ALAN TITCHMARSH ON I’ll never branch out into reality TV

IT might seem as if Alan Titchmarsh is never off the box... but the perennial TV host insists his career is still carefully cultivated.

Alan, who drew audiences of more than 12 million to his 90s hit Ground Force, says his secret is to keep saying no.

The telly evergreen is celebrating 40 years on our screens and says his list of snubbed shows reads like the Radio Times.

“People say, ‘You’re always on the telly’ and I say, ‘You don’t know what I’ve turned down’,” Alan tells the Sunday People.

“Strictly Come Dancing a few times. My wife was a dancer and she says my knees just wouldn’t take the lifts.

“My agent knows not to even ask me about I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here.

“I want to be famous for doing something, not for the sake of being famous.

“I’ve never had a quiet period and I’ve always had my spade to fall back on. I’ve been very blessed.”

After turning 70 this year, Alan has been asked if he has retirement plans.

Allotment

But the gardener, broadcaster and author, who’s working on his first book of poetry called Marigolds, Myrtle and Moles, says: “I keep thinking I have to ease off a bit.

“My wife says I should cherrypick more, I say I get offered a lot of cherries. I like being stimulated so it’s vital to me.”

Alan – who became an apprentice gardener with his local council after leaving school at 15 – is returning to our screens with ITV show Fifty Shades of Green.

It sees him joined by pals like Mary Berry and Griff Rhys Jones in some of his favourite spots.

His love of plants has taken the schoolboy from Ilkley, West Yorkshire on a path around the world and introduced him to the globe’s key figures, from the Queen to Nelson Mandela.

But he remains grounded as he encourages us to love our gardens. His new show includes an emotional visit to the allotment where, as a toddler, he was first introduced to gardening.

“I was one when I picked up my first spade in my grandad’s allotment,” he says. “Then I built my own greenhouse when I was 10.

“Going back to the allotment I think was my grandad’s was wonderfully emotive.”

Alan also revisits the famed Royal

Botanic Gardens in

Kew, where he is reunited with a rare tree he looked after whilst working there.

He went to Kew for further study aft er gaining t he

National Certificate in Horticulture at