Before we get into this, I need to make a confession. I’ve been obsessed with Bob Flowerdew since I saw his weird little face in a gardening magazine last summer (doctor’s waiting room, though I picked it up because I was going through a planty phase). He’s a gardening expert, a regular magazine columnist and an occasional presenter of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time. His name is Bob FLOWERDEW. I’m not sure if it’s just a lucky coincidence or what, but once I saw his bum-scraping plait, I was hooked.

Which brings me to the point. Bob, and Radio 4, have got themselves into a spot of controversy over a particularly saucy edition of Gardeners’ Question Time. And that’s not even a lie! The BBC has officially apologised (which they must be tired of by now, right?) after a chat about Rhodochiton Volubis went awry.

Problem is, the plant is known colloquially as “the black man’s willy”. Cue giggles from the panel, with Bob snickering that he had “only ever seen one close up – and not that colour,” with cohort in smut, Anne Swithinbank, suggesting that “they don’t really like the cold, as you can imagine. They shrivel up and look very unhappy.”

The Beeb issued the following statement about last October’s floral filth fest:

“Potential for racial offence is not always an easy thing to gauge. In this case, there was nothing derogatory of black people in the language used. Nevertheless, it is clear that some listeners did infer a derogatory intention. We regret this. With hindsight, we believe it would have been preferable to omit the item from the programme because of the risk that it could be misconstrued.”