Eric Robson on his last Gardeners’ Question Time after 25 years
After 25 years on ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’, Eric Robson retires this week. He talks to Joe Shute
Decades ago, in a distant past, Eric Robson was strolling through the corridors of BBC’S Manchester HQ when he heard the controller for the North of England booming behind him: “That’s the voice I want on Gardeners’ Question Time.”
When he got the gig – as the eighth chairman in the history of the programme, which started in 1947 – he was told he was being “handed the keys to middle England”. Now, 25 years on, he is handing them back. This Friday, Robson’s last broadcast from the hallowed chair of GQT will go out on Radio 4. The 72-year-old is stepping down, to be replaced by newsreader Kathy Clugston.
His departure marks the latest in a recent spate of male BBC stalwarts to desert their posts. Last year, David Dimbleby retired from Question Time to be replaced by Fiona Bruce, and in March it was announced his brother, Jonathan, was leaving Radio 4’s Any
Questions? after 32 years. John Humphrys is soon to finish up on the
Today programme and in February Andrew Neil announced his departure from This Week, which he has fronted since 2003.
So, spade in both hands and firmly digging, was Robson pushed?
“It’s entirely my decision,” he insists, his Cumbrian drawl booming about the empty hall of Manchester Grammar School, where we are sitting before his final broadcast. “All the names you mentioned are of an age. I loved doing the programme and could have carried on doing it until my clogs fell off, but the travel was getting very wearying.”
A year or so ago, he was taken out for lunch by a BBC head honcho, who politely requested Robson provide as much notice as possible when he decided to call it a day. “I thought about it and said to them: ‘My contract is up in 18 months. Why don’t I give you 18 months’ notice?’”
For his successor, he has nothing but praise: “She’s a charming lady with a wonderful voice, consummate broadcaster and a great sense of humour”. But the man who has spent decades clipping his panellists like
wayward roses can’t resist adding: “I will keep listening. I’ve told Kathy that I will and I will be honest with her.”
Another former GQT chairman, Stefan Buczacki, has proved rather less diplomatic about Clugston, who has described herself as an “amateur gardener”. Buczacki called her appointment an example of the BBC “dumbing down”. Robson says that accusation was first levelled at the programme when he took over in 1994. “By tradition, the chairman is a broadcaster and not a horticulturalist,” he adds.
He also admits to possessing little horticultural skill. He doesn’t “garden” in the traditional sense, but he owns 35 acres of oak and ash woodland and an orchard of fruit trees, in land surrounding his Lake District home. Still, he rolls his eyes when I ask what he feels about the trend of “vegan gardening” recently suggested by Matthew Appleby, deputy editor of Horticulture Week.
An unofficial role of the GQT chairman is to marshal the levels of smut, both deliberate and unintentional, for which the programme has gained a cult following. An example would be a 2016 query from a man called “Dick Soaper” from Great Saxham, about selfpollinating his peaches.
His co-conspirator is often Bunny Guinness, the Telegraph columnist and GQT panellist. “Gardening has so many connotations,” she says. “The swingers and the pampas grass, putting things to bed and banging up against the wall. Sometimes you think it is a bit risqué, but it is always best to just say it – there are two million listeners out there who will love it.”
Guinness has worked with Robson for 21 years and describes him as “unflappable”. Coincidentally, she also has an adopted chicken named after his successor – Kathy Cluckston – of which the same cannot be said.
“I remember going into my first programme and it being so nerveracking, and Eric was very helpful,” she says. “I’ve made some real bloopers in the past and he always turns it around to a funny joke.”
Robson has never been tempted to move into the media bubble, save a two-week stint living in Ealing. He grew up on a council estate in Carlisle (his father was a fireman) and attended the local grammar school. He dreamt of becoming an actor, but his mother, Nessie, was having none of it and started applying for jobs on his behalf.
Borders TV offered him an interview as a £17-a-week clerk, which he accepted on the proviso he would be given a production job in two years. A promotion to reporter followed and, after 10 years on the station, he went to work for the BBC as a freelancer, where he has been ever since.
Robson is married to Annette, his second wife, and has five grown-up children and four grandchildren. He states several times how lucky he has been in his career. Does he worry about the prospects of young working-class people trying to make it in the media today? “It must be soul-destroying,” he says. “The sheer number of people being encouraged by media studies courses to go into a shrinking industry.”
His big break came in 1977 when the US president Jimmy Carter visited Tyneside on his first foreign trip. The BBC had set up an outside broadcast unit but, Robson says, forgot to hire a broadcaster for the day. He was handed the microphone and told he would only need to speak for a few minutes live on air. “As it turns out, it was a b----- long time, since Carter had seen a cheering crowd, so he kept slowing the procession down,” he recalls. “My first experience of live broadcast was padding for 45 minutes.”
Over the ensuing decade, he became one of the BBC’S main outside broadcasters, covering events of national significance, such as Remembrance Sunday, Trooping
‘I will keep listening. I’ve told Kathy that I will be honest with her’
The programme has gained a cult following for its levels of smut
the Colour and the 50th anniversary of the Second World War. Eventually, the mantle was passed to David Dimbleby, although Robson insists he feels no bitterness.
“I used to enjoy it tremendously and was good at it. But something comes up and you move on,” he says.
Over the years, Robson has noticed a marked shift in the GQT demographic. “Our audience is a lot younger in general. No doubt quite a lot of people are cut off from gardening because all they can afford is a one-bed flat.” He says panellists are as likely to discuss house plants as they are elaborately trained espaliers. Accordingly, he deems GQT in rude health.
What now for Robson? He runs a DVD company with his wife and is chairman of Cumbria Tourism. But he insists his time off air is a mere hiatus. “I’ll go home, clear the decks for a bit and rest for a week or two, then I’ll be putting ideas up.”
Spoken like a true hardy perennial.
Gardeners’ Question Time is on BBC Radio 4 on Friday at 3pm