Fame Costs. And Right Now’s Where You Start Paying.

Fairly shortly after I started the Tinpot Alley site I received a phone call from a rather excitable TV company researcher. She was after some stainless steel planters for a new garden makeover show. I’d been doing a spot of ‘forum posting’ regarding our planters and that’s how she’d found us. (If you ever waltz round the odd forum you’ll find these lazy swines posting all manner of ridiculous televisual concepts).

Obviously our own thoughts of TV stardom blinded us to her initial mantra of ‘no budget’ and ‘freebie’. It did take a couple of days for the actual deal to be laid on the table. In return for us supplying them with £2000 worth of stainless steel planters we’d receive space on the website relating to the programme plus the airtime associated with the planters.

Now you don’t have to be a dour, world-weary sheet metal worker from Lancashire, or a rocket scientist, to see who was going to benefit most from this. Especially when you take into consideration it was for a Channel 5 pilot. There wasn’t even a website – but there would be. It even had some spurious working title along the lines of ‘Nice House – Shame About the Place’ for Pete’s sake.

At this point our frantic email negotiations stalled. A desperate last ditch attempt to get John’s garden made over during the series nearly resurrected the whole sham, but it wasn’t to be. Our dreams of a TV cash cow had been shattered.

So, for any of you TV researchers out there – be warned. We only work with Titchmarsh.

This is the closest one of our Planters ever got to a camera