The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Good Evans – Queen tunes in to Chris’s flower show Monarch reveals her radio taste during visit to Chelsea display
The Queen was an ardent listener to Sir Terry Wogan’s radio show when it graced the airwaves but she has now revealed she tunes in to his successor Chris Evans.
She met the Radio 2 DJ as she toured the Chelsea Flower Show and told him he was on her radio on Monday morning.
Evans had broadcast his breakfast show from the famous horticultural event in celebration of his “Taste Garden” at Chelsea – celebrating the tastiest plants grown in allotments and community gardens across the country.
The green space was inspired by TV cook Mary Berry, and when the Duchess of Cambridge toured the garden she showed she had no airs and graces when she ate a tomato that had fallen on the ground.
After meeting the Queen, Evans described the moment: “She said, ‘I was listening to you this morning’, because it was the Chelsea Flower Show.”
The Queen was famously one of Wogan’s Togs – Terry’s Old Geezers or Gals – but it was not known if she listened to Evans, who took over the BBC Radio 2 breakfast slot after Sir Terry retired in 2009. When Kate, who wore a dress by Rochas, toured Evans’s garden he went into the site’s greenhouse and gave her a tomato, but despite dropping it, the down-to-earth duchess was happy to pop it in her mouth and munch away.
Other members of the Royal Family toured the Chelsea Flower Show, including the Duke of Edinburgh, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, the Earl and Countess of Wessex and other minor royals.
Kate also chatted to Northern Irish gardener Ian Price, 39, who built his “Mind Trap” garden to tell the story of his 15-year battle with mental health.
Mr Price, who supported William, Kate and Harry’s Heads Together marathon campaign, said: “Kate said that George knows that the foxgloves are poisonous but she didn’t realise that the Euphorbia can be bad too.”Actress Gemma Arterton was also to be seen discussing her green fingers as she prepared for her upcoming movie role.
She will play Vita Sackville-West in forthcoming release Vita And Virginia, which depicts the writer’s love affair with Virginia Woolf, as well as her famous passion for horticulture. She will star alongside Nocturnal Animals actress Andrea Riseborough, who plays Woolf.
Arterton, 31, said her research for the part had made her a devoted gar- dener. The Girl With All The Gifts star said: “I would like to be a big gardener and I am constantly trying to find new ways to bring it to life. I am moving house soon just so that I can have a garden. The role came before the passion. Vita was one of the world’s most famous gardeners, so I have been trying to get into the zone for that.”
Arterton described Sackville-West as a “natural gardener,” and said finding her own green fingers came with challenges and admitted at first every plant she touched “seemed to die”.