Outside Broadcaster: An Autobiography

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A year or so ago he says 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 went home, thought about it and said to them ‘my contract is up in 18 months. Why don’t I give you 18 months notice?’” 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”. What’s a warm-up? Soul Limbo by Booker T & The MG’s blasts out from the speakers. Anna at the front, the kids lined in rows copying her every move. This way, that way, clap, smile, stomp. That way, this way, stomp, smile, clap. Then it stops and everyone sits.

For his successor he has nothing but the warmest 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 so many wayward roses can’t resist adding: “I will keep listening. I’ve told Kathy that I will and I will be honest with her.” Improvisation was at the heart of her methods. Knowing that anger and tension could sometimes be near to the surface, she kept an olive branch close at hand as a way for pupils to “make up” when the improvisation exercises were over. This came in handy, too, when she was brought in to lead “peace workshops” in Northern Ireland and Rwanda. Whoever she taught, she would draw on the words of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Anne Frank. The programme typically comes from a village hall or other public venue somewhere in Britain, or occasionally further afield, such as in the Republic of Ireland or northern France. GQT often records at special locations throughout the UK including on a moving train, on top of Snowdon, [3] from inside the Tower of London [4] and in December 2016 from the state dining room at 10 Downing Street. [5] [6] He studied Horticulture at Pershore College and then trained further at Cheltenham University where he studied Landscape Architecture. Chris later lectured horticulture and design at Pershore College and it was here that he was asked to contribute to a number of television programmes including House Call, Gardening Neighbours and Weekend Gardener. Chris left full time lecturing to concentrate on TV work and has since featured in The Flying Gardener, Hidden Gardens, Gardeners' World, Great Garden Detectives and Country Lives. K: Oh, long ago. As a… when I… It meant nothing, really, to me, whether to be a Hindu or a Muslim or, you know, a Christian. I mean, these are all… human brains have been programmed, like computers.

Bunny Guinness

After completing her education in 2002, Alys began working as a journalist for Horticulture Week, and Landscape Review. In 2005, she worked for Gardeners' World and Parks as a horticultural researcher. In 2006, she became Head Gardener of the BBC garden at Berryfields in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and created features at the Gardeners' World Live shows. Alys was also a regular presenter on Gardeners' World from March 2009 to Novemeber 2010. ER: I know you’ve written that before you can be sure of anything, you have to strip away the conditioning, but how exactly do you do that? I mean, you are presumably conditioned as a Hindu. K: Sir, at every talk, at every discussion I say this: don’t do it, be careful, don’t… – you follow? – it’s so silly, because you’re destroying yourself, you’re following… I may… what K is talking about may be utterly false. Begin with scepticism, don’t accept anything, including what I’m saying. Work it out; let’s discuss it, let’s go into it together, so that there is no you as the leader and I the follower; we are together in this beastly business of living. Old battered chairs line the walls. You sit in one closest to the door. Nobody notice me, please. Nobody does. The 50 or so other kids are too busy with their chat, their excitement, their … what’s that thing I don’t recognise from normal school? Oh yes, their happiness.

K: How can you organise a human being according to a pattern? Whether it is a religious pattern – faith, belief, dogma rituals – how can you shape man, who is extraordinarily alive, to a particular mode, like the communists are trying to do? The totalitarians are trying to force man to a certain way of thinking, which is so contrary to freedom. Freedom… I mean, man has always sought throughout history to be free. That was one of his urgent, constant demands – not only from poverty, environmental ugliness and so on, but to be free from the sorrow, pain and anxiety and so on, those things. And how can any structured religious attitude give him freedom? Wainwright, who died in 1991, wrote more than 50 books, including seven Lakeland pictorial guides, of which only a handful are left in print. His co-conspirator is often Bunny Guinness, the Telegraph gardening 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 look at the audience and 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.” He's Britain's leading organic gardener, but Bob Flowerdew also runs a consultancy landscape service, teaches at agricultural college and can be heard on Gardeners' Question Time.

K: If you change radically in that sense, you are going to affect the world. It may be very little but you are going to affect it. Like a bad case, like Hitler – it’s a bad case; he was insane and all the rest of it – he affected the whole world. He… all the rest of it. So I think if a few of us radically changed, there would be tremendous effect, naturally. Robson had earlier contributed to various regional TV series about Alfred Wainwright's walking guides. [3] In 1980 he presented the final episode of the first series of Great Railway Journeys of the World, produced by the BBC. ER: I follow you up to there, but doesn’t that lead us to a paradox, that the people who listen to you, who come to this school, who listen to you in India or California, do they not regard you as a signpost in a pathless land? An experienced broadcaster, Kathy Clugston has been a newsreader and continuity announcer on BBC Radio 4 and 4 Extra since 2006. She started her career at BBC Northern Ireland and worked at the World Service and Radio Netherlands before joining Radio 4. An amateur gardener, Kathy will bring her huge broadcasting experience and a thirst for horticultural knowledge to the role ofGardeners’ Question Time chair. Kathy will continue in her role as newsreader and continuity announcer.