Gardeners' World star Monty Don has opened up on what it was like to grow up with an "incredibly damaged" dad. It was only when he became an adult that he learned that his father, Denis, had actually "shot and killed" another man.

Speaking to Gyles Brandreth on the Rosebud podcast, Monty, 70, revealed that his dad had been a military man. He shared: "This, I discovered recently, was one of his men went beserk and said 'we are all dying, I'm going to kill us all'. So my father shot him." Gyles replied: "Gosh. He shot him to kill him?" Monty confirmed that that was correct as the host added: "This is the horror of war. This is the reality." The BBC star then added that his father later got onto a boat which was "torpedoed". "He was one of the survivors, he was picked out of the sea," he said. When he asked his dad what that was like, the veteran replied: "Embarrassing, because they had blown my trousers off."

Reflecting on growing up with a dad who was "incredibly tough" but "incredibly damaged", Monty continued: "He used to have these terrible depressions, when he literally wouldn't speak for two weeks and if you walked past him he would bash you over...

"I remember once, my mother telling me to take the bolt out of the gun, because we didn't know what he might do."

Gyles asked: "You mean like he could shoot you, shoot himself, shoot anybody?" Monty replied: "Yeah... yeah. So, obviously, that colours one's childhood."

When asked what his "sweetest" memory of his father was, he quickly replied: "I don't have many."

However, he then touched on Denis writing to him "once a term" when Monty was shipped off to boarding school, which he appreciated as he knew his father would have found it to be "incredibly difficult".

Some of the most memorable advice Monty received from Denis was the "shocking" sentence: "Montagu, if you're going to do any f***ing, use a Johnnie," before the presenter headed off to France.

Speaking to The Times previously, Monty told a similar tale of his father. He said: “He [Denis] was an army heavyweight boxing champion and a commando and had been through the war.

"He had killed people. He was not in any way aggressive but it was a latent ... He was a scary man. You didn't mess with him."