North Korea’s state television channel has censored a BBC gardening programme – by blurring out presenter Alan Titchmarsh’s trousers.
“It’s taken me to reach the age of 74 to be regarded in the same sort of breath as Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Rod Stewart. You know wearing trousers that are generally considered by those of us of a sensitive disposition to be rather too tight … I’ve never seen myself as a dangerous subversive imperialist I’m generally regarded as rather cosy and pretty harmless so actually it’s given me a bit of street cred really hasn’t it.”
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I’ve failed Wordle two days in a row and we’re discussing Alan Titchmarsh’s jeans?
Well – and always start a comment with “well” – if you have something better to discuss, Mister Importypants, you go ahead and discuss it. The Titchmartian Trouser seems of vital relevance to me.
You need to go back to cheating.
I don’t think paying Baron Harkonnen for the answer is strictly cheating, is it?
Waste the day away discussing a cheesy gardener and his M&S Comfy Waist Jeans, trivialise my pain with an uncaring off-handedness, besmirch the good name of RayX – swine, the pair of you, utter swine.
Well, quite.
That’s a wonderful story.
Amazing to think that in potting sheds across the planet, Titchmarsh’s trousers have suddenly become a very hot topic.
As the article mentions, it is also rather a surprise to discover that the BBC’s Garden Secrets has keen viewers in North Korea. I’d have thought it was the height of bourgeois decadence.
What else do they watch? I would be fascinated to know more. In a country plagued by starvation, the Great British Bake Off might not go down too well. (Incidentally, I was very surprised that Noel Fielding from the Mighty Boosh is now a co-host!)
“Potting sheds across the planet”
You mean from Berwick to Land’s End?
A post about trousers on the AW and nary a mention of PJ Proby
Truly this place is on its last legs
That was a rip off.
An account of PJ Proby’s “routine” in Q Magazine concluded with the memorable phrase “revealing a sizeable acreage of raw talent”
He’s no P J Proby.
Let’s be sporting and credit HR’s mention of PJP as the return leg
I suggest we share the accolade @Jaygee as Stanshall and Moon shared some trousers.
Hmm. Chinny-chinny-chin-cheree.
Do you doubt it’s veracity H P?
Yes, I do. The whole thing just reeks of vainglorious mythologising. A bit like Moosey’s wifebeater vests.
Vests plural? You people are changing vests? Oh swipe me, how glittering!
The only reason I take mine off is to wring spilled Stella Artois back into the glass. Waste not want not!
*winces*
Sorry, Moosey … I … I don’t know what came over me …
Wring that out as well before it dries. NOT IN THE GLASS! Oh too late
I’ve just seen a version of it in Rolling Stone and in this the two protagonists are Moon and Legs Larry Smith. Hmmm.
Though Stanshall did enjoy his practical jokes.
Somebody told the same story in the radio documentary Big Shot. Moon rather than Smith as I recall.
It fails the cred test because ripping a pair of trews – tailor-made, mark you – in half would take more than just a couple of out-of-shape pop stars. Try this simple test at home – take a pair of your wife’s best slacks and try ripping them in half. Now try when she’s not wearing them. It’s like those scenes in Bond movies where someone tears an item of clothing into ad hoc bandages like it was rice paper – it was.
It’s a story, that’s all, like the Bible or World War 2.
I thought you all wore rice-paper trousers in Thailand. Or have Tin Tin comics lied to me?
If the story took place in H&M I’d believe it.
@hubert-rawlinson
Leg ends in our own lifetime. That’s you and me, H.
You’ll get a cuff round the ear.
Well that’s a turn-up for the bucks (as in we young (ish) bucks)
These jokes are increasingly pants (as a more recent generation of young bucks was wont to say)
These jokes crease me up.
You’re fairly easy to pleat though, HP
That explains why Status Quo never played Pyongyang.
Though I believe in pre gig dressing room warm-ups they would play ping-pong.
They had a smoking device endorsed by the White Christmas Hitmaker… it was a Bing bong.
Jesus, North Korea seems bad enough but you would have thought you could at least escape from Alan Titchmarsh.
I suppose the jeans thing is that they are, as an item of clothing, now associated almost exclusively with people over the age of 60 – and in North Korea you’re not allowed to live that long.
An unusually considered and lengthy comment from you, Moosey, yet retaining your signature biting satiric edge withal.
Looking forward to Stephen King’s new one, HP?
It’s like I already read it!
…uncanny…
But without any knob jokes.
It’s an industry common knowledge that Alan Titchmarsh is hung like a baby’s arm holding a mango. This is what probably did it for the Koreans
The first thing I thought of was the notorious appearance of Terry Wogan on Points of View, which most certainly was not suitable for Sunday afternoon viewing. Talk about a late career resurgence.