In recent months, TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh has talked more openly about the impact his fame has had on his children and grandchildren.
He may have found immense success as one of the country’s favourite on-screen personalties, but it’s a far cry from the money struggles he and his wife Alison had in the 1970s.
Still, they’ve been married for 50 years. And people regularly ask him how they keep the spark alive.
Their secret? She’s tolerant of how much he talks about gardening. But how have his children responded to his career as a professional gardener, and the fame it’s brought the family?
Alan Titchmarsh jokes his daughters were ‘relieved’ to drop his family name
On a recent episode of Mark Wogan’s Spooning podcast, Alan Titchmarsh talks about the impact his fame has had on his daughters, Polly and Camilla.
Having such a distinctive surname means they’re easily identifiable, something the son of Terry Wogan can likely attest to.
“I think what happens is because, as you say, both our two names are quite identifiable. I think my two daughters were so relieved when they got married that they could change their name.
“What they found a bit easier was it didn’t suddenly come upon them. I was on television when they were born, so it was always there as you were. But it was difficult for them.”
He worried their school friends were using them to meet him
Not only might it have been easier for them when meeting people as adults, Alan reckons the family name – Titchmarsh – might have made it harder for his daughters to make friends at school.
“It was hard for them,” Alan continued. “I think [it was] one of the things they found difficult at school, though they have never to this day ever complained to me or said: ‘You don’t know how difficult it was.’
“They had to be a little bit more careful about if their friends were choosing them because of me. Mercifully, it appears not to have been the case, they’ve had some very good friends.”
Elsewhere, he has talked about how fathers of daughters tend to worry. Not in a paranoid way, but as a gentle, persistent nag. Fathers of sons, on the other hand, “have expectations”.
“I delighted in their company and they’re now mums themselves and I’ve got four grandchildren. But you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child,” he wrote for The Times in February of this year.
“And that spreads to grandchildren as well.”
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