''The Alan Titchmarsh Show'' is a British daytime chat show presented by

Alan Titchmarsh Alan Fred Titchmarsh HonFSE (born 2 May 1949) is an English gardener, broadcaster, TV presenter, poet, and novelist. After working as a professional gardener and a gardening journalist, he established himself as a media personality through a ...

. It was first broadcast on ITV on 3 September 2007 until 14 November 2014 and aired on weekday afternoons. The show's main focus is the "Best of British" theme with many of the shows' segments focusing on fashion, health, nature, cookery and animals. On 18 March 2014, Titchmarsh announced that he was leaving the show. The last episode aired on 14 November 2014.

Format

The programme made its debut on ITV in 2007. It focused on the theme of "The Best of British" focusing on food, entertainment and celebrities in a mid-afternoon slot. The focus of the show later shifted towards gossip, entertainment and a light-hearted discussion of sex tips. The latter was dropped after viewer complaints and a shift to a late afternoon 5 pm slot in 2010. The show usually opened with a review of gossip and current affairs stories of the day with regular guests including

Gloria Hunniford Mary Winifred Gloria Hunniford, OBE (born 10 April 1940) is a Northern Irish television and radio presenter, broadcaster and singer. She is known for presenting programmes on the BBC and ITV, such as '' Rip Off Britain'', and her regular appea ...

Carole Malone Carole Anne Malone (born 14 October 1954) is an English TV presenter, journalist and broadcaster. Career Malone was born on 14 October 1954 in the mining village of West Allotment, near Newcastle upon Tyne. She started her career as a journali ...

Penny Smith Penelope Jane Smith (born 21 September 1958) is an English author, television presenter, newsreader and radio presenter. She has presented for Sky News, GMTV, Classic FM, BBC Radio London, TalkRadio and is a regular contributor to TalkTV la ...

Nick Ferrari Nicolo Ferrari (born 31 January 1959) is a British host, television presenter and broadcast journalist. He is best known as the host of the weekday breakfast show on the London-based radio station LBC, with 1.5 million weekly listeners. He a ...

Janet Street Porter Janet Vera Street-Porter (''née'' Bull; born 27 December 1946) is an English broadcaster, journalist, writer, and media personality. She began her career as a fashion writer and columnist at the ''Daily Mail'' and was later appointed fashion e ...

Jane McDonald Jane Anne McDonald (born 4 April 1963) is an English singer, songwriter and television presenter. Born and raised in Wakefield, McDonald spent much of her early career performing in local clubs and pubs before landing work as a singer on cr ...

and

Emma Forbes Emma Katy Forbes (née Clarke; born 14 May 1965 in Hammersmith, London) is an English radio and television presenter. Biography Forbes's parents are Nanette Newman and Bryan Forbes (né John Theobald Clarke). She attended Hurst Lodge School. ...

offering their opinions. The programme resumed the studio debate format at half-past the hour with a "heated" discussion on the main "hot topic" of the day. The programme also included regular cookery slots with

Nadia Sawalha Nadia Sawalha (; born 18 November 1964) is a British actress, television personality and YouTuber. She played the role of Annie Palmer on the BBC One soap opera ''EastEnders'' from 1997 to 1999 and Gina in ITV comedy Second Thoughts (TV series), ...

Claire Richards Claire Anne Richards (born 17 August 1977) is an English singer who is best known for being in the pop group Steps. Richards was a contestant on the second series of '' Popstar to Operastar'' before being voted off in the semi finals. She po ...

with Titchmarsh adopting a comical, "hands-on" role as a hopeless cookery assistant. In Shrager's cookery demonstrations, the pair alternated between bickering and flirting with visual "humour" and numerous

double entendre A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...

s from the host. A wine-tasting panel often featured along with items on flower-arranging, pets and gardening, the latter involving Titchmarsh answering viewer's horticultural questions assisted by studio guests. The show usually concluded with Titchmarsh interviewing a major celebrity or public figure and also contained regular musical items with live studio performances. The show was coloured with Titchmarsh's dry, slightly camp style and Yorkshire wit and was often peppered with risque puns of a mildly sexual nature. In March 2011, the show returned to its traditional daytime TV mid-afternoon slot for its eighth series between 3-4pm after a spell in the "primetime" 5pm slot for a 10-week run. The programme celebrated its 400th edition on 9 March 2011. The show returned to ITV daytime on 5 September 2011, with a return to its original opening 'starry' titles and theme music. The latest series stars David Domoney as one of the expert gardeners. The show was produced at The London Studios by Spun Gold TV. It is aired Monday to Friday with some editions broadcast live and other editions pre-recorded. Previous series were broadcast from

BBC Television Centre Television Centre (TVC) is a building complex in White City, West London, that was the headquarters of BBC Television between 1960 and 2013. After a refurbishment, the complex reopened in 2017 with three studios in use for TV production, opera ...

