Book excerpt: A great raconteur and entertainer, Alan Titchmarsh gets together every Christmas with family and friends to celebrate the season and performs much-loved anecdotes, stories, poems and sketches - old and new. Fill My Stocking combines these well-known favourites with his own self-penned festive pieces, each beautifully illustrated with his own watercolour vignettes. Collected together for the first time, this is the perfect stocking filler for his legions of fans. Alan Titchmarsh has presented numerous television programmes including the hugely popular How To Be A Gardener and British Isles: A Natural History. He is also a best-selling writer and novelist.