Lots of people thought it was very amusing - but the subsequent, light-hearted, discussion between Robin Lane Fox, FT Gardening columnist and Tim Rumball, from Amateur Gardener Magazine on snobbery in gardening, led the former to say: "If you banned fairies you'd have to ban half the garden designers."

Some listeners were predictably offended by such a homophobic comment, and demanded instant on-air apologies. We settled with reading out one cross e-mail and three in praise of gnomes at the end of the programme.

(You can hear the whole episode here, and see the pictures of the gnome here.)