1. Yellow Book launch-Joe Swift made a speech to about a 500 gardening hacks and 100 NGS garden openers on the theme of…thank you for opening your garden/writing about National Gardens Scheme. A missed opportunity. The assembled hacks could do with food for thought. BBC Gardeners' World were filming it. Victoria Summerley mentioned the non-winning of Garden Media Guild prize incident she posted on her blog.

Emma Townshend writes in the Yellow Book…"when I was a little girl we’d sit on a Sunday afternoon after lunch in my grandma’s kitchen and open a drawer and get out the YB and flick through and etc.” ahhh.

Lookalikes-Hayley Monckton-Louisa Preston Colin Firth-Stephen Bennett (no, I can't see it either) PW Botha- Nigel Colborn-Mike Wyatt.

2. If you see a garden profile in the national press, chances are it has come from the YB. A bit like a plant piece will include the national collection holder from NCCPG book. Spoke to RHS plant guy Graham Rice about plant trials. he's been asked to step up in trials committees and wants to ensure individual trials are costed/weighed. Spoke to Sir Roddy Llewellyn, who said he is lining up Joanna Lumley to launch Southport Flower Show this 19 August. He said northerners were better than southerners. I agree. Joe Swift made two jokes about Alan Titchmarsh’s wages-one was on how someone made £12,000 for charity in six hours-“The sort of £ AT gets!” and another was about a big cheque “the sort AT gets”. Double the £12k I’m told. Marianne Majerus said NGS was “the most perfect antidote to our broken society”. Also bumped into Seabrook, Steve Bradley, Liz Dobbs, Marc Rosenberg, Christopher Woodward, Geoff Hodge. But where was Martyn Cox?

3. Cox, 43, turned up at the Garden Press Event event the next day, along with 208 other hacks (who had said they were coming-I didn't count them). My theory is the gardening hacks at the Garden Press event is less enjoyed by the hacks than the Yellow Book because they have to do some work at Garden Press Event rather than look at pics of nice gardens gossip, eat cake and booze. Human nature I suppose.

Seriously, the hacks like visiting nice gardens-Yellow Book listed usually-but don't like writing about boring old products and growing your own etc. But as consumer gardening mags and papers get more commercial that is what they'll have to do, unless they are just writing guff on blogs like this.

5. Alys Fowler’s new programme The Edible Garden will start on BBC2 on March 16. My sources suggest it is already being dubbed Five Go Mad in Kings Heath as Alys, Claire Savage etc enjoy outdoor picnics of homegrown ham and turkey sandwiches, bags of lettuce, hard-boiled eggs, heaps of tomato, and lashings of ginger beer.

6. Tapas seven update-media types the RHS is hosting for lunch at Goya in Lupus St SW1V 3EB on 17 Feb. I suggest a demo outside. Pattie Barron, Camilla Phelps, Tamsin Westhorpe, Juliet Roberts, Cleve West, Rosemary Edwards, Lauren Holden, Hazel Sillver, Jane Owen, Stephenie Meyer, James Alexander-Sinclair, Magda Ibrahim; Mark Diacono and Martyn Cox.  

7. Saw Guardian was using Emma Cooper for recent make do and mend supplements gardening bits-eg make your own cuttings etc. Wonder why they didn’t use gardening ed and write Jane Perrone and Lia Leendertz?

8. This was good.

9. Last year it was estimated that British men spent £4.2bn on the country’s sex industry-an eight per cent rise on previous years. Uncannily, the gardening industry is also worth £4.2bn, up eight per cent according to some sources.

10. MA: How did you find the conference? Garden centre person: I used satnav.

MA: You harvest at Astley Moss as in Rick Astley? William Sinclair's Bernard Burns: Yes.

11.  Like this site

12. Spotted: David Lloyd spotted talking about Andy Murray in Wimbledon village. Also, Joe Swift on South Bank-though does this count?

13. I once (a few years ago) saw footballer Wayne Bridge in Cobham with his girlfriend, Vanessa Perroncel. We went to Pizza Express. On a Sunday afternoon.

14. John Terry's house in Oxshott is for sale Graham Rice tells me. Homeless Hayley Monckton is considering an offer. 

15. I suggested Bridge as an alternative to Glen Johnson as full back for England at the recent GCA conference to Glee's Dave Langrish at the bar. I had to be reminded that Bridge plays on the opposite side of the defence to Johnson. This is one of the worst male crimes that can be made.
Btw, I'm a Gleek-I'm obsessed with the garden centre trade show Glee. I hear that at the recent Garden Centre Association conference rival show Garden Expo was banned form exhibiting, sponsoring, or even attending. Don't stop believing Expo!
 

16. The late Steven Wells wrote this in the Guardian:

The People's Republic of China are torturing, culture-smothering and democracy-crushing bastards. But then so was Germany in 1936. And Britain in 1908 and 1948. And the Soviet Union in 1980. And the USA in 1984 and 1996. Then there was the massacre of hundreds of Mexican demonstrators to pave the way for the games of 1968. In fact the history of the modern Olympic movement is one long, sad litany of imperialism, racism, exploitation and oppression. But that's not why I think we should boycott the Olympics.

And I do think we should boycott them. Not just the Beijing games. All of them. Forever. Why? Because of the total disconnect between what the Olympics are supposed to be about (grace, beauty, athleticism, sportsmanship, solidarity, brotherhood and the human spirit) and the sordid reality — as superbly illustrated by what the preparations for the 2012 London games are doing to the Manor Garden allotments.

Ask yourself this question: are the drug-riddled, debased and corrupt Olympics worth the demolition of a single 80-year-old community institution that genuinely and continually promotes health, mental wellbeing, exercise, neighbourliness and fresh vegetables? And (while we're at it) was it worth ripping up the much-loved and heavily used five-a-side football pitches in East London's Spitalfields market just so the City of London could have yet another identikit shopping/office development? (If you answered yes to either question, stop reading and trot off and fellate a stockbroker, you dominant ideology humping Tory ***).

Don't get me wrong. I dislike cockney gardeners just as much as the next professional Northern bigot.