Tommy Walsh obituary

Burly TV presenter who brought his building knowledge and power tools to the BBC’s gardening makeover show Ground Force

Tommy Walsh, who has died aged 69, brought decking and pergolas, as well as rippling muscles and a brusque manner, to the BBC gardening show Ground Force, alongside Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock. The trio transformed gardens for members of the public in just two days, and the programme (which ran from 1997 until 2005) made the burly 6ft 5in Walsh a star after years running his own building and landscaping business. “People want textures, shapes and surfaces in the garden that you wouldn’t get from planting alone,” he said.

Armed with a power drill, sledgehammer and a host of other tools, he did the back-breaking landscaping work before Titchmarsh, the gardener and broadcaster, and Charlie Dimmock, a garden centre worker, moved in to do the planting. Homeowners would go away and return to find the results of the surprise makeover, organised clandestinely by family members or friends; many were delighted, some less so.

But Walsh had almost missed this chance to become a celebrity. While he was doing building work at the London home of a TV producer, Carol Haslam, she showed him the video of a pilot programme she was working on with Titchmarsh, provisionally titled Over the Garden Wall. “It was like watching paint dry – it was terrible,” he said later. When he offered useful comments on camera angles and other issues, Haslam asked him to join the show, but he refused – three times.

He changed his mind after one of his young daughters said she had a £10 bet with a boy at school that her father would soon be on television. He and Dimmock were screen-tested on the same day and as Ground Force established itself – attracting up to 12 million viewers – the pair became known for their playful bickering.

But it was Titchmarsh with whom Walsh had a more sharp exchange. Sawing timber, the builder left flowerbeds covered in sawdust, which annoyed the lead presenter, who always looked for a “pristine” finish to makeovers. “I do not get a thrill from seeing them covered in dandruff,” he said. Walsh recalled: “For a while, it did get a bit hairy. But when we’d both calmed down, we actually kissed – yes – and made up.”

One project that required Walsh to pull out all the stops was installing enormous flat decking on a slope suitable for a mountain goat, while other challenges took the trio of presenters abroad. These included a garden for a children’s home in New Delhi, India, and a surprise makeover for the former South African president Nelson Mandela, organised by his wife, Graça Machel, at their home in Eastern Cape province. The DIY superstore B&Q reported soaring sales of decking in the years after the show began.

When Titchmarsh left Ground Force in 2002, Walsh (often helped out by an assistant, Will Shanahan) and Dimmock were joined by Kirsty King. But the programme ended three years later when Walsh signalled his own intention to leave. “I don’t want the public to tire of the show,” he said.

He went on to call on his wider building skills as the presenter of Discovery Channel TV series such as Tommy’s Ultimate Workshop (2005), in which he created a dream space filled with tools for DIY buffs, and Tommy Walsh’s Eco House (2007), which showed him building an environmentally friendly home in 60 days for £60,000. From 2021 to 2024 he was one of the team presenting the BBC’s Homes Under the Hammer, which featured property auctions and renovations.

The third of six children, Tommy was born in Hackney, east London, to Irish immigrants, Margaret (nee Carty) and James Walsh. His father was a builder running his own firm who went on to manufacture garden products and undertake hard landscaping. From the age of four, Tommy accompanied his father on weekend jobs. An accident-prone child, he fractured his neck after falling 15ft from a roof at the age of 12 trying to retrieve a football, and at other times suffered a fractured collarbone, wrist and big toe. “At school, I was always in one scrap or another,” he recalled. “One day, a child attacked me with an iron bar. I put up my hand to protect myself and that was the result.”

After leaving Parmiter’s grammar school in Bethnal Green (where his headteacher predicted he would end up “breaking stones” – serving time in prison), Walsh worked with his father for two years then set up his own business. For a while, he played in goal for the Old Parmiterians football club of former pupils.

During Ground Force’s run, he was also on the Discovery Channel presenting Trading Places (2000), in which he learned new skills from other tradespeople, and Challenge Tommy Walsh (2002-05), which featured building and home improvement tips. Later came Tommy’s Fix Your House for Free (2009) and Fix It Yourself (2010), also for Discovery.

For the BBC, he presented Cowboys and Angels (2015), meeting homeowners devastated by shoddy work, as well as tradespeople coming to their rescue, and, as the building expert, Clean It, Fix It (2021-25).

With Titchmarsh and Dimmock, he wrote Ground Force: Garden Handbook (2001). His own books included DIY Survival (2002), and four handbooks published in 2004: Bathroom DIY, Kitchen DIY, Living Spaces DIY and Outdoor DIY.

Walsh, who licensed a range of tools to Poundland, suffered a string of health problems over the years. He had a benign tumour removed from his chest in 2002 and underwent surgery for throat cancer in 2022 and lung cancer in 2023.

In 1986 he married Marie Farrell. She survives him, along with their daughters, Charlotte and Natalie, and son, Jonjo.