West and Alexander-Sinclair both have long experience of Chelsea, and were
apprehensive about their chum’s debut. “I think they were a bit apprehensive
at first,” says Swift. “But then the frames arrived and they started to say
‘you know, I think this might be OK’, to which I replied ‘yes guys, thanks,
I have actually thought about it, it isn’t completely random.’ I was on the
plot next to Cleve, which was helpful. But I wasn’t really nervous. I
haven’t gone down the garden-designing route because the people with enough
money to let you do a proper garden tend to be very controlling. But I’ve
always had a strong aesthetic sense, and from years of standing in show
gardens for telly I know how they work.”
He proved his planting chops, too. “Some of the iris exhibitors from the
pavilion looked at my bearded irises and said ‘that’s exactly how they’re
supposed to be grown, with lots of space and a gravelly base.’ ‘Thanks very
much,’ I said.
“Chelsea was great, but left me shattered. I can see how winning a gold medal
could become an obsession, but now that I’ve got one there’s no way I’d go
back next year. Plus I’m never going to win Best in Show, because Cleve
always wins that.”
It’s tempting to see Swift’s mix of telegenic good humour and thoughtfulness
as a reflection of his parentage. His father is Clive Swift, the actor best
known for his part as Richard, long-suffering husband of Hyacinth Bucket, in Keeping
Up Appearances. His mother is Margaret Drabble, the novelist and
academic, and his siblings are an academic and a lawyer.
“My parents separated when I was very young,” he says “so I saw Dad mostly at
the weekends, when we’d go to the Arsenal together. But I definitely get my
sense of humour from that side of the family; a strong Jewish sense of
humour.” Being the son of famous parents never affected him. “Once at
Highbury the people around us starting singing ‘There’s only one Richard
Bucket,’ but that’s about it. It didn’t catch on.”
The academic inheritance from his mother’s side of the family was less
obvious. “There was certainly a lot of typing going on in the house when I
was growing up,” he says. “But I was never much of a reader. I was busy – I
was in a band, I went to art college, I went on a kibbutz in Israel. But I
never wanted to go to university, and frankly I didn’t have the A-levels.
But it wasn’t really rebellion. Or if it was, it was rebellion against a
family that was impossible to rebel against. Whatever I’d do, my mum would
just say ‘oh, that’s nice dear’, and carry on.”
After a series of odd jobs he started working for a landscape design company,
and took a course at the English Gardening School in Chelsea. His first
makeover was of his mother’s garden in Hampstead, which backed onto John
Keats’s old house. Broadcasting offers followed soon after.
His new series mixes a serious message with all the joshing. In The
Flowerpot Gang, he teams up with Anneka Rice and former England
cricketer Phil Tufnell. In each episode, the slightly improbable bunch sets
about transforming an unpromising site into a community haven. Each has a
different role. “Anneka’s brilliant at drumming up support. If we were short
of manpower she’d go off and come back with the local rugby club, or the
Territorial Army. Tuffers is more of a people person. He can talk to
anybody.”
The team created spaces for a dementia home in Sheffield, a young carers’
centre in Sunderland, a community garden in Poplar and a schools’ garden in
Bristol.
“It’s very important,” he says. “And there does seem to be a bit of a movement
at the moment. Ten or 15 years ago it was all about Ground Force, and people
putting in decking. But properties are getting smaller and smaller, and the
idea of having a private garden is fading.
“Community gardening is about coming together, so what we’re doing has far
more reach than just designing one or two posh people’s gardens.”
Of course, the less positive aspects of television exist whatever the subject.
“If you put yourself up on screen you’re going to be called names. At a
garden show I once heard these two old biddies talking to each other over
the microphone. ‘You’ve just missed that Joe Swift,’ one said. ‘Oh good I
can’t stand him,’ said the other. And I still get called a mockney. But you
have to be able to take it. It’s just human nature that some people will
like you and others won’t. If you start getting too precious about it all
you lose that sense of humour. It’s important to be able to take the —-
out of yourself. But I guess the Chelsea garden showed I’m not all laughs.”
The Flowerpot Gang starts on Wednesday on BBC One at 8pm
Anneka Rice interview, Review p29
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