I am very excited because I have just purchased three thrilling books from the charity bookshop in my road. Two are novels by my gardening hero Alan Titchmarsh (alive) and the other is a non-fiction work by my gardening hero Percy Thrower (deceased).

I went into the bookshop because on my way home from the show today a man in an apron handed me a flyer. I was slightly surprised to be flyered so far away from the main festival action and was intrigued to see what kind of show the man in the apron was doing. Turns out the flyer was for a free wine tasting in the St Columba’s Hospice Bookshop, which is a the top of my road. So I rushed home, flung off my costume and chucked on more appropriate wine tasting and book browsing attire and was soon supping a pleasant prosecco and nosing among the shelves.

Some kind of inner voice or mystic force drew me to the novels and the T section, where I spotted not one but two works by AT, previous winner of the Bad Sex award for some kind of dreadful sex scene, possibly in one of these books. I am particularly looking forward to reading Mr MacGregor, the story of “a gardener who is also sex symbol”. Anyone who has seen Can You Dig It? will know that AT features fairly heavily in this very capacity.

I once interviewed AT when I was a journalist on a local newspaper and asked him which he preferred: gardening or sex. He replied: “Sometimes you can do both at the same time.” The mind boggles.

I have already dipped into the Percy Thrower and learned about the different styles of garden hoe – the hand, or onion hoe; a Dutch hoe; a draw hoe; and a Canterbury hoe. Most informative and no smut, just hoes. The other thing I like about Percy is that he wears a tie when he’s gardening – very smart.

Can You Dig It? runs from Aug 5-29 (not Tuesdays), Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 4pm. Book here or direct from the show’s website here