Housewives’ favourite Alan Titchmarsh tells The Guide that retirement is not an option.

At a certain age, most keen gardeners might relish the thought of retirement and a chance to potter in the greenhouse and tend their beds and borders. But not Alan Titchmarsh.

Over the years he’s encouraged us to grow our own, banged the drum for natural history, given us insights into royalty, chatted to the rich and famous and done the rounds of daytime TV.

At 61 he’s never been busier, and his Hampshire garden – although he manages some time in it every day – will have to wait.

Titchmarsh has his fingers in lots of pies. His ITV1 chat show, a new gardening series, Alan’s Garden Secrets on BBC Two on Tuesdays, a regular Radio 2 show, novels, newspaper columns and factual books.

“My job doesn’t feel like work. I just do things,” he explains. “You do feel you ought to pace yourself more and I do try very hard and I honestly expect that at any time now they’ll say, ‘That’s it’, and it will happen.

“I’ve got to be realistic about it. The world doesn’t owe me a living, but hopefully because people who read your words can’t see how crumbly you look, I’ll be able to get away with it on the page.

“I don’t think I could ever retire, but in the next few years I ought to start leaving bigger gaps in between things.”

Some might argue that he’s been over-exposed on television, that every channel we tune in to has genial Mr Middle England either gardening or chatting or hosting, that we see his face on his products in every garden centre we go into, or his name in every magazine we read, and that inevitably his popularity will wane.

But it’s not happening yet.

He has just turned out yet another book, When I Was A Nipper, in which he takes a nostalgic look at 1950s Britain in search of old values and traditions.

Readers might be mistaken for thinking that he’s a grumpy old Yorkshireman who yearns for the good old days, for a simpler, more well-mannered life devoid of excessive technology or GM foods.

“Today everyday life is lived at a faster pace. There is tremendous pressure on all of us to ‘achieve’,” he writes.

“But in the race to ‘better ourselves’ we’ve left behind some of the things we once valued – respect for authority and our ‘elders and betters’, community spirit, family life and good manners.”

It’s ironic, then, that Titchmarsh is just one of the many entertainers who have made a very good living out of effectively enticing people away from the dinner table to the television.

Yet he sees himself as a gardener first and a broadcaster second.

“My own garden is my sanctuary and I know in my heart that’s what I am – a gardener who’s been allowed to do other things. That’s the reality of the situation.”

Critics have accused him of being too nice on the show, of fawning over celebrities as they plug their new book, film or other product. He received a particular pasting when he interviewed David Cameron on the show.

“Well, I’m just me,” he shrugs. “It’s not Newsnight. My rule of thumb is that I wouldn’t ask anybody in an interview what I wouldn’t ask them across a dinner table.”

Will he remain a housewives’ favourite, then?

“I’ve yet to meet the housewife,” he laughs. “But it’s very flattering.”

* When I Was A Nipper, by Alan Titchmarsh, is published by BBC Books, priced £20.