Gardeners’ World presenter Monty Don has been a familiar face on our TV screens for decades, but he wasn’t always a household name – as one amusing anecdote about a book signing shows
Monty Don began hosting Gardeners’ World in 2003(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
It’s can’t be often that television presenter Monty Don and Jeremy Clarkson are mistaken, but that’s exactly what happened earlier in the Gardeners’ World star’s career.
Monty is one of the UK’s most renowned gardeners while Jeremy has been the country’s premier motoring journalist for decades. Other than both being of similar ages – Monty is 71 and Jeremy is 66 – they don’t appear to have too much in common.
Despite this, Monty was mistaken for the Clarkson’s Farm star during a book signing earlier in his career in what was a particular low point for the BBC presenter.
While he’s instantly recognisable today, fame wasn’t always guaranteed. He’s fronted Gardeners’ World since 2003 and penned numerous bestselling books on the subject.
Monty shared a hilarious story about hosting a deserted book signing event, and when somebody finally appeared, they’d come expecting Jeremy instead.
During a recording of BBC Gardeners’ World live, Monty recalled: “The long walk is a bit, for those of you who don’t watch the programme. Does everyone here watch Gardeners’ World?
“It’s like when you give a talk to people who are looking blankly at you. I once had to do a book signing, and nobody came. This was years ago,” reports the Express.
“Nobody came, and suddenly a woman rushed in. We were going to pack up and go, she rushed in and got a pen out of her bag, looked up at me and went: ‘Oh, you’re supposed to be Jeremy Clarkson.’
“You go to a talk and people go: ‘You’re meant to be talking about cooking leeks.”
This comes after the gardening legend admitted his shame as a topless photo behind his rise to fame emerged. Monty shared his unusual route to stardom as he talked about how a magazine feature in the 1980s thrust him into the spotlight.
Monty was always a keen gardener but it wasn’t his green-fingered skills which caught people’s attention to begin with. Instead it was the home he shared with wife Sarah.
Talking on the ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?’ podcast, he revealed: “A magazine called Elle, which was really big in the eighties, a sort of lifestyle/fashion thing, came and did an article about our home. Sarah and Monty Don’s lovely home, you know, that type of thing.
“They looked out the window and said, ‘Wow! Look at your garden, who did you get to do that?’ I thought, that’s fighting talk. I said, ‘we did it, it’s our garden, planted every single thing, of course we did.'”
Impressed by what they saw, the Elle team asked if they could snap some pictures of Monty in the garden.
He continued: “So they said, ‘Well, can we photograph it?’, which they did. And I’m ashamed to say, in it, I’m topless. I genuinely can’t imagine why.
“It’s out there folks, you can find it. And then a newspaper picked it up and thing was, in the 80s, if you were a gardener in your twenties, it was like being in the British ice hockey team or you found out that a premier league footballer was mad about crocheting. Something like that, it was really very unusual, and they wrote about the garden.”
Monty stepped into the shoes of the legendary Alan Titchmarsh, at the latter’s own suggestion, taking over as lead presenter of Gardeners’ World in 2003. He stepped back from the role in 2008 while battling illness, before making his comeback three years later.
Alongside Gardeners’ World, he fronts the BBC’s coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show and a host of other programmes, including Monty Don’s Spanish Gardens.
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