Julie Peasgood

Top Talk
TV presenter, actress and author Julie Peasgood recently won the Best Sex Writer Award for her book ‘Greatest Sex Tips in the World’ and as a consequence is currently the resident ‘Sexpert’ on the Alan Titchmarsh Show. “Funnily enough,” she explained, “I wrote the book as a result of filming a Gardening programme with Steve Brooks . He told me about a publishing company he had set up called thegreatestintheworldltd.com. He had written the Greatest Gardening Tips himself and had commissioned other titles on golf, travel. Yoga etc. I jokingly asked who had written the Greatest Sex Tips? And he said ‘no one yet – how did I fancy doing it ?’.
“I laughed it off at first then, after the third Gin and Tonic, agreed. After reading 32 books on sex, attending loads of seminars, interviewing friends and testing all sorts of ‘toys’ (our local Postie thought it was all hilarious!) I got the book together and won the Award which I am thrilled about.”
I met Julie when we both worked on Turf Wars a couple of years ago and wondered if she was still ‘gardening’ as well as, other things...
“Yes, I love gardening, as you know,” she laughed, “though I’m still not very good at it. We have a lovely Holiday Cottage that we let out in Cornwall so we have a gardener there, Liz Watson (we call her ‘busy Lizzie) to help us keep it tidy. My husband says he can always tell if Lizzie has planted something or if I have. If Lizzie has, it’s all nice and neat and done properly but if I do, the plant is always on a sort of tump. I HATE digging holes and I don’t dig very deep – I always think, ‘Crumbs I can’t dig anymore’ and the plant ends up on top of a mound of soil.”
“My favourite plants are the fragrant ones, like jasmine, honeysuckle, stargazer lilies (though I don’t grow those)and roses. And I love naturalised daffodils. I don’t like just green or desert type stuff. And I hate digging,” she reminds me.
“My Mum was the most green-fingered person ever and even grew an avocado plant from a stone. She was wonderful and me and my brother have happy early memories of watching things grow. We had our own veg plot from about 7 years old and grew potatoes, carrots and tomatoes. I learnt at a young age just how much pleasure gardening and growing things can bring. My Mum also recycled before the word was invented; I remember her tying up old bean sticks with her old tights.”
Has Julie inherited her Mother’s commitment to the environment? “Patrick (my husband) and I are avid recyclers and he soon pulls me up if I don’t wash out a Marmite jar! I am absolutely thrilled that it’s all now mainstream news – it’s a bit late in the day but we can still all do our bit to lighten our carbon footprints. I love walking, and always walk wherever I can, and only drive a small car – it’s so small I look like Noddy on speed driving it. We have just managed to get our Council to collect plastic bottle after continuous campaigning. It’s great to get a result and goes to show if you push hard enough and shout load enough, Councils will eventually listen!