Congratulations to that nice Mr Obama. I hope he doesn’t regret taking the job. One of the, many, remarkable things about the whole election, I thought, was the sight of people queuing to vote,some of them for many hours. Two things, firstly I admire the dedication of the American voter (if there were queues like that at a British election people would take one look and go home) secondly, why on earth are there such queues? can’t be that difficult to get people through the poll booth quicker. Voting here takes approximately 22 seconds – mind you counting the votes takes an awful lot longer. Anyway, I hope he gets to go and lie around doing nothing for a while before he becomes leader of the free world. I feel rather sorry for Mr Bush: it cannot be very comfortable having quite so many people dancing joyfully on your grave.

Now, and this has nothing to do with Mr Obama but, if you will forgive me I will deliver a short polemic. The Americans among you may retire to celebrate/commiserate as it will make little sense. I am sorry, this is the second post that has been transatlantically exclusive. I will repair the damage at the earliest opportunity.

I am quite fond the RHS – not just because there are some talented and delightful people working there but also because, although imperfect, it is the only one we have. Many of you will have read Frank Ronan’s piece about the RHS in Gardens Illustrated (unfortunately it is not yet available as a podcast but will be soon, I hope). The most interesting bit of a very thought provoking article is the last couple of paragraphs which pose the question – A charity benefiting whom?

I thought a bit more about this when truffling around Matthew Appleby’s blog over at Horticulture Week. (Incidentally Matthew receives a regular whipping from Lionel Blair over there which is often quite entertaining.) Matthew remarked that the RHS website is clumsy, tricky to navigate and being full of inaccessible information. Geoff Hodge, the chirpy RHS website editor responds that ‘being a charity, the website budget is tiny’.

Think about that statement for a second. The avowed purpose of the RHS is to spread knowledge. The most effective way to disseminate such things is, in this day and age, through a well run and easily navigable website. Therefore, why is the Society not spending its money on this? it seems so darn obvious. It should have the best, glossiest, swingingest website in town. There is a lot of stuff about education but that is not very interesting to the bulk of the membership – nor, actually is it very interesting to most children above primary school age – who are basically not getting much value for money. They don’t even get the warm fuzzy feeling that they are helping the disadvantaged and the starving. I get to talk to a fair few gardeners and what they want, more than anything, is information. How to grow stuff, how to stop stuff dying, how to kill pests, how to make their gardens the envy of the world etc, etc. The RHS should be supplying this information in an easily accessible fashion to their membership in every part of the country – simplest way? via the website. In Geoff’s favour the site has just had a bit of souping up and looks better but think what he could do with more wedge?

The RHS has a lot of common ground with Radio 2. Traditionally both organisations attracted the middle aged, middle of the road, relatively traditional, well behaved and respectable end of society. The problem is that the market has changed dramatically. For example: I am, I admit, a (nearly) fifty year old man (in my defence I am younger than Cleve West) with a wife, three children, a job and a reasonable garden in the countryside. I am the perfect market audience for both Radio 2 and the RHS. However, unlike my parents at the same age, I hope that I still retain a slight vestige of youth. I share much more with my children: our musical tastes dovetail frequently (my father considered all music that was not steadfastly classical to be ‘blaring pop’), we like the same films, I go to festivals (provided I do not have to share a tent with Ann-Marie Powell), so far I have resisted the call of comfy slippers and a pipe and I am unafraid to dance in public. Fifty year olds nowadays are different. My personal theory is that everything changed in the 1960s when suddenly children were no longer wearing the same clothes as their parents.

So, my contemporaries should be the perfect audience for the RHS but, a short survey reveals that remarkably few of them are members, would ever consider becoming members and see no reason why on earth they should join. On the other hand their parents are all members. The RHS needs a bit of a shake. It needs a bit of irreverence and to get rid of that knee jerk, pompous, old fashioned image.

Similarly, Radio 2 has always conjured up visions of cardigans,the Cliff Adams Singers and the vacuous twitterings of lamely bearded, lightly paunched DJs. It is the personification of onrushing middle age. At the same time Radio One is equally appalling. So where do I go? I could go to Radio 4 but that has no music, I could  go to Capital Gold but I have no wish to be subjected to a stream of oldies and never want to hear Hotel California ever again. Radio 3 is frankly a bit heavy so what is left ? Not much. Radio 2 has the right idea. By updating its playlist a bit and employing people like Jonathan Ross it is changing its image to gently encompass a new tranche of listeners. The fact that Mr Ross and Mr Brand go over the top occasionally is just a risk you need to run in order to prevent the whole thing from collapsing into a Daily Mail driven slough. 

There is no alternative to the RHS except not paying your subscription at all – which would cause few inconveniences to the average member. It needs somebody slightly edgy and unafraid of controversy to speak out on its behalf: where is the RHS’s Barack Obama? I vote for Matthew Wilson in gold hot pants.

Enough blether. I am listening to Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living) by the Eels. The picture is of  Asparagus seeds.