Bob Flowerdew
He's Britain's leading organic gardener, but Bob Flowerdew also runs a consultancy landscape service, teaches at agricultural college and can be heard on BBC Radio 4's Gardeners' Question Time.
He says he likes: "Gardening, scented plants, good food, cats, beautiful women, conversation, reading, etymology, outrageous ideas, public speaking, scuba diving and whingeing on about the state of things." His dislikes include: "Bad and bland food, political correctness and people whingeing on about the state of things."
Bob was born into a family that's tilled the land in Norfolk and Suffolk since pre-Elizabethan times. A member of Garden Organic and the Soil Association, he practises what he preaches with his own organic garden in Norfolk.
Bob has also been a chicken giblet washer, computer installation engineer, council cleaner, dog impersonator, glass fibre laminator, houseboy and cook in a house of ill repute, security lighting engineer, marine engineer, museum attendant, nude model, official guide in Paris, theatrical gofer, vitreous enamel applicator, arcade mechanic and inventor.
The son of a farmer, he actually studied financial management. After graduating, he worked his way around Europe and North America, and became fascinated by the different gardening and farming methods, returning to pick grapes with one French family for 12 successive years.
He's been gardening on his current plot for more than 16 years and grows organic fruit and vegetables of almost every variety, including bananas, pineapples and guavas. He also keeps chickens, ducks, geese and bees. He set out to prove that all this can be done single-handedly - and in your spare time - which he has achieved, but at great cost to his social life!
Books he's written include Bob Flowerdew's Complete Book of Companion Gardening, Bob Flowerdew's Complete Fruit Book and Bob Flowerdew's Organic Bible.
