Alan Titchmarsh ‘lucky to escape with life’ after being set on fire

was lucky to come away with his life after being set on in a horror incident.

The expert opened up about the ordeal in his autobiography Nobbut A Lad, discussing his rural childhood – and when a friend suggested recreating a scene from a cowboy movie, a young Alan was up for it.

Things took a turn, however, when real flames were introduced into the mix. Alan confessed he recreated a scene in which a villain tied the cowboy main character to a chair and lit a fire underneath it – before the flames burned through the ropes and he was able to escape.

All too ready to give it a go, Alan was secured to the chair, explaining: “[My friend] Mickey tied my feet securely to the legs of the chair and bound my hands behind me on the bentwood frame.

“Obediently I helped him position me in the centre of the fire by shuffling forward into the middle of the hot ashes.”

He continued: “I pretended to struggle as the newly fuelled flames licked around the chair legs. The rope did catch fire, and so did the legs of the chair, but because the timing had not been orchestrated by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the rope didn’t give way and within a few minutes the flames were spreading to the broken cane seat and licking round the seat of my pants.

“I tried to move, but realised that if the chair toppled, I would fall headlong into the flames. I had to be hauled from the fire by Mickey, who grabbed the back of the chair just as the broken leg collapsed, but mercifully before my trousers were alight. He beat out the flames with an old curtain that he found in the hedge bottom.”

Though the soles of his shoes had melted, Alan boasted he “cheated the flames” – and was forced to keep the incident from his mother. He admitted after blaming the smell of smoke on a neighbour’s bonfire: “I was happy to have got away with it.

“It never occurred to me that I’d actually been lucky to get away with my life. But more importantly, Mum never did find out.”