Alan Titchmarsh as the Island High Sheriff in 2009.
THIS ISLAND LIFETHE News of the World is no more but in a long-forgotten report, buried deep inside a dusty filing cabinet in a newsroom now festooned with cobwebs, an unexpected name lurks.
This is the place where men and women once earned an honest living writing lies about the rich and powerful, until the newspaper became such an embarrassment, owner Rupert Murdoch shut it down.
While the inquiries, the litigation, the compensation and the accusations rumble on, names of those whose privacy has been compromised continue to be dripped into the public consciousness.
Secret surveillance has now been added to the nefarious activities employed and the names of some unlikely targets have been revealed.
Among them is our own Alan Titchmarsh, for goodness sake!
You may be wondering, as I am, what the good sheriff has been up to that could possibly have attracted the attention of the News of the World.
Well, all can be revealed because I have been sent a copy of the report compiled by the private investigator assigned to the Titchmarsh case.
It has been passed to me anonymously and amid great secrecy in a plain brown envelope.
I think it only fair this fascinating document should be shared in its unvarnished state with the County Press readers Sheriff Titchmarsh served so faithfully.
It reads:
Full name of subject under scrutiny: Alan Fred (honestly, I’ve checked it) Titchmarsh MBE.
Occupation: Television presenter, author and occasional gardener.
Area of surveillance: IW.
Time of surveillance: Seven days during 2008.
Report details: I travelled to my destination on a Wightlink ferry, which left an hour late "due to operational problems".
I followed Titchmarsh into Newport, where he disappeared into a building called County Hall.
When he emerged, he was dressed in tights, buckled shoes, ostrich feathers and a lace ruff and proceeded to walk shamelessly up the High Street. I know you will find this difficult to believe so I’ve attached a photograph as proof.
There was a group of other blokes with him also dressed in a most peculiar fashion and I thought it was the gathering of a weird cult.
Apparently, he had just been made sheriff or something, an old Island honour, which is rarely conferred upon old Islanders.
They tend to prefer those who "have a home on the Island" but Titchmarsh certainly took his new job seriously.
He spent the next couple of days rushing about all over the place cutting ribbons, planting trees, opening things and giving speeches.
Photographers had to work special shifts to cover his activities and dozens of pictures of him appeared in the local rag at the end of the week.
Titchmarsh had the same expression in all of them; a bewildered half-smile as if someone had just told him a joke he didn’t quite understand. He got so confused at one place that he planted the ribbon and cut the tree.
I suppose you could do a story about him being a secret vandal — "TV gardener in cut-tree shock!" — but I can’t see it selling many papers. Other than that, his main activity was writing.
He started his new novel on Tuesday. Fortunately, he’d finished it by Thursday so I was able to resume surveillance.
Tall order
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| CP reporter Richard Wright on a Southern Vectis bus. |
READERS may have been somewhat startled to see a familiar County Press face trundling around the Island on the side of a Southern Vectis bus.
It belongs, of course, to this newspaper’s veteran hack and gardening writer, Richard Wright.
I particularly enjoyed the e-mail sent to him by our mutual friend, Tim Marshall.
Musician Tim, as most people know, is a tad vertically challenged and (to lift a line from the equally small but perfectly formed Ronnie Corbett) his first job on leaving school was rumoured to be as a lumberjack on a mushroom farm.
He wrote to Richard: "My congratulations on the splendid photograph of you I saw adorning the side of a double-decker Southern Vectis bus, which passed my house this week.
"Please ask the company to bear me in mind should they be looking for suitable subjects for their single-deckers."
Back came the reply: "Sorry, it would still be too big. I’ll ask them if they’ll decorate one of their minibuses instead."