Chris Rea is also into gardening, particularly hybrid plants, he has done extensive work on house plants, one of which he left in the Turdis, so having gone back to 1938 to meet up with Gracie Fields, he gifted this house plant to her, this proved to be another disaster, and a blessing in disguise too, unbeknown to Gracie, Chris had crossed the plant with a Canadian Redwood tree, as the plant grew to an unbelievable height, the council put an order in place to fell the thing, after being bombarded with complaints, yet the giant plant was the inspiration for one of Gracie Fields most popular songs, that she sang to entertain the troops in WW2, none of who knew that “The Biggest Aspidistra in the World “ was real, and had nearly brought Rochdale council to it’s knees, who had to be assisted by specialist lumberjacks from across the world to cut the thing down