Jeremy
VINE
Family trees have always been important for the nature-loving BBC broadcaster...
I’m talking to you from Broadcasting House in London, and the only green thing I can see is Fiona Bruce’s t-shirt. Later I’ll cycle home to Chiswick, about seven miles, and the best two are through Hyde Park. It’s where I decompress after the churn of the city. Trees don’t run you over; they don’t shout at you or nick your mobile. In fact there’s a good argument to say that trees are better than people.
Another joy for me is how trees clock the year. I leave home around 5.30 each morning, so I see every sunrise, all the colours. And when the sun spears low through the branches in Hyde Park and the spring leaves are freshly budding… oh my god. There’s nowhere like it.
The first time I properly understood nature’s value, I was a 15-year-old pupil at Epsom College. It was all boys and they’d play non-stop pranks. We had this gigantic holly tree outside the cafeteria that was about 150 years old, and a group of sixth-formers cut it down in the night. The entire school was kept from going home for summer until there was a confession. Even then I remember thinking what an act of violence against nature it was, and those feelings came back to me in 2023 when the tree was felled at Sycamore Gap. That was one of the worst crimes this century – those guys should have got 15 years.
"We should mount a Woodland Trust campaign to reclaim Park Lane!"
My late father built an amazing treehouse at the bottom of our childhood garden in Cheam. He put a platform in this big silver birch, built a cabin, then ran a bridge to another tree. It was like another house, and my brother, sister and I would spend the night there. We’d try out games too, like could we jump from the top using a bag as a parachute? That treehouse was defining for me – partly because of dreams and play, but more importantly because it represented my dad spending time with me.
I suppose I’ve tried to carry on that legacy with my own daughters. They are 18 and 21 now, but when they were little we’d pack a picnic and head for Chiswick House. We’d always sit under a tree, and there would be such a feeling of being at one with each other, and with nature.
When you’re young trees are for climbing, but nowadays I worry I’ll fall out. I’m pretty sure the last moment of my youth was on a skiing trip when I was 23: I tried to copy a move from those winter sport programmes, where you fly over a hillock and hover in mid-air. I landed badly and was in pain for about a month, and that was it: my tree-climbing days were over.
I’ve tried to get braver in middle-age. I bought a penny-farthing bike and I ride it, and now I’m limbering up to tackle a tree I’ve got my eye on at Chiswick House. It’s quite stunted and has grown sideways, so the branches almost touch the ground. I think it’s an elm, but my wife Rachel would know for sure: she’s my tree dictionary!
As the BBC’s Africa correspondent I lived in Johannesburg, and we had a wonderful dog called Zola. But the only walk I could find for her was around our own garden. The city didn’t really have parks – and we all need parks. Where I live in West London, the public spaces are so well maintained it’s unreal. I recently discovered that Park Lane was created in the 1960s when the city authorities bought a slab of Hyde Park and converted it into an exclusive six-lane road. That happened before I was born, but I’m still cross about it. I am a Woodland Trust member and I reckon we should mount a Trust campaign to turn it back!
» Jeremy Vine’s new novel Turn the Dial for Death is out now (Harper Collins, £20).
