Heard on the Today Programme

I'm not always fully awake when listening to the Today Programme, but something jolted me out of my slumber today. For once it was not the desire to strangle whichever politician was adorning the 8.10 slot, but instead something very funny. Bizarrely, the Today Programme decided to fulfil its public service mission this morning by sending out a reporter to try and smuggle a garden gnome into the Chelsea Flower Show in order to test out its rule banning said gnomes from its "naice" gardens. There was then an interview with a very posh gentleman clearly implacably opposed to garden gnomes as a fundamental lapse of taste. The interviewer pressed her case - would it be the case, she enquired, that other ornaments such as toadstools and fairies would be unacceptable and should be banned. Without missing a beat the posh gentleman replied: "If you ban fairies there wouldn't be any gardeners...."

The programme proceeded sedately on its course.