Gardener loses the plot

According to probability theory, somewhere in the vast universe must be a planet exactly like this one, except that everything there happens in reverse. On htraE, the daylit streets are plunged into blackness whenever motorists accidentally park with their head-darks left on.

A man called E ba gum Trebor runs a democratic ewbabmiZ. Women's prisons are not called penal institutions, but vaginal institutions. Free thinkers argue that there is no doG. On vt 1CBB, Jonathan Ross is hailed as an intellectual. And on htraE, their journalists all write backwards, whereas here, of course, our backward journalists write.

Talking of which, I intend to take a break from journalism soon, so that I can fly Dr Who-like around the universe in my space ship (the Re-Tardis), in a bid to locate planet htraE, and to see if there's any intelligent life anywhere in the galaxy. But I doubt if I'll discover anything, because as soon as a species becomes as intelligent as we are, it's going to be stupid enough (and ingenious enough) to destroy itself. And it does.

The presenter of last night's The City Gardener (C4) clearly regarded himself as something of a botanical Dr Who. Speaking to us from the postage-stamp-size backyard of a Newcastle terrace house, Matt James claimed that he could expand it (in a Tardis sort of way) into "a lush, enclosed Eden", even though a previous owner had paved this Lilliputian Paradise and put up a parking lot.

Admittedly, this presenter ( presumably chosen to appeal to the lucrative 18-35 advertising market) emitted a nervous laugh as he said it, like a castrated hyena coughing up furballs, because there clearly wasn't enough space between the narrow walls to swing a kitten, let alone plant every tree that is pleasant-to the sight and good for food, support every beast of the field and bird of the air, and locate the source of a river that feeds the Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates (sorry. I've never quite got over Sunday School).

In short, it was obvious that the easiest way to have doubled the size of this garden would have been to install a window box.

After consulting with the current owner Ian, Matt's biblical vision was modified to involve the mere creation of "a spacious party garden" that could be used for evening entertainment. "He'll need great lighting to get real impact after the sun goes down," the presenter told us, and with that the pair wandered off at dusk to the city centre, in search of ideas about nocturnal illumination.

Some might think that night-time alfresco partying in chilly Tyneside would be pretty much out of the question, except in high summer, but I've been to Newcastle, and know that they are not like other people there.

No, they're a lumpen mass of British, brutish bone, testosterone, bristle, tattoos, brown ale and earrings, delegates from the North-East branch of Densa who wear T-shirts in December, think overcoats are for "Southern shirtlifters," and expect their evenings to end either in getting laid or getting laid out.

Like a horticultural Jamie Oliver, Matt seemed preoccupied with style rather than with practicality, and as I watched him renovating the yard (or Turdis, as I'd now coined it), my slits soon narrowed to mere eyes.