Alan Titchmarsh discusses support from his mother-in-law
James Martin guest Alan Titchmarsh paid tribute to his mother-in-law for her help which sparked a decades spanning TV and radio career.
The 75-year-old gardening expert was one of the guests on James Martin's Saturday Morning alongside award-winning composer Debbie Wiseman, and chefs Nick Nairn and Dipna and Gulu Anand on Saturday morning (November 23).
Presenter James Martin invited Alan Titchmarsh into his kitchen to cook a dish for Alan to sample. While cooking, James Martin asked the gardening presenter and writer how he started out his TV and radio career.
Alan Titchmarsh paid tribute to his late mother-in-law for her support for his freelance media career.
Alan said: "I was working there (BBC) for gardening magazines, so they called me and said about the Green Fly and whatnot.
"I then went freelance so I went on my own - I decided I didn't want to be stuck in a London office all my life. I'm a gardener and I wanted be out in the countryside.
"We lived in Hampshire and I just went out on the own. The only person encouraged me to go freelance is my mother in law, bless her, because I said to Alison, you know, this is it, we won't be earning what I'm earning now.
"In fact, I did all right with television, radio and writing and manage to earn a living."
Alan Titchmarsh has since gone on to become a broadcasting legend thanks to presenting Gardeners' World, Ground Force, Alan Titchmarsh Show and Love Your Garden.
James Martin moved the conversation to his most popular hit Ground Force, which attracted millions of viewers every week on BBC One. Alan Titchmarsh transformed gardeners across the country with co-stars Charlie Dimmock and Tommy Walsh between 1997 and 2002.
But Alan was not entirely convinced any set of gardeners could transform a garden within two days. He said: "I wanted to make it accessible.
"But you've got to remember, I mean, that was 15 years after I started doing television. I started doing Gardeners' World in 1996 and then Ground Force came along in 1997 so that's nearly 20 years since I started broadcasting.
"So there was a long learning curve before you get told off for instant gardening."
James interjected: "It's the same thing as a chef, you could never create dishes in 20 minutes. Now we're doing it in six (minutes). It's the same thing."
Alan replied: "My argument was you could, because I said this to the producer, when they said 'We want you to do a garden makeup', I said, 'it can't be done - it takes years make a garden'.
"They said, 'Well, what if you had two days? (I said) that's ridiculous. They said, 'so you couldn't do anything in two days?'"
This moment is when Alan Titchmarsh realised Ground Force could be a reality.
He said: "So we did what we did and the people who inherited those gardens, it's the same with Love Your Garden, which I've been doing on ITV, you gift people with a garden and it changes lives enormously and also they get something that they want to look after."
The renowned gardening expert and broadcaster has also collaborated with celebrated composer Debbie Wiseman to craft a delightful new Christmas album titled Jack Frost - A Winter Story.
James Martin's Saturday Morning airs weekly at 9.30pm on ITV 1.
