BBC is swapping plant pots for snooker pots, says Monty
MONTY Don has taken a pot shot at the BBC for regularly replacing Gardeners’ World with ‘cheap’ snooker coverage.
The presenter also bemoaned the show’s lack of funding compared with Top Gear, telling his 45,000 Twitter followers that his BBC Two programme would flourish if given ‘a quarter’ of the budget of the motoring show.
In a series of recent tweets, he said: ‘Imagine what GW [Gardeners’ World] could do if we had half – a quarter – of the budget of TG [Top Gear]. In TV, money = time and GW is always shot in a flat out 10hr day, full-on rush. An extra day per programme would change everything.’ He added that he would ‘make better programmes, more strands, more specials’ if Gardeners’ World got more money.
He also took a dig at this week’s shunting of Gardeners’ World in favour of the World Snooker Championship.
Don, 61, who writes for the Daily Mail’s Weekend magazine, tweeted: ‘Snooker is cheap “event” TV. That makes it very attractive to schedulers.’ His weekly show is forced to give up its regular Friday 8pm slot every year for the snooker.
The gardening advice programme regularly attracts up to 2.5million viewers and over 7,000 have petitioned the BBC to stop cancelling its slot for live sport.
A BBC spokesman said ‘contractual commitments’ to air sporting events mean they are left with little choice but to change the schedule.