Slow Life » ITV

Gardening World Cup 2011

jonathandenby — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 08:09:08 +0000

Big in Japan – Gardening World Cup from Tracey Cragg on Vimeo.

Not many people know it, but England won the World Cup last year- the Gardening World Cup that is.
This year the competition is even more fierce, with gardeners from all five continents taking part. Last year’s winner, Andy Sturgeon, is taking a rest this year as a competitor, but is returning as a judge. His place as the senior English competitor is taken by Sarah Eberle who won her 8th RHS gold medal at Chelsea this year with her stunning Monaco garden.
I’m very proud to have been chosen as the other English competitor and I’m going to take a slice of the Lake District to Japan with a garden which will feature a Cumbrian Dabbin.
This video is a clip from Lookaround, the regional news programme which is shown after the ITN early evening news, in which intrepid reporter Hannah Lomas in a piece about last year’s event, takes the footballing metaphor to its furthest extreme by calling me “The David Beckham of Gardening”. It’s very entertaining and I hope we have as much fun this year.

#The Hotel

jonathandenby — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:44:29 +0000

Anything over a million viewers would have been acceptable, but Channel 4 were ecstatic to hear that 2.3 million viewers watched the first episode of The Hotel – and that it was the most viewed programme on Channel 4 in the entire week. I got a call not long after the programme ended to say that I must log on to #thehotel on Twitter. It was amazing to see the torrent of tweets – most of them favourable. Two things were obvious – all of the girls loved Amos and everyone loved Wayne, except for the girls who thought that he had been mean to Amos. For a while on Sunday ‘The Hotel’ trended No1 in the UK on Twitter and No2 Worldwide. The video shows an interview with Wayne shown on Granada Reports on Monday evening.

Windermere Tourist Information Centre- The LHA Takes Over

jonathandenby — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 07:38:21 +0000

In the space of quarter of an hour today I spoke to couples from Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, China and Japan and one gentleman from London. They had all popped into the Tourist Information Centre in Windermere and all agreed without demure to have their photos taken by our local newspapers and to be filmed for ITV news.

The media were there for the re-opening of the TiC under the auspices of the Lakes Hospitality Association who have taken over the running of it from the local council. It’s a role which we have taken on reluctantly, but we had no choice because the local government funding has been slashed and there was a real chance that it would close for good. I found myself giving a whole series of interviews for TV, radio and the press, telling them that when as many as 1,200 people visit a TiC in one single day there could be no possibility of us allowing it to close down. It’s been chucking it down today and no doubt some of the visitors came in to get out of the rain. There was a similar spell of bad weather last year, after which they announced a drought and a hose pipe ban which lasted for three months, during which the rain never let up. Let’s hope for better this year.

The Great North Swim Fiasco

jonathandenby — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:41:49 +0000

This weekend 28 competitors swam the length of Lake Windermere- more than ten miles. Some of our guests at the Newby Bridge Hotel also swam in the Lake, along with hundreds of others who had travelled to the Lakes to take part in the Great North Swim event. The only problem was that they weren’t able to take part in the event itself as it had been cancelled at the last minute by the organisers who had had the fear of God put into them by the presence of blue-green algae close the the starting point. They went onto national TV saying that the lake was poisonous and that it would have been irresponsible to let the event take place. This was no small matter, as 9,000 people had registered to take part in the event. Anyone with knowledge of local conditions could have told them that the algae is ever-present at the proposed starting place near the Low Wood Hotelas; ever since power boat racing has been banned the water there has been stagnant. There are many other places from which the event could have been started in complete safety. The organisers could also have given the participants the option of choosing themselves whether to take part, after having the risks explained. In the end, people voted with their flippers- they swam in the lake and, guess what- no-one suffered any ill effects.
This video shows me putting my point of view to ITV local news, followed by the actual broadcast.

A Black Swan on Lake Windermere

jonathandenby — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:00:38 +0000

A Black Swan is the term which economists use to describe a unexpected and devastating event which scuppers all your plans. The Lake District had its own Black Swan in November when the unprecedented rainfall caused unprecedented floods which frightened away all our tourist trade. This was followed by a family of Black Cygnets when 5 successive snowfalls over as many weeks made certain that the tourists wouldn’t or couldn’t come flooding back.
Some lateral thinking was needed if our businesses were to be saved. We hit upon the idea of ‘Super Sundays’ where hotels would give away their rooms for next to nothing on the first four Sundays of the year. We put the idea to our colleagues and they loved it. So did the public. As soon as ‘Super Sundays’ went public more than 1000 room nights were sold. The idea also caught the imagination of the local TV and the national press. This video is of me being interviewed about Super Sundays for the ITV news and the item was shown on the 6 o’clock news and again at 10.30.