Judi Dench: My Passion For Trees review: A magical insight

Neil Pearson, for example, is a renowned collector of rare books.

The late Robert Hardy was an authority on the English longbow, and had most of the early examples of the weapon in his own private collection.

He also has a tree dedicated to him, as we found out in Judi Dench: My Passion For Trees (BBC2), for this is the actress’s private pastime.

A tree-hugger in the truest sense of the term, the famous dame has turned her Surrey garden into a private woodland, many of whose trees commemorate the life of departed colleagues and loved ones. 

Over the course of a year, assisted by the head curator of trees at Kew, Tony Kirkham, and her nature-loving friend David, Judi explored the mysteries at the bottom of her garden and there were many to be dug up.

I was still grappling with the early revelation that Surrey is the most wooded county in Britain, and home to more deer today than there were in Queen Elizabeth I’s time, but Judi & Co had swiftly moved on to delve deep beneath the roots and the bark.

With the aid of some hi-tech paraphernalia, we (via a truly gobsmacked Dame Judi) were able to listen to the inside of trees in spring, as hundreds of litres of water were drawn up from the ground and channelled, with little popping sounds, to the tiniest buds.

The magic didn’t stop there. We encountered beech trees that could turn their own leaves bitter, to see off nibbling roe deer.

There were pines, using a scent to divert an infestation of aphids by luring ladybirds down to eat them all up. Weirdest of all (though not strictly trees) were the fungi, along whose buried, mile-long silken threads, everything in the wood could send and receive signals, like a sort of mushroom-based internet.

While astonishing us, this final revelation added a level of extra joy to Dame Judi, because it meant everyone in her remembrance wood was talking to each other.

It is strange how The Real Marigold On Tour (BBC2) plays some locations for maximum bother, yet lets others speak for themselves.

That might be down to whether the episode includes Miriam Margolyes, who was not on the list for last night’s Iceland visit.

There are, actually, ample opportunities to horrify foreign visitors to this small volcanic plug of a place.

There’s the roasted puffins (I’m sure Miriam would have had a few things to say about them), not to mention the tradition of eating fermented skate wing, doused in mutton fat, and finished off with a shot of home-brew whose name translates as “burning wine”.

Apart from Rustie Lee being a bit shocked at the prices in the supermarket, though, and Sheila Ferguson not liking the flat-pack architecture, the celebrity-retirees found little to dislike about Iceland.

Sheila, in fact, found a bloke (well, she went on a date with a charming gent whom she said she’d like to see again).

Perhaps it’s also got a lot to do with the time of year the filming takes place.

I know the good ole boys down at the hot springs near Húsavik said they took the health-giving waters there every day.

I’m not sure that includes all the days when there’s 23 hours of darkness and 24 hours of blizzard.