In the Spring of 1999, a friend phoned me to say that she made just heard that the BBC were going to record a session of the long-running and very popular Radio 4 gardening program, Gardeners' Question Time (GQT) in Holland at the Dutch bulb garden the Keukenhof on the 7th of May. One could apply for free tickets and wouldn't it be fun to go together with several friends from my English gardening group ?? The tickets duly arrived and one could submit a question to the illustrious panel of GQT, consisting of Bob Flowerdew, Anne Swithinbank and John Cushnie. They mentioned that they preferred 'interesting' or 'unusual' questions, as the program gets inundated with things like 'when should I prune my roses.........' etc. After racking my brains for a couple of weeks, I could not think of anything really special to ask. So I decided to ask whether anybody in the uk.rec.gardening (URG) newsgroup had a decent question for me. The most interesting reply was from Carrie, who suggested that I ask whether the panel of GQT use the Internet in their work? Five of us duly went of to the Keukenhof for the day. My friend Nicky had a very serious question about potatoes which was picked and to my surprise my question was chosen too. When it was my turn, I stood up and said "And MY question is..............." Presenter Eric Robson replied that it actually was not really MY question was it and he produced a printout of the whole story from URG. I was so amazed that he had been following URG that my response was: "OH SHIT !" The audience and the panel fell about laughing, but I was convinced they would NOT broadcast it. It turned out that the producers of the program monitor the newsgroups to see what's going on the the gardening world. A couple of days after the program had been recorded, I received an e-mail from the producer, Trevor Taylor, telling me all about how they had been looking out for my question in their flowerpot! He said he'd never had such a good laugh on GQT in all the years that he'd been with the program! I told him that I presumed that the BBC would edit it, but he said he was going to try and get it sent out as it was !! I was absolutely amazed when a few weeks later they did indeed broadcast the whole thing. It even got onto "Pick of the Week" as well............
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