William Edmund Sowerbutts (4 January 1911 - 28 May 1990)Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, subscription based, accessed 27 December 2011
/ref> was an English gardener and panellist on the long-running

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

programme

Gardeners Question Time ''Gardeners' Question Time'' is a long-running BBC Radio 4 programme in which amateur gardeners can put questions to a panel of experts. History The first programme was broadcast in the North and Northern Ireland Home Service of the BBC at 22 ...

. Born in

Ashton-under-Lyne Ashton-under-Lyne is a market town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. The population was 45,198 at the 2011 census. Historically in Lancashire, it is on the north bank of the River Tame, in the foothills of the Pennines, east of Manche ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...

, the son of a

market gardener A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under to ...

, Sowerbutts wanted to become a journalist on leaving school, but his father died when he was 16 and he started work on the family's

smallholding A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology ...

. The family first opened a stall on

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...

's Victoria Market and later on Ashton's outdoor market. Sowerbutts toured the area giving lectures to local gardening and allotment societies. He went on to appear in the first edition of ''How Does Your Garden Grow?'', soon renamed ''

Gardeners' Question Time ''Gardeners' Question Time'' is a long-running BBC Radio 4 programme in which amateur gardeners can put questions to a panel of experts. History The first programme was broadcast in the North and Northern Ireland Home Service of the BBC at 22 ...

'', an offshoot of the

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Dig for Victory Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany during World War I ...

campaign. The first programme was broadcast from the Singing Room at the Broadoak Hotel in Ashton-under-Lyne on 9 April 1947. On the first panel along with Bill were Fred Loads, Tom Clark and Dr E.W. Sansome. Sowerbutts and Loads later went on to become household names, appearing every Sunday at 2 p.m. on the

BBC Home Service The BBC Home Service was a national and regional radio station that broadcast from 1939 until 1967, when it was replaced by BBC Radio 4. History 1922–1939: Interwar period Between the early 1920s and the outbreak of World War II, the BBC ...

. In 1950, Professor

Alan Gemmell Alan Robertson Gemmell FRSE OBE JP (10 May 1913 – 5 July 1986) was Professor of Biology at Keele University and a regular member of the panel on the BBC Radio Home Service (later BBC Radio 4) programme ''Gardeners' Question Time'' from 1950 ...

joined. The banter between the trio attracted a large following, with the listenership building up to two million. Tameside Council placed a

Blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving as a historical marker. The term i ...

in his honour on the Broadoak Hotel.

References

External links

Tribute to Sowerbutts on Tameside Borough Council website accessed 27 December 2011
1911 births 1990 deaths BBC radio presenters English radio presenters English gardeners People from Ashton-under-Lyne {{UK-radio-bio-stub