My run-in with Mary Berry at the Chelsea Flower Show

Plus, the fastest-growing sport in the world, the loveliest pub in London and getting trapped in my own trousers at an awards ceremony...

May 21, 2024

The Chelsea Flower Show. What a glorious day it was yesterday. The sun was out. The alliums were swaying. Chelsea Pensioners were riding rocking horses. Oh look, there’s Joanna Lumley in a natty blue panama.

The Monday of Chelsea Flower Show week is press and celebrity day. It’s not called that officially. I think it’s just called press day but that’s slightly misleading because what you get is press plus celebs. So as Mum and I walked in yesterday morning, we did so behind Rob Brydon in his lovely blue linen suit. Then we saw Amanda Holden and goggled at her shoes; then Paul Hollywood in one garden; next to that, the new Bridgerton star Hannah Dodd being snapped in ‘The Bridgerton Garden’. Yup, there’s a Bridgerton garden this year, sponsored by - you got it - Netflix. Although it was very pretty - full of fox gloves, bits of wavy green stuff and a tinkly fountain.

I know not v much about gardening but Mum and I had been invited by her cousin George, who’s the boss of the National Garden Scheme. This is the amazing amazing charity that has donated more than £70m - SEVENTY MILLION POUNDS - to nursing charities since it was founded. That was back in 1927 when an enterprising woman called Elsie Wragg came up with the wheeze of raising some much-needed cash for district nurses via the country’s obsession with gardens. Why not open private gardens for a day and charge visitors a shilling a head, Elsie wondered. It’s been happening ever since. You see little yellow signs in the countryside sometimes declaring there’s a garden open day nearby (although it also happens in cities - I saw one in Forest Hill a couple of weeks ago), and that’s probably the NGS. You get to snoop around someone’s private garden, admittedly for more than a shilling now, but you do often get cake. And it all still goes to charities like Macmillan, Maggie’s and Marie Curie. Like I said, amazing.

Anyway, the NGS has a show garden at Chelsea this year (which means one of the eight big competition gardens), and I’m obviously a bit biased but it is sensationally pretty. Shaded by hazel trees, there are little paths that weave through white azaleas, white irises, white fox gloves (fox gloves are HUGE at Chelsea this year, darling), and altogether it creates a very magical, dappled space.

At the back of the garden is a dead smart potting shed, complete with its own mini Aga, and in front of that was a lovely garden table, laid up with Victoria sponge cakes, where Chelsea king and star garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith sat chatting with a couple of nurses and Chelsea Pensioners. (And since every single leaf of every single garden has to be accounted for at Chelsea and used elsewhere afterwards now, pretty much the whole thing will soon be bundled up and sent to a new garden for Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.)

Tom Stuart-Smith and pals having cake in the NGS garden

‘The garden makes me feel at peace and at ease. I love the tranquility of the white,’ said Dame Mary Berry, who was visiting the NGS garden when Mum and I arrived. As was Alan Titchmarsh. Two massive names; we absolutely nailed the timing. Cousin George let us into the garden so we didn’t stand there gawping at it over the rope, and introduced us. Just to set the scene, Alan was also in a very vibrant blue suit; Mary was in a terrific pink dress. How does she keep her hair like that? I don’t know. I thought it might be letting the side down to ask.

I don’t mean to brag, but on meeting her, she clapped her hands together and said she reads my column in the Telegraph every Saturday, and she knew what day it runs, which meant she couldn’t have been fibbing. ‘Cor!’ my ego and I thought, ‘this is terrific! Look at me and Dame Mary laughing in the garden!’ Then she leant forward and said slightly more quietly, ‘You’re very cheeky, aren’t you?’

Oh god, I thought, panicked. Which column had Dame Mary been startled by? The one about sex scenes in novels? The one about loos? The one about posh men sending their sons to prostitutes? ‘Err…sometimes,’ I stammered back. But she then winked at me. Phew. Dame Mary was teasing. ‘I had no idea you were so tall,’ she added, at which point I thought I might be able to get away with asking a personal question about her hair, but she was whisked out again and on to the next garden before I could. Probably for the best.

After a fortifying coffee, Mum and I wandered down to peer at the other gardens. There was Nick Grimshaw in The Newt’s v grand Roman villa garden (they’ve literally built a Roman villa, stuffed with lavender, and pomegranate and cherry trees, in homage to the hotel’s Roman villa in Somerset); there was Sophie Raworth AND Fiona Bruce wearing orange. Big favourite among the newsreaders, apparently, orange. Then we saw some hedgehogs, a man in a diving kit to highlight the damage we’re doing to the world’s oceans, Monty Don at the David Austen stand (‘Not in his garden jacket today,’ noted Mum), an extremely grand shepherd’s hut, and Josh O’Connor (Prince Charles from The Crown), wandering along with his parents.

We left just as the sniffer dogs were coming in ahead of the visit from the king and queen. It was splendid, and very spoiling to be there and especially lovely to be there with Mum, after the past few months she’s had. Look, here we below are in our dresses:

‘Why’s your mouth like that?’ Paul asked when I sent him the pic last night. ‘Because I’m laughing!’ I told him. It was a very happy day.

