Monty Don reveals excruciating 10-year health battle after ignoring doctor's advice

For the past few decades, TV star and horticulturist Monty Don has been entertaining and educating the nation on all gardening matters.

However, the Gardeners’ World presenter has now said that his passion has come at a bit of a health cost, as he's been facing problems with his knees.

Writing in the BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, Monty, 70, said that, for the past decade, he had been struggling with the painful issue.

• Katie Price and Peter Andre release bombshell joint statement after shock wedding
• Phil Taylor dead: BBC star dies as co-star issues heartbreaking tribute

He admitted that he'd gone to his doctor over the knee trouble, but then had promptly ignored his medical advice before requiring a double knee replacement later on.

Monty recounted: “For the last 10 years or more my knees have been giving me the gyp and, it turns out, slowly deteriorating. This is not so unusual or unexpected.

“I have spent 70 years kneeling on them, asking them to stagger about under unreasonably heavy loads or, until 10 years ago, pounding around tarmacked roads. They have had a long, hard time of it."

The star went on to explain how his ailment had impacted his work on Gardeners' World, adding: "You will have rarely seen me do much serious digging, and never kneeling, over the past few series - by the end of a day's filming, I could barely hobble to the end of the garden."

Monty continued: “I remember going to my doctor when I first had knee trouble and he commented drilly that knees were appallingly badly designed and that was the end of it. He prescribed painkillers and told me to stop digging. I ignored both aspects of the prescription.

“Last summer I finally got round to having scans and seeing a surgeon and was duly told both my knees needed replacing. This was a bit of a surprise as I had been working on the assumption that I had one good knee and one bad knee.“

Despite the ardour of having to have both knees replaced, Monty says things are now getting better and even compared himself to his beloved Land Rover.

He said: “The important thing…is that I shall be able to do things again, to get stuck in and crack on….with a fair wind and thanks to superb surgical skills, I should, like my beaten-up old Defender, keep ploughing on a bit longer.”

This isn’t the first time Monty has talked about his health, with the BBC star additionally being open about his battle with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Also known as SAD, this occurs when someone’s mental health is affected by the changing of the seasons.

Speaking on the Gardeners’ World podcast, Monty once spoke of his coping strategies. He said: "I now have a pattern whereby I try and spend one day a week on my own in the garden, which is obviously usually a weekend, one of the two weekend days.

"It's a kind of treat I give myself. But when I say share, I don't necessarily mean gardening with other people, which actually, personally, I don't like very much.

"Even my wife and I, who have always gardened together, we hardly ever physically garden together, we just were in the garden at the same time.”