Radio 4’s lost the plot!
Ex-host says ‘enthusiastic amateur’ will dumb down Gardeners’ Question Time
A FORMER chairman of Gardeners’ Question Time has accused the BBC of ‘dumbing down’ after it handed the reins of the show to an ‘enthusiastic amateur’.
Kathy Clugston was named this week as the first female chairman of the Radio 4 programme.
The Shipping Forecast presenter, 49, admitted she is a gardening ‘novice’ and would ask panellists to ‘spell things out if they get too technical’.
But now Professor Stefan Buczacki, one of her predecessors, has criticised the Corporation for choosing someone with little horticultural experience. He accused BBC bosses of choosing ‘style over substance’ and sidelining qualified experts. He said: ‘The BBC are obsessed with enthusiastic amateurs and seem not to recognise the merit…of the qualified professional.
‘I am not really sure the public can have respect for someone who knows no more gardening and probably in many cases knows a lot less gardening than they do themselves. It is one aspect of dumbing down. It is not treating gardening as a subject with the respect it merits.’
Gardeners’ Question Time, which is broadcast every Friday, features a panel of expert gardeners travelling around the country and taking questions from locals.
Prof Buczacki, 73, was on the show for 13 years in the 1980s and 1990s, first as panellist and then chairman. He studied botany at Southampton University and forestry at Oxford, and is a chartered horticulturist.
Miss Clugston is also well educated, though her degree from Queen’s University Belfast was in French and Russian.
She will replace Eric Robson, who owns a sheep farm and has been chairman since 1994, on May 3.
The BBC yesterday played down the need for an expert chairman, given the panel are specialists, and said Miss Clugston would bring a ‘thirst for horticultural knowledge’.
BBC Two’s Gardeners’ World was similarly accused of ‘dumbing down’ when it appointed Toby Buckland host in 2008. He spent much of his stint focusing on tips for beginners.
Two years later, the BBC announced a ‘return to proper, grown-up gardening’ with Monty Don back in the main role.
Jan Moir – Page 37