Did you know that in Britain, 4.7 million people watch Gardeners' World? And that 6.9 million people routinely tuned in to Ground Force during the most recent series? That makes this pair of programmes the top two shows in the brainy sector of television world: BBC2 and Channel 4 respectively, that is.
And perhaps it explains why their perky presenter, Alan Titchmarsh, seemed less than impressed when I proudly told him that The Irish Times circulation was well over 100,000!
Anyway, as if Titchmarsh hasn't enough to be doing with all of this bouncing around in front of the camera (Ground Force has just moved its new series to BBC 1) - and with writing two regular national columns - he's gone and written a novel now. Mr Mac-Gregor features a handsome television gardener from Yorkshire (remind you of anyone?) and is a page-turning tale of love, lust, buried treasure and back-stabbing in a very English horticultural habitat. Barbara Cartland meets P.G. Wodehouse in the potting shed. But one of the best things about the book is that its publication made Alan Titchmarsh available for interview, providing an opportunity for us to find out all about the man who, in 1997, was named Yorkshire Man of the Year and this January, was awarded number 12 in Elle magazine's "Hip 100".
When I asked my gardening friends what they most wanted to know about this ultimate son of the soil, one said: "Ask him is he married." Another urged: "Find out if he has a girlfriend, and where he goes on holidays". (Was nobody interested in his gardening techniques, likes or dislikes?)
So, here goes: Alan Titchmarsh is 49-years-old. He has been married to Alison for 23 years. They have two daughters aged 18 and 16 (and four chickens, two ducks, two cats and two dogs) and he likes to go to the south coast of England for his holliers - where he "pootles around in The Solent in a very slow old motor boat".
Alan, as anybody with half an eye on Gardeners' World knows, lives at "Barleywood" - a pseudonym for his Hampshire home. "We chose the name to avoid people pulling up at the gate". The garden, which is "chalk, clay and flint" measures just over an acre and is on a one-in-four hill sloping to the northwest. "It is really foul, but if you dig loads of muck in, stuff grows". A part-time gardener, Sue, "comes in a few times a week", while a full-time estate manager looks after a further 30 acres of field and woodland. At Barleywood, few chemicals are used: "common-sense organic gardening, rather than evangelical," he stresses. "I haven't sprayed with a pesticide for years, but I do occasionally use Roundup to clear the weeds in an area I'm about to cultivate."
Favourite plants depend on the season: "They're different every week, that's the joy of gardening in Britain." Geraniums - both the hardy ones and the pelargoniums - are especially cherished. "And I love quite a few common things, like sweet pea, and pinks and old roses . . . I'm a bit of an old rooo-mantic really," he purrs.
Gladioli - the big showy ones - are despised: "I hate them with a passion that's intense. They're so stiff and unwieldy, like magic wands!" But he does like their traditional bed-mates, dahlias and begonias. "I like plants that repay your kindness with equal generosity," he says warmly. "I get impatient with things that are so fiddly that you have nine months of very difficult nurturing to produce three tiny brown flowers." Despite this, he delights in alpines, "I love dionysias. But some of the more obscure alpines that look like little pieces of mud don't grab me!"
Alan Titchmarsh has brought a sense of fun to gardening on the television that wasn't there before, but apparently he's brought something else too. Sex. "He's not a gardener, he's a mighty sex god!" swooned Deborah Ross in The In- dependent. So, no better man to make sense of that often-repeated adage that "gardening is the sex of the nineties". What does he think?
His voice deepens as he answers: "I'd rather enjoy both I think, rather than one substituting for the other." But another question must be asked, on the instruction of one of my more low-minded friends: does he not think that it's unhygienic for gardeners who always have dirty hands to be having sex? "Oh no," he replies, "I'm pretty scrupulous about that!" And he goes on to say that a certain journalist suggested that the sex in his novel, which is "all about clean towelling robes and shiny floors" was very wholesome. "Perhaps I've got a cleanliness fetish," he admits. "I don't like grubby hands, you're right. And I've just done Gardeners' World today, and I've just washed my hands and they're very clean," he says laughing, but with some finality.
Back to matters horticultural: the advent of gravel, pebbles and decking has changed gardening no end. "It opens up the garden as an all-weather surface. But now we could get slightly more "planty" around these decking areas." Let's have a wider range of plants, he says. And what would he like to change about gardening? "This may sound terribly altruistic," he says, "but I'd like to stop people worrying about it all, to stop thinking that the garden is something to be tidied. Yes, if I could stop people tidying up..."
Mr MacGregor by Alan Titchmarsh is published by Simon & Schuster (£16.99 in UK)
The size of Denise Dunne's garden grew rather spectacularly in the caption with last week's garden column. Her garden is actually one acre, with over 200 varieties of herbs.