Monty Don reveals plans to leave Gardeners’ World – and speaks out on ‘sex symbol’ reputation
MONTY Don has spoken out about his Gardeners’ World future amid personal heartbreak while filming the show.
Recently, Monty’s beloved dog Nell passed away and he has since shared a series of sweet memories of the beloved pooch online.
A regular co-star on his wildly popular BBC series, 68 year old Monty has now admitted he has been considering his future with the show that made him a household name and has confessed his plans to leave for good.
The TV favourite admitted in a new interview with The Guardian that he will quit the programme within the next five years much to the disappointment of his beloved fans.
Monty has appeared on the programme for the last 20 years having made his debut on the show in 2003.
His own personal garden, Longmeadow, has been the backdrop for the show over the years with the star telling the publication: “What my garden cost, I couldn’t buy a parking space in London for now.”
The exceptional garden is one that many of the show’s fans, and even hosts, could only dream of having with the star admitting he has two people to help him with the upkeep of the huge open space.
Many of his younger co-hosts have much smaller spaces and Monty admitted that he thought it would only be right that his ‘replacement’ was more representative of the current generation.
He said: “I would like to think the next Gardeners’ World presenter ideally would be female, would represent either singly, or in multiplicity, the diversity in this country, that has at least some urban context.
“So I think all that leads to it not being just one garden any more, because if it is one garden, it’s got to be a big one.”
He admitted that if it were to be one single person ‘take over’ with a big garden, they would have to be a wealthy countryside-dweller, something Monty acknowledged could be ‘out of touch’ with the regular viewer.
The TV presenter added: “It probably has to be in the country, and the further you get into the countryside, the less diversity there is.
“The world’s changing; we need to change with it.
“In many ways, it’s likely I’m the last middle-aged, middle-class white male with a large garden doing Gardeners’ World. Which is fine.”
Elsewhere, Monty opened up to the publication about his unlikely sex symbol status – something he admitted to finding “embarrassing”.
Monty said: “Well, I feel slightly embarrassed, sort of smirky. My wife would say: ‘Look at you smirking at that question.’ I’ve been living with somebody for 43 years, who I love more and more, so on one level, it’s so irrelevant as to be silly.
“On another level, I’m human – I’d rather that said about me than not. But I can’t tell you how insular my life is outside work. I go in the garden.
“I see a few people every day, usually the same people. I like them very much and not one of them thinks I’m remotely sexy.”