The news that the BBC might soon look at online advertising [DS] reminded me of a panel I sat on recently with an exec from a national newspaper. He was talking cogently about his title’s online strategy. It was moving towards audio-visual content. It was all about niches, said the exec. Panellists and audience nodded. Plausible stuff. Sensible. But then he mentioned the niche he wanted to ‘own’ – gardening. My heart sank. He wanted to ‘own’ gardening.

In Britain this modest sounding ambition is instantly blighted by every gardener’s friend – Auntie. Auntie, as nobody calls the BBC, ‘owns’ gardening. It airs Digging Deep, Gardeners’ World, A Year at Kew, The Flying Gardener, Royal Gardens,and many others besides. It covers Royal Horticultural Society shows at Chelsea and Hampton Court, live and interactive. It even puts on its own gardening show – GW Live. If you missed Gardeners’ Question Time on digital or analogue radio, you can listen again online.

And in case you thought it just occupied the media space formerly known as ‘New’, it is a formidable presence in the glossy magazine sector where it publishes Britain’s favourite horticultural mag, Gardeners’ World, with 300,000 copies sold every month – over a third to subscribers. The profits return to the BBC to benefit the UK’s licence-fee payers. It would be quicker to hand them straight to Jonathan Ross, and cut out the middle man, but decency forbids.

The BBC’s tanks are dug in on Britain’s lawns. Anyone wanting to tiptoe into the tulips risks one of Auntie’s uranium-tipped shells. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is just gardening.

So what, you may say? The slothful under-investors who own newspapers deserve it. The BBC got there first and the public good is served. God forbid that Richard Desmond should get his hands on the fragrant Rachel de Thame.

But there is a point at which the BBC’s gravity warps the whole of cyberspace. For an unaccountable organization established under that least democratic of instruments, a royal charter, it has neither the commercial freedom to become a global force, nor the commercial constraints to prevent it stifling domestic opponents.