Celebrity Extreme Gardening

Perusal Travelbrochure is now credited with bringing about the revival of what had seemingly become a moribund TV genre with her introduction to the early evening schedules of 'Celebrity Extreme Gardening'. Most TV critics seem to agree that it was the sight of Mammary Extravagance, formerly a background character in some of the UK’s most popular soap operas, and several times winner of the prestigious 'Crime Drama Naked Corpse Of The Year Award' at the BAFTAS, pruning roses under artillery fire that made the show such a hit with the TV audience. Other TV critics have also pointed out that Travelbrochure has learnt the lesson from that other famous gardening show populariser, Charlie Dimmock by making sure that her charlies are on prominent display throughout her on-screen time.

It is possibly the fact though that the so-called ‘celebrities’ who appear on this programme are constantly in danger of losing their lives in such situations as, for example: pruning their roses under fire from live rounds, attempting to irrigate their sweet-peas adjacent to a crocodile infested river, using their dibber in a minefield, and attempting to keep an allotment in bloom in an area where rival drug gangs are in constant dispute, that has earned the programme its rightful place at the top of the TV ratings charts.

TV critics say that is the possibility that a minor celebrity could be eaten alive, blown up into tiny bloody shreds of flesh, or mown down in a hail of bullets, and other such violent deaths that keeps the audiences coming back week after week. After all, most viewers seem to think, what does the loss of life of one from the seemingly endless list of minor celebrities matter?

The producers of the programme too seem to share the audience’s casual attitude to this potential loss of celebrity life, especially when it is stacked up against the show’s massive audience ratings, prime time advertising rates and a very popular merchandising range of everything from bullet-proof gardening vests to rebadged standard NATO battlefield hoes and riot-proof flowerpots.