Yvette Huddleston meets Alan Titchmarsh on his return to Yorkshire
Photographs: Walter Swan
Although Alan Titchmarsh has acquired a huge fan base as a broadcaster and a writer, it is only when you meet him in the flesh that you come to appreciate fully what an inspiring man he is. There are many different kinds of Yorkshireman, but Alan encapsulates an essential niceness, a generosity of spirit which makes him appreciative of his relatively humble origins and the nurturing influences of his family, friends and his home town, Ilkley.

In recent years Alan has combined his career as a gardener and broadcaster with writing. As well as his books on gardening, he has penned several books of memoirs – the latest instalment ‘Knave of Spades: Growing Pains of a Gardener’ was published in September – and seven bestselling novels.
‘I have always loved words and got pleasure out of them from very early on. I enjoyed playing around with them and I really liked writing essays at school,’ he said. ‘If I heard a new word that I didn’t know, I would look it up. I still do it now. Then, when I became well-known as a gardener, writing gardening books was a kind of natural progression, really.’

Making the move from fact to fiction came later but is another area where he has seen success. ‘I was lucky, really,’ he says with typical modesty. ‘I was already well established as a broadcaster and gardener and I really wanted to try something new, so I had a bash at writing a novel, sent it off and it became a bestseller, which was a delightful surprise.’

He cites writers such as Daphne Du Maurier and P G Wodehouse as influences, while admitting that they may seem quite old-fashioned today. ‘I know it’s the kind of writing that is sometimes disparaged these days, but I love it. Du Maurier wrote what you might call romantic adventures and that is the genre that appeals to me, really; it is the kind of thing I like to write. Wodehouse’s humour was wonderful and he wrote really good yarns.’

Charming, humorous and a remarkably fit-looking 60 year old, Alan leads a busy life juggling his various creative activities. While many people of his age might be thinking about retirement, he shows little sign of slowing down and thoroughly enjoys everything he does. He has also deftly managed to balance all his interests so that one does not take precedence over the other.
‘It would be like asking someone to choose between their children,’ he says. ‘I would say that gardening and writing are of equal importance in my life. I do tend to do both every day. And there is also my television and radio work... The thing about the writing is that I’ll be able to keep on doing it when my looks go.’ He adds, laughing: ‘That was a joke...’

Gardening, however, was his first love and he considers himself fortunate to have been able to make a career out of it.
‘I was never particularly gifted academically, I was always more interested in what was going on outside, but my writing and gardening both come from the same root, I think. I enjoy sharing a passion.’

Growing up in Ilkley in the 1950s, the son of a plumber and a housewife, he has fond memories of his childhood and Yorkshire holds a special place in his heart.
‘You may leave Yorkshire bodily but it never leaves you,’ he said. ‘It’s like the old saying “you can take the lad out of Yorkshire but you can never take Yorkshire out of the lad”. I didn’t leave Yorkshire until I was 20 so I was here for the most impressionable part of my life. In some ways I feel as if I am always here in my head; because I know the place so well, I can revisit it in my imagination whenever I want to.’
He is particularly fond of upper Wharfedale, an area which brings back many happy memories of family days out. ‘I love Bolton Abbey, Burnsall and all the way up to Kettlewell. It all feels very much like home. When I was growing up, we often used to go out there as a family on a Sunday in my dad’s works van. We’d take a picnic and me and my sister would play by the river.’

Alan tries to come up to Yorkshire at least once a year and though, sadly, his parents are no longer living, he still has friends and relatives in Ilkley he likes to visit. They include his Auntie Edie and the widows of two local teachers who had a profound effect on his life and future.
‘I had a lovely primary school teacher called Harry Rhodes who was just the most inspiring teacher and a great influence on me. At secondary school my art and drama teacher, David Wildman, really encouraged me. He was also Artistic Director at Ilkley Playhouse for many years and got me acting.’

Catching up with Alan when he visited Ilkley recently to appear before a sell-out audience in the King’s Hall for the Literature Festival, it was clear that his home town will always remain dear to him. ‘I don’t really miss it now that I live elsewhere, though, because I have never really left the place behind. It’s so much a part of me and with me all the time.’ Alan remembers Ilkley with such fondness that his list of favourite places associated with the town is almost never-ending. ‘There are just so many,’ he said. ‘The Cow and Calf rocks, Rocky Valley up on the Moor, the swing bridge over the river to Middleton Woods, the Ilkley Playhouse, Morton’s the Ironmongers, and Betty’s tea shop on The Grove. I also like the King’s Hall; I have happy memories of performing in ‘Oklahoma’ on the stage there with the Ilkley Operatics Society. Oh, and talking of singing, I was a choirboy at All Saints church.’

During his recent sojourn, Alan made sure he had time to pop in to Betty’s for a slice of Yorkshire fruitcake and Wensleydale cheese with a cup of China tea, and then stayed overnight at Ilkley’s grandest hotel, the Craiglands, built in Victorian times for those who were coming ‘to take the waters’ in its spa-town heyday.
‘My dad used to do the plumbing at Craiglands, so I’ll be looking at the bathroom facilities with a very critical eye.’

As part of his trip north, Alan was going to be doing some filming for the BBC’s ‘One Show’ at 34 Nelson Road in Ilkley where he grew up. ‘It will be really strange to go inside the house again,’ he said. Looking wistful and slightly misty-eyed, he added: ‘There was a small garden at the back and that was where I had my first greenhouse when I was about 10 years old. Those early years are so important. I remember being such a sensitive child and noticing things around me. In Yorkshire we felt like we were miles away from anywhere, but we had an amazing freedom; Ilkley was a wonderful place to grow up. We were out all day playing and having adventures in this magnificent countryside – it was like a mixture of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and ‘The Secret Seven’.’