AT FIRST GLANCE, I’D SAY BOSSY PANTS DICTATOR RANTS ABOUT PANTS TO SYCOPHANTS: Why North Korea has blurred the jeans of its new TV star… Alan Titchmarsh.

Alan Titchmarsh can count himself among the few British celebrities to appear on North Korean state television – but only from the waist up.

The broadcaster had his jeans blurred by Pyongyang’s censors in an episode of the BBC’s Garden Secrets when it was aired on Korean Central Television this week.

North Korea has outlawed jeans since the early 1990s because they are viewed as a symbol of US imperialism.

Titchmarsh, 74, appears to present a peculiar dilemma for those in charge of the reclusive regime’s strict broadcasting rules.

On the one hand, the promotion of gardening and greenhouses holds a special place in North Korean propaganda, particularly at a time of widespread food shortages among the population.

State media only last week claimed that leader Kim Jong-un had opened the “world’s biggest vegetable farm”, the Kangdong General Greenhouse Farm, with his revered young daughter Kim Ju-ae as a sign of his concern for his people’s well-being.

On the other hand, the wholesome Titchmarsh’s unexpected popularity in North Korea is somewhat marred by his fashion choices – it would not do to show the veteran presenter in “anti-regime” jeans.

As a result, the presenter is seen kneeling in a garden bed tending to plants while wearing fuzzy blue trousers.

Won’t the average North Korean viewer wonder why that nice British man working in the garden has his pants constantly covered in a Gaussian blur filter?