Not being a menopausal invalid, I've rarely had much to do with Alan Titchmarsh, although I'm constantly stunned by, and envious of, his humongous book sales (all called things like Only Dad! and illustrated with a picture of a potting shed and a pipe). So The Great British Summer, narrated by Titchmarsh, was perhaps even more puzzling for me than it would have been otherwise.
Clearly a commendable BBC recycling exercise consisting of the scrag ends of four different documentary strands, it was more confusing than the numbers game on Countdown.
Featuring an excitable lepidopterist clearly auditioning in his head for the BBC's next wacky expert/national treasure, who bounced about looking for butterflies; a twat trying to figure out if he'd rather be a surfy twat in Cornwall or a photography twat in London; a man trying to scratch a living from a hotel in Blackpool, to the accompaniment of really patronising remarks by Titchmarsh ("It's yet another quiet night in the new Las Vegas"); plus horrible parp-parp clowns falling down music and a posh strawberry farm ("the strawberries not perfect enough for Wimbledon go to cut-price supermarkets!") - the only connection given was that "some things" took place between May and September this year.
The clue is perhaps in the script. "Ben Nevis ... the tallest mountain in Scotland ... The Trooping of the Colour takes place in London in the presence of the Queen." Yes, it has to have been made for the international market. It's like something they show on the Heathrow Express in between warning you not to smuggle any prostitutes.
It's also stuck in some gruesome, frankly upsetting, timewarp, where it always rains at Wimbledon and a sunny day is "glorious". Actually, Alan, last summer was a horrific, sticky, terrifying mess where night after night of sweltering temperatures finally rammed it home to us that global warming is here, it's real, and we're destroying everything about the UK everyone has ever liked.
That one wet day at Wimbledon was actually a monsoon, as our weather patterns change beyond all recognition. Those butterflies that crazy bloke keeps going on about shouldn't even be in this country. Doing some national whitewash job for tourists and the nervous elderly is simply cruel.
There is a fascinating story about last summer. This was so far from being it the mind boggles.
