Monty’s the don of tiny gardens — and a menace with a machete!

Big Dreams Small Spaces HHHHI Room 101 HHIII

Don’t know about you, but for me one of life’s little telly pleasures is the moment on Great British Bake off when the contestants’ plans are revealed with luscious, cutaway drawings of cakes.

Illustrator tom Hovey makes every confection look like a piece of the crown jewels — sponges garnished with diamonds and iced with gold. It’s mouth- watering, and it’s completely calorie-free, the perfect cake in every sense.

Gardener Monty Don took the technique to a new level in Big Dreams

Small Spaces (BBC2), as he explained his visions for tiny plots of land with animated watercolours. A painting of each garden in its raw state slowly evolved, with Monty’s changes spreading across the canvas, until the completed plan was revealed.

It was like watching a flower bloom in fast-forward. And just like Bake off, it gave viewers a much clearer idea of the ambition than any amount of wordy explaining.

Monty has that gift, which to most of us seems like sorcery, of being able to look at a wilderness and see potential. He doesn’t just imagine a square of lawn hemmed by flowerbeds: original designs pop into his mind, ideas that most people could never conceive. He’s like the 18thcentury landscape genius Capability Brown, in miniature.

there’s nothing cerebral about his gardening style, though.

on an allotment in Barnet, north London, he laid into the nettles, wielding a machete with all the

DAMP SQUIB OF THE NIGHT: After solving Marley’s murder and letting the killer go free, Inspector Bucket (Stephen Rea) took a last look at the street on Dickensian (BBC1) and sauntered sadly off. So is that it? Has he left? Talk about a whimper and not a bang.

gusto of an Amazon explorer pursued by headhunters.

‘ this is applied brutality,’ he explained, before attacking an inoffensive hawthorn and pollarding it back to the trunk. He’s got green fingers, but there’s a touch of the red mist there, too.

You wouldn’t want him visiting if you ran a garden centre either. He marched around one outdoor salesroom, yanking seedlings out of pots to see if their roots were developing properly, and moaning loudly about the shoddy standard of pruning on a bush. But at least he’s a hefty spender — not a man to buy a single shrub if there’s an opportunity to get 20.

All this is entertaining for the general viewer and those of us who, as spring looms, are starting to wonder whether this might be the year to learn the difference between dandelions and dahlias.

But the show also has to cater to the dedicated gardener, offering useful tips and advice, and this is what Monty does so well. Planting a sprig of lavender, he chucks a handful of gravel into the hole first for drainage, to ensure the plant is never sitting in a puddle of water.

And to a gardener laying out flowerbeds to nurture bees, he advises pyracantha. You’d think that honey bees would be more interested in bright blooms, but this thorny evergreen is apparently one of their favourites.

Speaking of thorny evergreens, Shaun Ryder — one-time lead vocalist with Manchester ravers the Happy Mondays — popped up on Frank Skinner’s panel game,

Room 101 (BBC1). You might struggle to remember any of Shaun’s hits: they didn’t exactly have tunes, or lyrics, just druggy riffs and chants.

But his face will be familiar if you ever watch music documentaries, or chat shows, or celebrity fluff like All Star Mr And Mrs.

Shaun is such an ever-present face, he makes rent- a- quote noel Gallagher, formerly of oasis, look shy and retiring.

there’s a reason why Shaun does all this stuff, of course, and it’s not to promote his back catalogue. He was in receivership for 12 years, paying out millions to stave off bankruptcy proceedings. So he’s not likely to turn down tV work.

He didn’t look comfortable on Room 101, though. It’s a thankless gig for the celebrity guests: they nominate their pet peeves, which is Frank’s cue for a stream of gags, ad libs, archive clips and sarky remarks.

Because this is a show that focuses on the negatives, the things people hate most, it has an undercurrent of grumpiness. the panellists always look like they’re sitting in the stocks, waiting to get rotten fruit chucked at them.

What did Shaun hate most? ‘Meeting new people,’ he said. telly-land must be a bundle of fun for him.