fought for all my feminist life i tell you what it's tempting to write back to that isn't it unfortunately it's the northwest oh no it's not tempting at all you wouldn't be remotely interested I think I need to calm down by sitting in a small space and reading about Anne, no ordinary princess Right, well that's your fun time evening

I'm going to go back and just lie down on my still very, very clean sheets We will talk again tomorrow It's Jane and Fee at Timestop Radio if you want to join in with this bunkum And don't forget that you've only got two weeks to finish Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton. I need to hear that message as well. Yeah, you do need to hear that message, sister.

But don't worry if you don't finish it because you're still obviously entitled to have a view. No, you are. And still to come this week, Jilly Cooper and Casta Semenya. And you haven't read the Jilly Cooper book, but you have read others of hers. And I think it is OK. Jilly Cooper is 86. I think we should we should get that out there.

She's there have been some pretty big shifts in thinking since she wrote some of her some of her bestsellers. Yes. And so we will go there during our interview and we will discuss how tackle fits into the modern canon of literature. Can I just emphasise this? There is an exclamation mark. It's tackle! Tackle! A little bit, yeah.

That's tomorrow. Have a reasonable evening. Goodbye. Well done for getting to the end of another episode of Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Henry Tribe. And don't forget, there is even more of us every afternoon on Times Radio. It's Monday to Thursday, three till five. You can pop us on when you're pottering around the house or heading out in the car on the school run or running a bank. Thank you for joining us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon. Don't be so silly. Money, good bank. I know, lady. Lady listener. Sorry. over on settings so you can navigate it just by listening books contacts calendar double tap to

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