Pictures of the week

Almost exactly this time last year, I wrote a column for the Tel about this sport my pal Holly had been banging on about for a while: padel. The fastest-growing sport in the world, many say, and the new-ish Bamford Club in the Cotswolds had apparently gone particularly mad for it. If you like, you can read the column here.

Last week, I went to The Hurlingham Club in West London where the inaugural Alfred Dunhill Padel Classic was taking place - a two-day event, sponsored by Dunhill, and played by various sporting greats. Bryan Habana was on one court; Greg Rusedski on another; Andrew Strauss knocking about on the third one. If tennis mated with squash, that’s sort of what it looks like. Fast. Frantic. Enjoyable.

Three years ago, not long after the pandemic, a friend who’s a member of Hurlingham invited me for lunch, and we sat outside and drank more rosé while I marvelled at the number of panama hats. It felt a bit like the Upper Class deck of the Titanic, I remember thinking; the world had changed but somehow Hurlingham hadn’t. It is an extraordinary place - 42 acres of West London, perfectly mown, where the main noise is someone gently thunking their opponent on the croquet lawn. You can only become a member if 63 generations of your family have been members and/or your Great Uncle Peregrine won first place in the Guiness-Mountbatten-Lawn-Bowls-Championship for several years running.

There are three padel courts at Hurlingham but muttering about building more because the clamour among members is so strong, although the ascendance of a young new sport doesn’t mean the rules can be broken. Oh no. One of the Padel Classic competitors appeared in a cream dress last week, but was ticked off by one of the officials for not being in white, so had to go to the shop and buy a whole new outfit before being allowed on the court. Standards to maintain, and all that.

Recommendation of the week

If you need a pub in West London any time soon, can I propose The Waterman’s Arms? It’s in Barnes, overlooking the river, and the food is madly good. The guy behind it, Joe Grossman, started Patty & Bun and the head chef is Sam Andrews, who went from Ducksoup in Soho to the BRILLIANT Camberwell Arms in, well, Camberwell. I’ve been there twice for Sunday lunch now and it’s been *chef’s kiss*. Quite a few of the Sunday lunch options are sharers like they do in Camberwell - big bit of pork or big bit of lamb - but they come with deliciously garlicky greens and so many roast potatoes you genuinely won’t be able to eat them all. My friend Ollie took our leftover spuds home in a polystyrene box and even though we’d just eaten a Sunday lunch that would have made Henry VIII reach for the Rennie, we discussed how he could eat them - with mayo? With aioli? - the whole way back down the towpath. A really excellent spot around there if you’re need pepping up after a walk. Would also be quite a good date place because on the first floor they have tables on the balcony, overlooking the river. Book though because tables get snapped up way in advance, although make sure you book the RIGHT Waterman’s Arms because in December, Holly, mentioned above, managed to book the wrong one and there were nearly tears.

Lunch for two (ha ha, just kidding, there were six of us)

Nonsense of the week

Zara trousers. WHAT is going on with them? After Chelsea yesterday, off I went to a hotel in the City for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Awards in the evening. My last novel, Looking Out For Love, was up for a Romantic Comedy gong, and I thought I’d better dress appropriately, in a bright pink Zara suit to celebrate all things romance.

I changed quickly in the hotel loo from Chelsea frock to pink suit, sweating because I’d raced there on the Tube, only to find the zip on my trousers wouldn’t do up. It got stuck half way, and no amount of heaving and bending and groaning in the loo (‘Sorry, I’ll be out soon!’) was going to shift it. So I threw the matching, luminous pink jacket over the top and hoped for the best.

I kept wriggling in my chair as the awards went on, trying to make sure the trousers were vaguely in place, just in case my name was read out and I had to leap up.

‘And the winner is…’ began writer Brigid Coady, the MC.

‘If it’s me, please can my trousers not fall down,’ I prayed. Anton du Beke was presenting the trophies and I really didn't think he’d like the sight of that.

It wasn’t me (it was lovely Maxine Morrey for her book You’ve Got This), but I told myself that was FINE because if I had gone up onstage, that would almost certainly have been the point at which the zip gave up entirely, my trousers fell down, and I horrified the esteemed gathering of several hundred women (as well as a couple of male romantic fiction writers), sitting in front of me. Although it would have been reasonably fitting for the Romantic Comedy award.

And then, just before getting back on the Overground to come home, I nipped to the bathroom only to find the zip now wouldn’t go down either, and I couldn’t quite pull the trousers over my bottom. You see? You hear award ceremony and think it sounds swanky but, last night, this is what it came down to: me, in a hotel loo cubicle, sweating while trying to heave a pair of admittedly quite cheap Zara trousers over my arse without ripping them because I desperately needed a wee.

I gave up in the end and decided I would just have to get home, so I near hobbled on to the train, back to Crystal Palace, where I delightedly YANKED the trousers over my bottom and was finally free of them. I probably won’t tell the dry cleaner that whole story when I go in and ask him to mend the zip.

But Zara trousers, what’s going on? I went into a branch last week to have a quick browse ahead of a wedding I’ve got this weekend, and tried on several pairs of trousers, but they were all terrible - too big, too small, too transparent and so on. That’s fast fashion for you though, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be wearing it in the first place. Sweating in a loo cubicle, literally stuck in a pair of them, probably serves me right.