Before I begin I would like to say a few words about our nation; the English nation. A nation which has been bred on the green and rolling pastures of this sceptic isle, under the winding hedges, inside the bus shelters and behind the bike sheds of the fairest corner of this world over which God has given us everlasting dominion. We are a nation who have shown ourselves to be destined to lead lesser races. We espouse the virtues of sportsmanship and fair play, tolerance and forgiveness, live and let live. Yet we are also a nation who will, when we think we can get away with it, stab our very best friends in the back and put our own grandmothers on the game to make a few quid.

I tell you, bothers and sisters, we have much to be proud of…
(Cheers, cries of How Tenji! How Tenji! How Tenji! He raises his hands and the chant slowly subsides.)
…much to be proud of indeed.
(From the back of the auditorium) "Get on with it!"

Our language is perhaps our greatest gift to the world. Taken up with alacrity by the gallant Scots, the guttural Welsh, the totally incomprehensible Irish and our charming American cousins across the water. It is a simple language—a child can speak it—my surly, teenage daughters excepted, yet it is also the language of Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth and Archer. Is it any wonder then, that when we had civilised the peoples of the world and deemed them ready to stand beside us in the family of nations, that it was English that they chose to replace their strange heathen babbling? As leader of this party I have travelled widely both in Cambridgeshire, and sometimes even further afield. And in all my travels I have never met a foreigner who did not understand English, either immediately or, in some cases, after it had been shouted at him and punctuated by few kicks up the bottom.

(Cheers, cries of How Tenji! How Tenji! How Tenji! He raises his hands and the chant slowly subsides.)

But I am not here tonight to list the achievements of the English. If I were we would have to book this stadium for a week…"

(Muffled cries of 'Bloody well get on with it, Tenji, you arse!' from the back of the auditorium)

…No I am here to tell you of a threat—an insidious poison, which is eating at the very fabric of the civilised world like a flesh-eating, poisonous thing. A world, which we, the English, have done so much to create. This is a threat more deadly than Al Qaeda, more evil than an Iranian Ayatollah, more mendacious than the French and more cynically self-serving than an American Republican Senator who has just accidentally shot a Democrat lawyer. I speak, my friends, of the humble garden gnome.

I can understand your shock. I know you all have gnomes in your street, perhaps even in your own gardens—friendly little fellows with wheelbarrows full of plants cradling quaint fishing rods in their gnarled hands. I know, I have seen them too. But I am here to tell you this is what they want you to think. As they hold their ‘Keep off the grass’ signs and beam their rosy-cheeked smiles they are planning nothing less than the overthrow of English society as we know it.

How can a few gnomes threaten us?’ I hear you ask. And I answer, God bless you. You are the Englishmen and women that I love—the people I am proud to lead and honoured to serve. Your tolerance of the gnome in our midst is, at the same time, the defining virtue of the English character and our greatest weakness. I say yes, embrace the lonely stranger, the weak and the oppressed. Feel in his pockets, see if he is worth turning over for a few bob. But I say also take care he is not a snake in the nest or a cuckoo in the woodpile.

How many gnomes are there? Do you know? I have discovered there are already two gnomes for every man woman and child in England. Where are they all? You ask. Brothers and sisters—they are all around us! In every garden, by every pond, watching and waiting with their little gnomey eyes and their rosy, gnomey cheeks.

(Cries of 'lynch the evil bastards!' from the rear of the auditorium)

Do not be fooled by their whimsical smiles. This is not a time for complacency. We must act. Look what happened in Zurich; they left it too late and the cuckoo clock monopoly was lost, the Gnomes of Zurich took it all. We cannot risk the same thing happening here. I heard only this week of a poor girl who was abducted by no less than seven of these freaks of nature.

This innocent waif was subjected to the most appalling depravities during which every conceivable perverted act was perpetrated upon her nubile person. Over a period of no less than six months she suffered unimaginable torments during which she was only allowed out four times a week to purchase vitamin pills, viagra and double strength red bull—which the plucky maiden forced her captors to swallow. By her enterprising actions this quick-thinking girl was eventually able to exhaust these gnomish fiends and return to the bosom of her family and pet rabbit, but not, I hasten to add, without paying the terrible price of unwanted, teenage pregnancy! Yes, dear friends, her captors had saddled this lovely vision of budding womanhood with not one, but seven unwanted offspring! Septuplets which will forever afterwards place an almost unsupportable strain on a welfare system which is the envy of the civilised world!

(Murmurs of 'castrate the evil bastards!')

Have no fear, dear friends, the gnomes will face the full force of the law as soon as they have gained sufficient body mass and had the complacent smiles surgically wiped off their faces.

(Murmurs of angry concern, tinged with a desire for revenge.)

Is this an isolated incident? Would that it were good people, would that it were. I have asked Special Branch to monitor the activities of some of the Gnome ring leaders and I am able to reveal that increased politicisation within the Gnomish culture is set to unleash a tidal wave—if not a tsunami—of inconceivable horrors upon our society. Where once a Gnome was happy to hold a ‘Keep off the Grass’ sign or perhaps sit cheekily fishing beside a ‘No Fishing’ notice, I now have evidence of a new, radical Gnomish sect that will stop at nothing to achieve its evil ends. I think these pictures speak for themselves:

(Crowd erupts into angry shouts, a Gnome in effigy is spontaneously produced from a large holdall with some ‘well fancy finding that here’ petrol. The effigy is burnt, someone spills petrol on his foot; there is a lot of running about and general panic. How Tenji resumes...)

See how they mock us; I say enough!
I am, this very night, ordering that all gnomes should wear an identifying red hat so that we can all see them wherever they are congregating. Gnomes will report weekly to the garden pond so that their movements can be closely monitored.

I beg you, brothers and sisters, not to take the law into your own hands. These simple measures are enough. There will be no need for you to use the pile of baseball bats behind the stadium to go on a wild rampage destroying gnomes in revenge for the sufferings of poor Snow White. Show these Gnomes good English tolerance one more time. Stop in the pub on the way home, have eight pints of ‘Olde Wifebeater’ and talk about the Gnomish plot. Then, if you still feel like kicking the shit out of them—well try not to get caught.

Good night people of England. God bless you. God bless the Queen.

(Tenji exits surrounded by minders wearing ‘Smash Gnomery’ tee-shirts. Crowd chants ‘How Tenji, How Tenji, etc. Notorious night of violence towards inanimate garden ornaments follows)

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