Death By...

Spring heralds a DIY bonanza - and a rash of casualties and deaths resulting from botched attempts at home improvement. In the first of a three-part digest, Cheryl Baker relives the flood that ruined her kitchen, while Peter Purves tells of his near-fatal fall from a ladder. With Nick Knowles.

Tommy Walsh introduces gardening horror stories - liberally sprinkled with archive comedy clips. Fifty people a year are killed gardening. We have a man cleaning his lawnmower while it was still on; the little girl who - like 400 people a year - put a fork through her foot; a woman falling over in a greenhouse landed on a cactus & severed an artery in her arm; a gardener wielding a chainsaw wearing no protective clothing and almost cut off her foot! And it's not just the amateurs - Charlie Dimmock tells of driving a sit-on lawnmower into a lake and Tommy admits having a very personal spade injury. Also Bob Flowerdew's disturbing strimmer incident, but the medal for most incompetent professional goes to Gardening World writer Martyn Cox...lighting a bonfire in a clients garden, got impatient when the flames wouldn't ignite - grabbed a petrol can and threw it on the fire, hitting the fence behind. The garden was burnt to the ground, leaving a lot of explaining to do!