Away with the fairies

There is unrest in the forest. There is trouble in the trees. It's been brewing for some time. And, to be quite honest, The Man hasn't been doing much to help matters.

The whispers of discontent are there, if you're willing and able to hear them. There they are again. Do you hear them? No, not the jingly bells, those have always been there. Listen out for the whispers.

"It's quite simple," says Wimple McGrew, "we're getting misrepresented." As spokes-being for the League of Fantasy Characters, McGrew hasn't had too many challenges to date. And as a mere stripling - only 87 next November - he can't remember the last time there's been this much disquiet.

"It got out of hand a few years ago with that bloody Peter Jackson. Here we'd been since time immemorial, us elves, quietly minding our own business. A bit of a jingle here, the odd 'hey nonny no' there. We weren't hurting anybody. But all of a sudden, with his Lord of the sodding Rings trilogy, he got everyone's expectations up. I mean, that Elvish language nonsense? You do realise that was just human actors speaking very poor Welsh, don't you?"

"All of a sudden we elves were expected to be all cool and catlike and mysterious. All that firing-off-three-arrows-at-once palaver. You ever tried that with a small bell attached to the pointy tip of your hat? Didn't think so."

It's not just his elven brethren McGrew is inclined to defend, either. "The dwarves are seriously pissed off, I don't mind telling you. They'd only just overcome the stereotyping from that Disney bloke and now everyone expects them to be carrying battleaxes and rolling their r's all the time."

In recent years the League has grown from a raggle-taggle group concerned mainly with mead production quotas and cheap lyre imports to the focussed lobbying group it is today. "We've had no end of arguments with the management, " sighs a Middle-Earth-weary McGrew, "Pretty much every time I go in to see Inhuman Resources I know I'm in for a torrid time. But if we don't act together, we're doomed."

Favouritism is the latest accusation to fall from every mouth and horn. "The Tooth Fairy gets all the glory, but all she does is swan about and put 50p pieces under some gappy kids' pillowcases. But do we ever hear the end of it? And at the same time, no-one's exactly holding ticker-tape parades for the Ear-wax Elf or the Navel-fluff Gnome, are they?"

In all of this, it's the Orcs that have come out worst. Small, timid, peace-loving creatures, much taken to whimsy and folk-dancing, their reputation is now shot. "It's a travesty. There was a time when you'd be happy to have an Orcish family as your neighbours. But just one unfair representation of them as war-hungry monsters and all of a sudden you can't move for 'Orcs Out' placards."

"I blame the Hobbits. Vicious gits, the lot of them."