Favourite guest: John Cleese. Hosted an Audience With at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury in 2015. “I performed a sketch with my comedy hero on stage in front of 1,000 people. It doesn’t get better than that.”


Least successful interview: Wilko Johnson from Dr Feelgood. “It was a Saturday morning and probably too early for him. He was monosyllabic so I asked if he wanted to be here and he replied in the negative and put the phone down.”


Broadcasting hero: Eddie Mair from Radio 4. “He is razor sharp, every word counts and uses audio brilliantly.”


treat loneliness and depression. He is also a trustee of Great Comp at Borough Green and is passionate about water safety, after his elder sister died at 17 on a family outing to the coast that went tragically wrong.


Andy says: “I suppose I’ve learned that


life is short and it’s important to have fun, and that’s why I love my job because it opens doors, allows you to learn and you meet fantastic people.”


The day we met at the BBC Radio Kent


studios in Tunbridge Wells he was sporting a spray tan (research for a report on the changing habits of men’s grooming, he tells me) and said: “I pinch myself every day that I have a job in radio. It’s something many people dream of and I realise how lucky I am.


“There can be very few people who,


hand on heart, love coming to work; and as long as that remains the case I will be more than happy to continue.”


He adds: “My time on the gardening


programme has introduced me to so many different issues and wonderful people. Gardeners are extremely sociable people, always ready to give you a cutting, their overspill of tomatoes and are so keen to share their knowledge, which I’m now passing on to my daughters as my dad and grandad did to me … it’s like the circle of life.”


Some of his new-found friends in Kent include head gardeners from some of the grandest estates, including Tom Hart Dyke at Lullingstone Castle, and Paul Bradshaw, who is featured in our gardening article in this issue.


Andy says: “Gardeners in Kent are so lucky that they have so many fantastic gardens to visit, and we get calls from amateurs to professionals all offering fantastic advice and suggestions for places to visit and ideas to try, which is great at this time of the year as the season really gets underway.


“Although it’s an all-year- Leeds Castle Festival of Flowers


round preoccupation for most of us, as the spring approaches the volume of calls we receive physically grows and grows.”


Biggest influence on career: “Paul Hopper gave me my first break. He was on Radio Devon and I was helping on the show. When he went on paternity leave, I hosted two of his weekly shows and I knew then that this was what I wanted to do.”


Most embarrassing moment on air: “I had a Brian Johnson moment and got an attack of the giggles when Steve Bradley on the gardening show gave the Latin name for varieties of ghost brambles. They end in “anus”.


Time when you’ve been star-struck: “Interviewing former Army chief Sir Peter de la Billière at the Folkestone Literary Festival was interesting, fascinating and challenging.”


Person you’d most like to interview on air: “I am a big Monty Python fan and have interviewed John Cleese and Terry Jones. I would love to chat with Eric Idle and Michael Palin.”


Flowers, vegetables or fruit?: “Fruit. I have a mini-orchard with the apple and pear trees trained to a fence. I learned from John Easton who runs short courses at East Malling Horticultural Trust.”


Worst thing about gardening: “Growing pumpkins. I just can’t do it and my girls would love me to but they only come up the size of tennis balls.”


Your Number one tip: “Do with your garden what you want to do with it. If it’s growing fruit, having gnomes, 50 hanging baskets or just lots of dahlias then fine. It’s your space – enjoy it.”


Images ©Andy Garland


Mid Kent Living 9


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