Alan Titchmarch? No, my fellow students, I'm afraid not

From this:

To this:

(in a number of easy steps - not including the wine)

The average student prides themselves with being able to skimp and save, and spend as little on food as they can. It's essentially a competition:

"Have you seen the deal on at the corner shop, it's two for one on those curries in a can," said one university friend.

"Ah, but it's buy three meals in a bag and get two free at the Golden supermarket," another announced in reply.

Unfortunately, when those buying into these 'amazing' deals start looking like living corpses it becomes apparent you cannot live off these bargains every night of the week.

At this point, I should immediately point out that the grow-your-own method is unlikely to take off in the student market or end such health-reducing buys.

But let me take you back to a jumble sale at the end of last year and a very Ground Force moment when I was temporarily misled by the idea.

One of my friends, Oliver Robinson, a Del Boy from Leicestershire, started talking to the wide-eyed-hippy-glasses-wearing-owner of a chili plant stall. Suddenly charmed by growing his own hot crops, Oliver persuaded me and two other mates to also buy into this soil hobby of the plant pot kind.

I can't say I wasn't taken in by this drug dealer of the plant world; the stall owner said we could call him at anytime - like Childline for the vegetable community. I did double check the shape of the leaves - I wasn't going to turn my house into a cannabis cavern.

Basically, it was like having a plant agony aunt, but in a more manly sense of the phrase, and we could cook curries and have the hot part fresh, and for free.

So it began quite well, a Facebook group was even set up to track the progress of our plants, because we were in-fact quite competitive about the future size of our chilies.

Unfortunately the novelty soon wore off; my housemate's ambitious compost was thrown out the back door and his plant was knocked off the windowcill during a house party.

He called foul play, but my own had been caught in a minor apocalypse - left behind my oversized curtain next to the radiator on a number of cold nights.

Don't do this at home:

The 'chili' specimen:

What they look like now:

As you can see, the chili plants have been literally obliterated. I say 'chili' with caution, because after growing one green specimen, shown above, I found it to have no seeds inside or carry any form of heat.

I believe that the plants were actually of the boring green pepper kind.

Good riddance.

...........

All this talk of grow-your-own reminds me of a project I filmed last year - look out for the moldy beetroot and rotting carrot:

Growth in Grow Your Own from Harry Harris on Vimeo.