Alan Titchmarsh has shared the “heartbreaking” question his daughter would pose after he kissed her goodnight, leaving him feeling torn.<\/p>\n
Speaking to James O’Brien on the Full Disclosure podcast<\/a> in July 2023, the renowned gardener<\/a> opened up about the challenges of balancing family life with a demanding career.<\/p>\n The 75-year-old recounted to James the “most heartbreaking” part of departing for work on Sunday nights was the moment he had to say goodnight to his daughters.<\/p>\n Reflecting on those times, he said: “It’s not something I wanted but it was at a time in my career where I knew it had to be done. The girls would be sort of 10,11 that kind of age.<\/p>\n “I would go away on a Sunday evening and come back later in the weekend. I do remember the heartbreaking thing of kissing one of them goodnight and them saying ‘will you be here in the morning?'”<\/p>\n He admitted the difficulty in responding, knowing he wouldn’t be there: “I knew I wouldn’t and that was really hard of course.<\/p>\n “I did say, I mean every weekend, it’s not as if I’m in the army going away for three months or a year or whatever, so that was my excuse.”<\/p>\n Despite leaving school with only one O level, Alan Titchmarsh<\/a> has become an iconic figure in British television and radio, earning a special place in the nation’s heart as one of the most beloved gardening presenters ever.<\/p>\n Titchmarsh first graced our screens as a gardening expert on the\u00a0BBC<\/a>‘s long-standing show Nationwide before presenting the 1983 Chelsea Flower Show.<\/p>\n He then went on to front a variety of programmes including Pebble Mill and Gardeners’ World<\/a>, and joined the beloved trio on Ground Force.<\/p>\n Reflecting on his career, Alan remarked that his stint on Ground Force thrust him into the limelight, with the impact being a “quantum leap”. He commented: “We were getting audiences of 12 million, it was the Bake Off of its day.<\/p>\n “Yes I got noticed before that but not in a kind of obtrusive sort of way. I remember they moved Ground Force from\u00a0BBC<\/a>\u00a0Two to\u00a0BBC<\/a>\u00a0One because too many people were watching it and that’s when we were getting 12 million.<\/p>\n “And I was walking down the street and everybody was looking, and I thought ‘ooo gosh’. I went home and I thought ‘either I get used to this or I come out of it now.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alan Titchmarsh has shared the “heartbreaking” question his daughter would pose after he kissed her goodnight, leaving him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":335628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2420,26854,6169,120133,77,90877,13537,13538,120134,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-335627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-parenting","9":"tag-alan-titchmarsh","10":"tag-bbc-gardeners-world","11":"tag-career-challenges","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-family-life","14":"tag-garden","15":"tag-gardening","16":"tag-ground-force-success","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115009975183751262","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=335627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/335628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=335627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=335627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=335627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}