‘Sorry, Monty!” says the woman who opens the door to the glass-walled room by mistake (or was it?). She looks a little thrilled – we’ll come to Monty Don’s status as a sex symbol in a bit, and he will squirm slightly. But for now, in this meeting room at Camley Street natural park in north London, Don is eloquent and good-natured, dressed in a navy corduroy suit that opens to reveal a peek of braces. He is, to those of us who are fans of BBC’s Gardeners’ World – on which he is the lead presenter – exactly as you’d hope to find him.
Don left London in the late 1980s when he and his wife, Sarah, with whom he ran a jewellery business, bought a big house with 15 hectares (35 acres) in Herefordshire. They lost it, along with everything else, after the 1987 financial crash. He had lived not far from where we are now, on the Hackney border in north London, long before it became fashionable, buying a house when he was 25. His three children, now in their 30s, “couldn’t begin to afford to live in London”.