2013 Revamp

The 2013 series, which began on Monday 21 January 2013, saw several changes to the show. Firstly the show's logo was replaced by a much more up-to-date and modern one. The former theme tune stayed the same but with a slower, fresher take on it. Several minor changes were made to the studio set. Many stars became regulars on the show, such as

Coleen Nolan Coleen Patricia Nolan (born 12 March 1965) is an English singer, television personality, and author. She was a member of the girl group The Nolans from 1980 to 1994, in which she sang with her sisters. Since 2000, Nolan has been a regular panell ...

Myleene Klass Myleene Angela Klass (born 6 April 1978) is a British musician, singer, presenter, model and businesswoman. She was a member of the pop group Hear'Say, and later released two solo classical crossover albums in 2003 and 2007. More recently, Klass ...

and Lisa Riley. Riley became a full regular on Monday's with up to date gadgets and ways to keep fit.

Transmissions

STV

STV, serving central and northern Scotland ITV regions, decided not to broadcast series' 3 to 7. STV wished to broadcast their afternoon chat show '' The Hour'' instead at 5 pm. STV also believe the show did not rate well and thus has an opt-out, but it became clear the series was partly axed to a dispute with ITV. In 2011, the dispute was resolved and STV began broadcasting the eighth series in March 2011, the same as the other ITV regions. During the period viewers had to use other means to watch the series including ITV Player or watch the show on ITV's

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

feed, on Sky or

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ventu ...

Controversies

The programme's discussion of "adult" themes, including a former regular item on

sex toys A sex toy is an object or device that is primarily used to facilitate human sexual pleasure, such as a dildo, artificial vagina or vibrator. Many popular sex toys are designed to resemble human genitals, and may be vibrating or non-vibratin ...

presented by Julie Peasgood have sparked a large number of viewer complaints. In 2010,

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

, the media regulator, released figures revealing that Titchmarsh's ITV show had the fifth highest number of complaints of any programme for that year. In 2013,

ruled that an interview with actress

Patsy Kensit Patricia Jude Kensit (born 4 March 1968) is an English actress and was the lead singer of the pop band Eighth Wonder in the 1980s. Beginning her career as a child actor, Kensit gained attention when she acted in a string of commercials for Bir ...

breached regulations. Kensit was found to have made "promotional and unduly prominent" references to diet firm Weight Watchers, which she is paid to endorse, and Titchmarsh had failed to challenge her claims or mention that Kensit was a "weight loss ambassador" for the diet company.

Former features

Singing contest

The show returned for a third series at the start of September 2008. It launched a competition to find a

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880& ...

to sing alongside Jonathan Ansell in the A Night at the Opera tour. From the thousands of hopefuls who applied, eight ladies were selected to sing in front of a judging panel of David Grant, Ruthie Henshall and Jonathan Shalit. The four successful ladies – Rosie Bell, Rosie Havel, Olivia Safe and Esther Dee – faced a public vote on 15 September 2008 and Olivia Safe and Rosie Bell won through. They both sang with Jonathan Ansell '' Libiamo ne' lieti calici'', the most famous duet from Verdi's ''

La Traviata ''La traviata'' (; ''The Fallen Woman'') is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on '' La Dame aux camélias'' (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas ''fils'' adapted from his ow ...

'' on 29 September 2008 and Olivia Safe won the public vote to appear in the tour of ''A Night at the Opera'' during October and November 2008.

Presenters, experts and guests

Although the show is primarily presented by

, presenters such as

and

present segments such as fashion and cookery.

''The Michael Ball Show''

From 16 August to 24 September 2010, actor

Michael Ball Michael Ashley Ball (born 27 June 1962) is an English singer, presenter and actor. He made his West End debut in 1985 playing Marius Pontmercy in the original London production of ''Les Misérables'', and went on to star in 1987 as Raoul in ...

presented his own chat show also produced by Spun Gold TV which followed a very similar format to ''The Alan Titchmarsh Show'' during the latter's summer break. It ran for 30 editions over 6 weeks and was aired 3 to 4 pm and recorded at

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Alan Titchmarsh Show, The 1990s British television talk shows 2000s British television talk shows 2010s British television talk shows 1997 British television series debuts 2014 British television series endings British television talk shows English-language television shows ITV (TV network) original programming