HANDS off our garden gnomes!
The brightly-coloured bearded guardians of the British garden are seemingly under threat.
A new Ikea advert which shows the massacre of dozens of the garden favourites has caused a national uproar.
Brandishing the slogan 'say no to gnomes', the ad shows an army of angry gnomes launching an attack on a family who are redesigning their garden with Ikea furniture.
The couple wage a full-scale war on the gnomes and they are all killed off.
Garden lovers have been left so shocked by the ad that 50 of them have complained to the Advertising Standards Agency to get it banned.
Flamboyant designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen said he is a "gnomesexual" and they "stole my heart when I was very young".
But Mike Ricketts, a shop worker at Norton Garden Centre, at Down Hatherley, said: "I have seen the advert. It is quite clever because it is being talked about. The decline of the garden gnome is probably a good thing. I can't remember the last time we sold one but we do still have a selection here. I think they have come to the end of their lives because now people want something more modern."
