The Secret Garden

Sceptred Dial on stories behind Gardeners' Question Time

I imagine we all remember where we were when we heard the news that the Queen had died, but Dan Cocker maybe has more reason to do so than most.

Dan is the producer of Gardeners’ Question Time, and I’ve been chatting to him for no reasons other than that I’m into gardening and therefore a listener, and that the programme is a phenomenon — a bedrock of Radio 4 that’s been on air continuously since 1947 and has remained essentially unchanged throughout its 78 years.

The “continuously” is relevant to the story of GQT and the death of the Queen because Dan believes it was the one moment in GQT history when it might — just might — not have been broadcast.

The Queen died on a Thursday, and Friday is GQT day. Radio 4 was busy ripping up its schedule and largely turning it over to music appropriate to the occasion, but did that mean no GQT?

“It so happened that the show we had lined up was a particularly jolly one,” Dan told me. “There was quite a lot of audience laughter.” Everything broadcast at that time that was not pre-planned was subject to close scrutiny, and GQT failed the test.

“The commissioning editor who checked it contacted me and said, hmm, I’m not sure this can go out — can you find me a less lively one? Otherwise the show would have to be pulled. I spent hours and hours checking back through the archive. I was up till 2 in the morning. I couldn’t believe I was actually looking for the most boring edition of GQT I could find.”

Eventually Dan alighted on something he thought suitable. It passed muster and the show went ahead, and I think one is bound to observe that the Queen would surely have approved — not least of Dan Cocker’s heroics.

A while ago I attended a recording of Gardeners’ Question Time. It was fascinating to see how the whole programme unfolded. The edition was chaired by Kathy Clugston — she roughly alternates with Peter Gibbs — and the way she simultaneously handled both the live audience and the panel of three experts, all the while mindful of the countless listeners at home, was incredibly impressive.

It was six years ago that Kathy Clugston succeeded the legendary Eric Robson in the GQT chair, and to the extent that up till then she was known “only” as a newsreader, the appointment was a surprise.

Dan recalled the process. “We tried out about 15 people — some of them very big names indeed — but Kathy was just the perfect fit. She has this lovely, approachable warmth — no edge, no airs and graces. She’d be the first to say that she’s no gardening expert, but the role is all about the relationship with the audience and letting the panel do their job. The best presenters know that it's not about them, and that’s so true of Kathy.”

GQT is made by an indy — Somethin’ Else, now part of Sony — and Dan’s not sure the show would be commissioned today if someone came up with the idea. “Three people answering questions about gardening for 40 minutes? I think we’d be told we needed a bit more than that.”

As it is, GQT is under instruction NOT to change. “You’d no more mess with its format than you would Desert Island Discs,” Dan told me. He says he feels like he’s a guardian of a crown jewel. “I guess it’s comfort listening. I get correspondence from people who love it who don’t even have gardens.”

I think there’s another reason why GQT is so valuable to Radio 4. The station is sometimes accused of metropolitanism, but GQT — with its embrace of all corners of the UK — is the very antithesis of that.

As it happens the recording I attended did take place in London, but such was the atmosphere that it felt like the Sands End Arts and Community Centre in Fulham could have been almost anywhere. Today’s programme — chaired by Kathy Clugston — is from the Clandeboye Estate in Bangor, Northern Ireland, and I’ll be sure to listen.