As we were coming out of the Chinese restaurant in Grange a car pulled up, the driver put his head out of the window and spoke to Glen, very politely- “I hope you don’t mind me asking but didn’t I see you on Channel 4- “How The Other Half Live”?”. Glen and I, Sara and Dominique still find ourselves being stopped by strangers almost every day, even though it is three months since the programme went out. The question I’m most frequently asked is “How is Glen getting on with his Open University course?”. Glen brought me up to date on this during his visit this weekend- he has enrolled on a four year course to be a teacher with Birkbeck College (not, in the event, the O.U.) and will start in October. Kylan will start at the primary school next door to their new house when he is three next March. Nicole, who is taller than ever, is going to college next month to do a two year course on beauty and hairdressing and Dominique has started at her new school where one of her subjects will be Japanese. Most importantly of all they are loving their new house and are able to go out and about with complete freedom.
Archive for the ‘TV’ Category
Saturday, August 21st, 2010
How The Other Half Live- An Update
Monday, July 5th, 2010
Joe Swift’s Howler
I turned on the coverage of the Hampton Court Flower Show on BBC2 tonight, anxious for news of Philippa’s Girlguiding Centenary Garden (it turns out that we’ll have to wait until Friday’s show before Philippa’s garden is featured). The programme began with Rachel de Thame and Joe Swift enthusing about the highlights of the show and Joe Swift told us very excitedly that a species tree Dahlia, the Dahlia excelsa had flowered for the first time in the UK, in the Heritage Plants collection. There then appeared on the screen a picture of a mauve dahlia flower with a yellow centre. Exactly the same flower in fact as in the photo here, which was taken in my garden a few minutes later. The plant in question is six feet tall and is one of three in flower at Yewbarrow House at the moment. I bought the plant from Crug Farm Plants several years ago and it is the first of the tree dahlias to come into flower. The RHS Plantfinder lists 4 nurseries which stock Dahlia excelsa, although none of them have any stocks available now, so it is indeed a rare plant, but it is one which has happily flowered outside at Yewbarrow House ever since I first obtained
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
The Isaac-Welcomes at Chelsea Flower Show
One of the best things about having a show garden at Chelsea is that you can invite family and friends to visit the show in the evening and to share a glass of champagne when the crowds have gone. Tonight our visitors included the Isaac-Welcome family and it was just great to catch up with them in person for the first time since ‘How the Other Half Live’ was screened. We all agreed that the response of the general public had been unexpectedly warm and generous. Dominique was excited by the fact that she had been recognised in the street more than 60 times. My own experience at Chelsea has been that dozens of strangers have asked to shake my hand or take my photo or even to ask for my autograph. I was delighted that Megan, Daniel’s assistant in the production team, was also able to join us and we all went out for a late and excellent supper at Chutney Marys in the New Kings Road afterwards.
Monday, May 24th, 2010
Press Day at the Chelsea Flower Show 2010
Monday is press day, which means cameras and lots of them non-stop all day. Philippa and I began with interviews for the BBC, then our local ITV stations followed by TV companies from all over, including Iran and Slovenia. Monday is also the day for celebrity spotting; for me the star of the day was undoubtedly our local reporter Katie Robinson from the North West Evening Mail who came armed with a video camera and was ruthless in pinning down every celeb who came by. This link is of a video in which she captured interviews with Ringo, Piers Morgan, Jane Torvill, and many others all of whom she coaxed into saying extravagantly flattering things about the garden.
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/lakes/chelsea-flower-show-garden-is-fab-says-ringo-starr-jayne-torvill-and-piers-morgan-1.712101?referrerPath=home/2.3320&resourceView=video&index=1#video
Thursday, May 20th, 2010
How The Other Half Live
“My God, you must the mad”, was the common response when I told people that I was taking part in the reality TV show for Channel 4. “They’ll stitch you up, they always do”. The truth is, we didn’t know how it would turn out, until we saw it tonight. But we were pretty sure that we could trust the producer, Daniel Fromm and his delightful assistant, with the wonderful name, Meghan Just-Truelove (Meghan Just fell in love with Marcus Truelove). Our instinct, thankfully, was right. Daniel and Meghan produced a very thoughtful and surprisingly truthful “feelgood” programme. For our part we were fortunate in being paired with the Isaac-Welcome family (pictured). After watching the programme, Georgina was a little upset about how she came over on screen and she was astonished to receive 50 “friend” requests within 5 minutes of the show ending, with dozens of lovely comments from friends and strangers, so that by the end of the evening she was positively beaming.
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
The Candidates Are Nailed
At the election on May 6th one thing is certain- either Tim Farron (Lib-Dem) or Gareth McCeever (Tory) will be elected to represent Westmorland and Lonsdale. At a Chamber of Commerce lunch today at the Riverside hotel, in the presence of three TV crews and lots of local business people they both gave impressive performances and I’ve no doubt that, whoever wins, the constituency will be well represented.
I submitted a question about the Digital Economy Act, which was passed on the very last day of the Labour government and which will have potentially appalling consequences for the hospitality trade as under the new Act a hotel might lose it’s broadband connection if a guest illegally downloads music.
I was delighted to hear both candidates give a firm pledge to work to repeal the act. In Gareth McCeever’s case he said he would even defy the party whip if necessary. Of course we all know that candidates will say anything to get elected, but I trust these guys and what’s more we’ve got their pledges on film.
I’ve written an article about the utterly appalling provisions of the Digital Economy Act for the Podium column of the Westmorland Gazette, which was due to be published this week, but has been held over until after the election.