Alan Titchmarsh is about to publish his eighth novel (Image: Spungold Productions) ALAN TITCHMARSH is in reflective mood. Next year he turns 70 and after nearly four decades in the public

eye the gardener-turned-journalist-turned-TV presenter-turned-novelist confesses to allowing himself the odd moment of introspection. "At 70, maybe because it's your supposed

allotted time, your three-score years and ten, there is a kind of mental watershed, where you do start to look back and evaluate your life," he says. "It'd be a bit scary to

be lumbered with an 'elder statesman' tag but it's happened once or twice recently and I've decided it's really rather nice. "There's a whole generation

with" to be done: more that he's just always been there. In the 1980s he was the fresh-faced, enthusiastic gardening expert on BBC's _Nationwide_ and _Breakfast_, the 1990s

saw him presenting _Pebble Mill at One_ and _Gardener's World_, and the past two decades brought us seven years of his own chat show, the long-running _Love Your Garden_, and the

Noughties phenomenon _Ground Force_, alongside Tommy Walsh and Charlie Dimmock. Oh, and you can add 30-odd years of presenting the Chelsea Flower Show to that mix, too. Fair to say then,

he's not been short of work. And he claims to have loved every moment of it. "The key is, believe it or not, I don't do everything I'm asked to do, which is a lovely

situation to be in," he says. "I remember actor David Jason once telling me the best bit of advice he'd ever heard: he said, 'You are your own currency, spend it

wisely.' "I try to work out if I've got more to lose than I have to gain. I won't go on _I'm A Celebrity_, for example. I've turned down _Strictly_ several

times." Really? Suddenly the prospect of a marriage between the BBC's flagship entertainment show and one of the nation's most treasured TV presenters seems a no-brainer. Why

on earth would he turn down _Strictly_? Alan gives an incredulous laugh. "They've asked me at least half a dozen times," he says. "I'm not saying that to boast, but

me? On _Strictly_? Don't be daft! "I'd rather be either interviewing someone or teaching people how to grow things or whatever. TV's all about engaging people, sharing a

passion." Alan's latest passion is writing novels though typically, it's also something he's been quietly – and extremely successfully – doing for nearly 20 years. Alan

Titchmarsh with HRH the Duchess of Cornwall (Image: Chris Jackson - WPA Pool/Getty) RELATED ARTICLES His latest, The Scarlet Nightingale, a wartime adventure he describes as "the story

of the sort of woman I admire" was released this week and is a shoo-in to join his previous seven novels and three memoir volumes in the best-seller lists. He dismisses such success

with typical understatement: "I'd always wanted to write fiction so I had a bash and found a publisher and it sold." This self-effacing "having a bash" line is

perhaps disingenuous - behind the modesty lies a fierce intelligence and genuine love for what he does. The truth is, you simply do not score as many successes as he has by accident or by

"having a bash". And he has grafted, too. Born and brought up in Ilkley, Yorkshire, he left school at 15 to work as an apprentice gardener with the local council, before putting

himself back in education three years later to study for a City and Guilds in horticulture. That led to a place at college, then a diploma, and then a job at Kew, supervising the training of

young gardeners. In his mid-20s he took up gardening journalism ("I'm old enough to remember the clacketyclack typewriters," he chuckles) before TV's Nationwide asked

him to present a regular segment. Alan Titchmarsh has been in the public eye since Nationwide in the 70s (Image: Spungold Productions) He never looked back: gardening, magazine and chat

shows all followed, as well as more than 40 gardening books, a long-running column in this newspaper, and, latterly, fiction. But his first and greatest love will always be for gardening -

and he remains almost evangelical in his desire to share that love. Even as the conversation turns to the subject he sits up straighter, becomes more animated "I like to try to debunk

the mysteries around gardening," he says. "Not dispel the magic, because it is magical but to give people a way in. I like people seeing how much I'm enjoying it.

"There's a wonderful bit at the end of Alan Bennett's The History Boys where the teacher, played by Richard Griffiths, says: 'Pass the parcel, boys. Sometimes that's

all you can do. Pass it on.' "And that's all I'm doing. All those generations of gardeners and growers, we are the custodians of our landscape and we are honour-bound to

pass it on, to share our knowledge. And once I've gone I'd just like people to say, we know how to do it because he shared what he knew. The pleasure of gardening is still raw.

Every day when I go out to my garden it's because I like being there. It's given me a sense of perspective. A friend came round to my garden recently and he said, what a wonderful

escape. And I said, this isn't an escape: this is real. This is reality." And gardening has opened doors he could never have expected. In 2000, he met Nelson Mandela, as part of a

_Ground Force_ special at the home of the late South African president. "He was an enormously charismatic man, but quietly so," says Alan now. "He had such grace, was so

comfortable in who he was. He said when he was in prison he looked after two tomato plants and when one of them took ill and died he gave it a burial and a proper grave. "I'll

never forget that. To him that tomato plant represented the only thing he had any control over in there, so he looked after it. It's a metaphor, but that's what gardening can give

you." From anyone else, casual anecdotes about meeting Nelson Mandela might seem a little self-important, but in Alan's case it ends up simply as the start of a monologue about the

spectacular tomato harvest he has enjoyed this year. And that may be the measure of the man. Puns aside, the phrase "down to earth" could have been invented for him. He's

been married to wife Alison since 1975 (they have two grown-up daughters) and cheerfully admits to "never doing the red carpet thing". Perhaps like gardening itself, once you take

away all the details the Titchmarsh philosophy of life boils down to something very simple indeed. "You can be either a fountain or a drain," he says. "I've never wanted

to be a drain. It's not productive so crack out of it. At least try to be a fountain. Look around It's not a bad life, you know." • _THE SCARLET NIGHTINGALE_ BY ALAN 

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