Reporter Alice Williamson speaks to Gerald Stratford, ‘the grandad of Twitter’ about everything from going viral and his journey into the gardening world, to his plans for the upcoming year (spoiler: it involves growing even more big veg).
At first glance, Gerald Stratford may seem just like your average 73-year-old retiree. He lives in the sleepy Cotswold village of Milton-under-Wychwood and spends his days pottering around his allotment. So, what makes him so special?
Maybe it’s the fact that he has over 300,000 followers on Twitter (with more than a few sporting a blue tick) or that he has won the hearts of people all over the world by simply posing with veg from his garden. Or maybe it’s that he modelled for Gucci earlier in the year.
Gerald arrives ten minutes late for the interview, reassuring me he had not forgotten about our call, and for the first five minutes I am given a shaky, purely accidental tour of his bungalow while he finds a seat and gets his sound working. He settles down into a big armchair and we bond over our shared experiences of the village where I also happened to grow up: “It’s magic,” he admits. “All my life is spent in a garden, in a shed, or up the allotment.”
The retired fisherman went viral in 2020, after posting a picture of himself standing next to his potatoes, captioned: “My first early rocket”. At first, Gerald was confused: “My phone started pinging and buzzing, and I thought, what’s going on? I couldn’t shut it up. At the time I didn’t know how to mute. I sort of started hiding the phone, it was annoying me. I was watching cricket that afternoon. So, I phoned my nephew up, and he came back and said you’ve gone viral with your spuds. Over the next two days I went from 96 followers up to 9,000, and I had something like 78,000 likes. It’s just snowballed since then.”
Gerald originally set up his Twitter account in early 2019 (with the help of his nephew) as a means of talking gardening with fellow veg-growers. For around a year, he had a steady 96 followers, posting the occasional photograph and sharing tips with others.
Now though, he admits that answering questions can take up to four to five hours a day, “I try my best to reply to everyone, because if somebody’s been polite enough to comment, it’s only fair that I should return the compliment.”
Following in his late father’s footsteps, Gerald, the youngest of six, first got into gardening when he was “knee-height to a grasshopper”. His voice full of passion, he tells me: “A garden, in my eyes, is just as important as a living room, a kitchen. It’s got to be tended.”
Gardening took a back seat for most of his life, though, while Gerald pursued his passion for fishing, becoming British champion in 1984. The more I talk to Gerald the more I get the sense that nothing in his life is ever done half-heartedly. So, how did all this land him on the pages of Gucci?
Gerald tells me that after the initial shock of becoming viral, he and his partner Elizabeth sat down one day to go through his many messages. One in particular caught his eye: a request from a company representing Gucci (High Snobiety): “I thought someone was having a laugh.”
After some persuading from Liz, Gerald replied, and after a series of Zoom meetings (“I think they were sounding me out”), he was whisked off to a private farm in Hertfordshire, where the 73-year-old spent two days modelling for Gucci’s “Off The Grid” campaign.
The campaign is all about living sustainably, consciously, and in alignment with nature, three qualities which Gerald embodies. Gerald tells me that he is “almost 100%” self-sufficient, no mean-feat in today’s world of 24-hour supermarkets and plastic wrapped, pre-chopped veg. Recounting what he had for dinner last night, he reels off a recipe involving seven vegetables, all from his garden, paired with a piece of protein. The very definition of living “off the grid”.
As we continue to talk gardening, Gerald comments on the amount of waste that supermarkets produce: “My argument is we don’t need to sell ‘wonky veg’, just sell veg! Just have a straight carrot next to a wonky carrot. It all tastes the same.”
When I suggested that his own Twitter platform makes a difference in inspiring others to live more sustainably, Gerald stays as humble as ever: “Well I just want to help people, you know. If I can make people happy and successful in something, then I carry on”.
Despite his many achievements, Gerald reveals he is most proud of “bringing up a family”, with “growing big veg”, coming in at a close second. Having recently published his first book, “Big Veg”, Gerald reveals he is already planning for next year. Big onions are at the forefront of his vision, as well as getting his partner Liz “up and running” again, following her recent ankle surgery. As for Twitter, he admits: “Nothing keeps growing forever. But as long as people are happy with what I do, I’ll endeavour to continue.”
Big Veg, by Gerald Stratford is available now.
