I’m fed up with London trendies sneering at my suburban semi

We used to make our own entertainment in the days before t ell y — songs round the ironing board, darning grandad’s socks, that kind of thing.

Now, on nights when there is nothing much on TV, we still do make our own entertainment — by watching the box and trying to scrape a bit of fun out of dull and flaccid programmes.

What a choice. MasterChef on BBC1, serving up another load of pretentious and fiddly unappetisers that no one would dream of trying in their own kitchen. A repeat of It’ll Be Alright On The Night on ITV, and digby Jones on BBC2, with his ‘amusing’ union Jack cufflinks.

The best bet looked like Everyday Eden (BBC4), which promised to deliver ‘A Potted History Of The suburban Garden’. Trouble was, it was fronted by a black-clad, shavenheaded hipster who looked as if his dearest ambition was to write about punk for the NMe, circa 1977.

Presenter Michael Collins was very keen we should understand that his family came from the Old Kent Road in inner-city London. Not from the suburbs: he mentioned that half a dozen times.

And he couldn’t give two ha’porth about the hardy perennials and hanging baskets. What mattered to him was the social history of Britain’s expanding cities and splintering class groups.

If you were hoping for some tips on getting rid of the yellowed patches on your lawn, you were in for a disappointment. That was a pity, because I live in what Collins several times scathingly called a ‘Tudorbethan semi’, and my lawn has numerous yellowed patches (the dog knows why).

But this documentary yielded plenty of entertainment — you just had to ignore the spiel and study the nostalgic footage of the english family garden revealed in home movies.

A dad and his little boy went stomping up and down a vegetable bed in wellies, treading seeds into the f urrows. A hobbyist in a deckchair steered a remote control lawnmower that he must have built himself, in long wavering swathes to the rose bushes and back.

Best of all, a marvellous lady named Mildred, who didn’t mention her age but whose wedding photos showed her in a surbiton garden before the war, unpacked a box of film reels showing garden fetes at her manorial home, The Glade, during the Thirties.

There were demonstrations by the local ballet school, cricket on the lawn and a skipping race won by the vicar. ‘I never remember rain when we had one of these fetes,’ she said.

darker memories were supplied by a lady whose photo album showed her garden equipped with an Anderson air raid shelter. Her father had been a veteran of the somme, and when World War II began he went into shock.

For three days he sat silent in the dining room, with the curtains drawn and the lights off. Finally he went into the garden and dug a deep trench from one flower bed to the other.

He showed it to his wife and daughters. I f war came to suburbia, he told them, they were to get in the trench and never go over the top — that way, they might be safe.

Tom daley went over the top in Thailand, but that’s normal for him. Britain’s favourite diver is not a quiet boy — Tom Daley Goes Global ( ITV2) was one l ong squeal, punctuated with cries of ‘Omigod’, as he and his travelling companion sophie encountered spiders, primitive plumbing and street cuisine.

The pair embarked on a sixweek backpacking tour of Asia and Australia. sophie is Tom’s BFF, which stands for ‘best friend f orever’, and she shared his reluctance to rough it.

On their first night in an island resort, faced with a mouthwatering sunset across the south China sea that looked like any tourist’s dream, Tom and soph were more concerned about creepy-crawlies in their beach hut.

When we next saw them, it was the following morning and they were leaving a four- star hotel. Backpacking was not quite their thing, it turned out.

They would have been happier in suburbia, just sunbathing in the garden.