C. H. Middleton
[5] Middleton's broadcasting career began when Colonel Frank Rogers Durham (1872–1947), Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society, recommended him to the BBC for radio talks.
[8] These talks continued until 1939 when the BBC and Ministry of Agriculture extended the series to include topical advice about what became the "Dig For Victory"[9] campaign and launched the complementary Kitchen Front programme.
[5] Hs innate humour, which he deployed when allowed to do so, once led him to remark (with reference to the consequences of German bombing) on the availability of mortar rubble for liming soil.
[2] When the Allotments Bill was debated in Parliament in 1950, the Minister of Agriculture Tom Williams recalled that "until his death [in 1945], Mr. Middleton stimulated and encouraged us all by his avuncular advice every Sunday after lunch".
[10] In addition to giving practical advice, Middleton was unafraid to confront issues of public policy: for example, as early as 1940, he was concerned that the Dig for Victory campaign was focused too much on urban areas, thus tending to overlook the contribution of rural gardeners who often had more space available, with the potential for greater yields.
[12] Such was Middelton's fame, even at this stage, that a comic actor, Nelson Keys, dressed in a mangy coat, impersonated him on television, making such irreverent observations as "the thistles are doing nicely today".
[13] At the annual Radiolympia exhibition in August 1939,[14] just before the outbreak of war, Middleton appeared in 'Television Avenue', tending a replica of the garden at Alexandra Palace, of which there was also a sixty-five-foot high model.
For example, during a spell of bronchitis, when his talks had to be relayed by an announcer, his fee was reduced and, after his home was bombed in 1940, obliging him to live with relatives in Northamptonshire, his claim for additional travelling costs was dismissed in an internal memorandum as "grabbing".
[5] Describing Middleton as "the Gert and Daisy of the gardening world", historian Philip Ziegler cited the immense popularity of his wartime broadcasts which "did as much as anything to convince doubters that running an allotment was a pleasant and profitable pursuit".
