HOUSEWIVES’ favourite Alan Titchmarsh thinks he’s lost his sex symbol status — because he doesn’t get as much fan mail any more.

The 71-year-old star of hit TV shows such as Love Your Garden was born in Ilkley and started his gardening career at Bradford Council, and has always been a favourite with the ladies thanks to his genial attitude and twinkling eyes.

But in an interview with The Times, Alan said that the sacks of fan mail he used to get from adoring female fans seem to have dried up.

He said: “I've probably come out the other side of that sex symbol stuff. I don’t get as many fan letters any more — maybe that’s because people don’t write as many letters.”

If his fans seem to have abandoned him, though, Alan has found solace with another group of glamorous ladies — the stars of hit Netflix reality show Selling Sunset, about a group of glossy estate agents in California.

He developed a passion for the streaming show but admitted that the LA women have nothing on his fanbase of Yorkshire lasses. “In the end I got impatient with it, everyone was so catty,” he said.

Alan grew up in Nelson Road in Ilkley and started work with Bradford Council’s parks department when he was a teenager. He studied horticulture at Kew Gardens in London and started his TV career at the age of 30 on the BBC’s magazine programme Nationwide.

He then went on to famously front the hit series Ground Force before becoming established as the country’s go-to gardening guru.

His waxwork which stood in the famous Madame Tussaud’s was said to be the most-kissed model in the attraction’s history, and he further cemented his sex symbol status by writing slightly steamy novels — one of which got him the runner-up award in the annual Bad Sex Awards given out to books.

Married to his wife Allison for 46 years, Alan told the Times that it was “only in my fifties that I became much more comfortable with myself” — perhaps leading to his reputation as the nation’s most fancied gardener.

But is his sex appeal really on the wane, as he thinks? What do you say?