I saw Martin Kemp in a garden centre the other day. In trying times you really must hold on to these little wins. Perhaps calling it a win is a step too far, but going to the garden centre and seeing Martin Kemp is surely a slightly more satisfying experience than going to a garden centre and not seeing Martin Kemp. Maybe regulars at this garden centre are sick to the back fucking teeth of seeing Martin Kemp. Maybe he sits outside waiting for it to open every morning and is the last person to leave when it closes. Maybe the staff at this garden centre are so numbed by his omnipresence that they barely notice him anymore, or perhaps they have worked themselves up to such intense levels of loathing for the man that some of them refuse to step behind a checkout when he looks like he’s about to make a purchase. To be perfectly honest: we just don’t know, or certainly I don’t. I don’t even have a garden, so by now you may well be asking yourself why you’ve bothered to read this far into a blog about seeing Martin Kemp at a garden centre that’s been written by someone who has no earthly reason to be in one himself.
But not so fast. For your average non-garden owning person there are all sorts of reasons to go to a garden centre. For a start, it’s something to do, isn’t it? You know, at the weekend. Don’t want to head off to the shopping centre or go for a long walk but still need something to widen the gap between lunch and an early gin and tonic on a Sunday afternoon? Why not head to the garden centre? It ticks the getting-out box and it ticks the green plant/talk to the flowers/wellbeing box and you’d be very unlucky if you’d didn’t find a parking space, because even at the height of the green-finger season (whenever that is) there are never enough garden centre enthusiasts to fill a garden centre car park all by themselves. On top of that you are almost guaranteed to have access to a coffee shop, sometimes even one that masquerades as a restaurant, though we all know that really it’s just a coffee shop that sells soup and, if you’re lucky, a baked potato. These garden centre coffee shops are often more popular than the garden centre itself and tend to attract a healthy range of customers, from pensioners taking their middle aged children for a scone and a pot of tea to middle aged couples taking their elderly parents for a laughably dense slice of Victoria sponge and, er, another pot of tea. This manner of arena is rich for all sorts of fun and games, such as ‘who has the most uncouth son-in-law’ or ‘why is he still wearing his cap while he’s eating?’. It is also a good place to get a glass of lukewarm, lemon infused tap water from a Kilner dispenser.
Sometimes you can find yourself in a garden centre and fool yourself that it isn’t a garden centre at all. This could happen when you’re looking at a range of bath bombs and scented candles, or when you’re deciding which Christmas cards to buy or whether you need a hard back ‘collectors edition’ copy of Sense and Sensibility for your groaning horticultural library. It could be when you’re choosing a calendar (because everyone hangs their calendar at the back of the garden) and are struggling between the one with photos of Highland Terriers and the one with piss poor oil paintings of famous steam engines. It could be when you’re choosing a tea towel decorated with ‘The Insects Of Britain’ or ‘A Pictorial Guide To The Home Counties’, or perhaps when you’re selecting some wrapping paper for a non-garden related gift (bought at the same visit, of course) or one of those appalling wooden signs that say things like “There’s No Time Like Wine O’Clock” or “I’m An Idiot And I Like Wasting My Money On Shit Like This”. In my local garden centre there is even a small outlet of COOK, a company that sells frozen meals specifically for cooking in an oven, in a kitchen. It doesn’t get more garden that that.
Anyway, it turns out it was Shirlie, AKA Mrs Kemp, that I saw first. I had reached a junction, the sort you find in every garden centre, an intersection between the outdoor succulents, some strawberry plants that are doomed to fail, a random mono-fruited lime tree and the periphery of both a selection of bird feeders and a reduced-to-clear offer on kneeling mats. At the time it didn’t dawn on me that Shirlie, from Pepsi and Shirlie, had just walked past me but it all made sense a few minutes later. Martin Kemp and Shirlie from Pepsi and Shirlie are one of the great success stories in British celebrity couples history. Magician Paul Daniels and magicians assistant Debbie McGee. Playwright William Shakespeare and pale actress Anne Hathaway from The Devil Wears Prada 2. Bloodthirsty, woad-drenched revenge lady Boudica and egg-shell walking Prasutagus. Yes, they were all famous celeb couples in their day, but none really come close to Martin and Shirlie Kemp. He had a promising start with Spandau Ballet (a third rate new romantic band who were contractually obliged to dress badly and write whiffy songs, though in spite of these setbacks they still managed to become curiously popular) and then shot to superstardom playing someone else altogether in the talent cul-de-sac that is Eastenders. He also played half of the Kray twins with his equally gifted brother – Gary Kemp from The Bodyguard. She was part of a pop duo with someone who pinched her name from a carbonated drink and she also dated Andrew Ridgley from Wham! until it dawned on her that he wasn’t much use to anyone and promptly jumped ship and fell into the arms of Martin. They’ve weathered all sorts of storms together, from brain tumours and bankruptcy to having a son called Roman who can’t seem to not be on TV all the time, but I would say that what has pulled them through all these traumatic interferences must surely (or Shirlie, surely) be a shared love of garden centres.
So, Shirlie walked past me and the main reason I didn’t recognise her is because I missed the Channel 5 celebrity countdown shows: ‘Britain Favourite Christmas Songs’, ‘Britain’s Favourite Biscuits’ and ‘Britain’s Favourite Mass Murderers’, and so didn’t have a clue what she looked like anymore, and then a few minutes later there he was instead; the star attraction, bass player, actor, Ronnie Kray’s brother, twinkly-eyed silver fox and Celebrity Gogglebox sofa monkey, Martin Kemp. By this point Martin and Shirlie had split up, as all couples will inevitably do in a garden centre, and while Shirlie was probably still umming and ahing over which herbs to select for the window sill in the kitchen or whether it was probably now a good time to buy an axe, Martin was hovering just outside the food section and seemingly on a bored bender of a loose end. Men always get bored first in garden centres – I’m not saying that’s a good thing but it is a fundamental law of nature. They drift off because they get bored and then they get even more bored once they’re drifting because unless you’re genuinely interested in gardening garden centres are essentially filled with lots of things that you can look at for a few seconds but nothing that takes your interest enough to actually want to buy it. And that’s why garden centres are filled with men just floating about without any sense of purpose, stopping every few seconds to pick something up and then, without fail, putting it back down again, overwhelmed by apathy.
I could tell that Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet was bored right down to the bottom of his spine because he had decided to distract himself by inspecting a water bottle. I don’t know if this one had been designed by NASA or doubled up as some sort of 3D puzzle sponsored by MENSA but it certainly seemed to be keeping him very busy, to the point that I almost wanted to walk over and explain to him how lids work and what liquid is. But that would have been rude and very possibly unnecessary and besides, the last thing Martin Kemp wants when he gets dragged to a garden centre by his wife is to be pestered by a prick like me. I mean, c’mon, he must get it all the time; shaking hands and posing for selfies and pretending he could give a fuck about what you’ve done with your life. It must be hard work. But then maybe, if he’s as nice as he seems on the telly, he would welcome the distraction and be glad that people still recognise him for the giant of song and screen that he is. I’ll probably never know because I left a few minutes later, too shy to say hello to Martin Kemp. For all I know he’s still there, four days later, trying to unravel the manifold mysteries of that sneaky little water bottle. I hope that Shirlie found him sooner or later and put him out of his misery (not with the axe, obviously) by saying she was all done and they were good to get the hell out of there. I saw Martin Kemp in a garden centre the other day. I just though you might be interested.
G B Burton. 31.07.2026
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 