Monty Don reveals he has a ‘veto’ rule with his wife Sarah
Monty Don’s wife has ignored his pleas to escape the UK during the winter months for the past 40 years.
The Gardeners’ World star was lamenting about how much he hates the final weeks of the calendar year and has always wanted to leave the country with his partner Sarah to avoid them. However, despite his decades of asking, it hasn’t happened yet.
Speaking on the Dish podcast, the horticulturalist told host Nick Grimshaw: “I’m very aware of light, you know, and winter, and all those terrible things.” Nick replied: “Some days I’m like, ‘Oh, lovely winter, cosy,’ and some days I’m like, ‘Hellish winter, I hate it.’”
“I hate November and December,” quipped Monty. “I really can’t wait for them to be gone. And every year I say to my wife, ‘Why don’t we go and spend November and December in the sun?’
“And we have been married for 40 years and we’ve never done it once.”
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The pair co-ran an initially successful costume jewellery business but, due to the stock market crash of 1987, they were left almost bankrupt and without any savings.
The 67-year-old BBC star and his wife, who married in 1983, described in their autobiography, The Jewel Garden, how they felt “like lambs to the slaughter” when they almost “lost everything”.
Recalling the distressing time, they revealed that they both became physically ill and were even forced to sell their home for a fraction of its original price.
Monty wrote: “We lost our house, our business. We sold every stick of furniture we had.”
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While Sarah explained in more detail: “A bad situation got worse every day. The banks wanted their money and started to bounce our cheques whilst simultaneously adding their charges – and interest on them – to the tally.
“Of course, it could not go on. Something had to give. As it turned out, that something proved to be our shop, our business, our savings, our furniture – and our home.”
Monty went on to reveal that the pair were forced to choose whether to declare bankruptcy or sell everything and pay back what they owed. Monty finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel when he was given the opportunity to manage a slot on a TV gardening segment in the early Nineties.
He also landed a job writing a column for the Observer, which proved to be a pivotal moment for the presenter.
Over the weekend, however, he was inundated with support after revealing his Longmeadow garden has been flooded by contaminated water.
Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter, Monty shared a video of water streaming through a field, which he claims contains a high level of nitrate – which makes water unsuitable to drink.
Captioning the footage, he wrote: “Run-off from fields going into flooded rivers taking with it nitrates. Repeated a thousand times every wet day, killing our waterways.”
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