RIP Nigel, Monty Don's dog

[Kevin S]

Going to miss seeing this chap on the screens every Friday evening. By having his real-life dog with him Monty Don hasn't just been telling us what to do with the garden, he's also shared his pet's life with us. And we've seen Nigel change from a fetch-obsessed bouncy retriever, to the latter-day creaky, sweet old boy.

Yes, there's Nell, in the prime of her life, and the cheeky new little addition. But GW without Nigel is just not going to be the same. Our own dog turns 12 on Wednesday and I know she's on borrowed time too.

https://twitter.com/TheMontyDon/status/1259793316427825152?s=20

[Hot Pepsi]

[Various Artist]

Fifty-two thousand 'likes' on that now – it was just under 10 thousand when I saw it a few hours ago, which was only about 3/4 of an hour after Monty tweeted it. There's nearly 10,000 comments alone at this point. Extraordinary.

But them Nigel really did get into the hearts of an extraordinary number of viewers, no doubt about it. He was lucky to belong to a breed that is almost invariably ridiculously photogenic, gentle, playful and appealing, but his own unerring instinct for scene-stealing was something else – I think it's in Monty's book about him and his other dogs that right from the moment he could walk, near as dammit, Nigel had the uncanny knack of knowing how to just ease himself into the back of any TV shot and plonk himself down in the most scenic and perfectly-placed patch of sunlight as if by an artist. He couldn't possibly have known what the camera was doing or how it would look, yet he effortlessly waltzed off with every shot he appeared in.

And that turned into a big part of what made him so loved to Gardeners' World viewers: you simply couldn't ignore him, even when he wasn't deliberately running up to Monty and dropping a tennis ball in his wheelbarrow. Being such a big, soppy, gorgeous golden retriever with expressive eyes and both puppyish enthusiasm and nearly boundless patience (Monty's now rather eerie previous tweet, three days ago, said "Gardeners World tonight BBC2 8.30- it was wet and cold when we filmed and the other dogs hid - but Nigel stuck it out to the end. A true pro.") merely sealed the deal.

It was pretty obvious that tonnes of viewers watching around the country with no dogs of their own, and/or maybe no garden of their own, had long since sort of adopted him as a virtual pet, since as Kev says Monty inadvertently or otherwise ended up sharing him with us for the last however many years just as much as he shared his garden. He'd been that gently omnipresent, patient companion, nonchalantly lolling around on the path or padding calmly after his owner from greenhouse to potting shed, so tangibly through the screen he felt quite 'present' without you needing him to be there in the fur and flesh. So RIP Nigel, the people's pup. What a good boy he was.

And this I think is a fantastic way to remember him – from Monty's tweet from April 30th: