What the dim-witted townie failed to understand, the country folk patiently explained, was that without foxhunting there would be no English countryside. Consider, they said, all those people whose livelihoods depend directly upon foxhunting. The saddlers, the grooms, the ostlers, the stable lads and lasses. The riding instructors, the vets, the manufacturers of horse pills and tackle and donkey nuts and stirrup cups. The blacksmiths and the blacksmiths' apprentices, the horse-breeders, the makers of horse boxes and those who worked in the factories that produce those stickers you see in the rear windows of Range Rovers that say 'I ♥ greys'.
And that was only the horses. What about the dogs? What about those packs of beautiful cuddly foxhounds? They'd all have to be destroyed. Destroyed! Dogs destroyed! A national shame! And with their destruction would go the livelihoods of the Masters of Foxhounds, their apprentices and assistants, the whippers-in, the manufacturers of dog collars and dog biscuits and dog food, more vets and so on and so forth.
Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hard-working honest country folk would be doomed to lives of dole-queue misery only previously reserved for town-dwellers.
Catastrophe!
And worse, far worse, what about the land itself? England depended upon its farmland. Its farmland and its produce. The land! Dear Lord, the land!
To put it plainly, there would be no more land. Without the efforts of the gallant foxhunters to keep the evil vermin that was the fox at bay, the English countryside would be no more. The fox, that hellish chimera of wolf, jackal, tiger and ghoul/demon! werewolf, would multiply, growing in unstoppable numbers, forming mighty packs and wreaking havoc across the land. Snatching infants from their cots, devouring entire herds of sheep and cattle in a hideous feeding frenzy, before moving on to destroy the towns and cities.
To ban foxhunting was to do little less than herald in the End Times and welcome the arrival of the Anti-Christ.
Blimey!
This all came as a bit of a revelation to the townie. For one thing, the townie had always believed that the greatest threat to a fanner's crops came not from the meat-eating fox but from the strictly vegetarian rabbit, which was, by a curious coincidence, the all-but-staple diet of the fox. And surely only one and a half per cent of the British populace actually lived in the country, and the countryside only contributed three per cent to the Gross National Product. And surely most farmers had guns? After all they were always pointing them at townies who inadvertently picnicked upon their land. Couldn't they simply shoot the foxes?
It was indeed a bit of a revelation, and one that served to pave over that aforementioned divide which had for so long, er, divided the rural community from its urban brother. Foxhunting provided full employment for the country folk, and spared the town-dweller from the rabid attentions of the demonic fox pack.
Harmony.
So where did the fox farms come into this? Well, as I thought I'd explained, there weren't enough foxes to hunt.
It was the town-dwellers' fault. Their love of motor cars and motorways. You see, ten times as many foxes are killed by motor cars than are killed by foxhunts, which explains why country folk always protest so much about new motorways.
It's all so simple when it's explained, isn't it?
So my Uncle Brian worked on a fox farm. It was one of the new ones. A fox factory farm. My uncle was employed as a genetic engineer. The aim was to breed the super-fox. A vegetarian fox that was a really slow runner, as so many foxhunters are old and fat, just like their hounds.
My Uncle Brian enjoyed the work. Playing God and tampering with the laws of nature had always appealed to him. But he became unemployed in 1997 with the change of government, and this in turn led him to lose the thirty-five quid which in its turn came to bring down the British book publishing industry.
Allow me to explain.
What happened was this. The new Labour government was very keen to save money. Having the nation's interests ever at heart they decided to cut back on government spending, and one way they found of achieving this was by amalgamating certain top secret departments and restructuring them so that they would run at a profit. Lumping them all together, as it were, sharing jobs. Fox farming, which was Very Top Secret, got amalgamated with UFO back-engineering, which was Above Top Secret. UFO back-engineering is when a government acquires a grounded flying saucer and then takes it apart in order to see what makes it run. This has not as yet been successfully achieved, which explains why we do not at present swish around in flying saucers and commute between the planets. But we're trying.
So UFO back-engineering got amalgamated with fox farm genetic engineering, and a chap called Hartly was put in charge with the remit to make the enterprise run at a profit.
Hartly was a bright young spark and almost immediately he saw a financial opportunity. Fox pelts. As townies were now convinced of the good of foxhunting and the evil of foxes, surely they would be prepared to purchase fox fur coats just like the good old days? Hartly set about the genetic engineering of the angora fox. It was a brilliant idea, but where he slipped up was in using genetic material taken from a UFO.
As all those who have access to Above Top Secret information will know, UFOs are mostly organic. Which explains why they don't show up on radar. The UFO genetic material used for the creation of the angora fox did not result in the creation of the angora fox. It resulted in the creation of the stealth fox.
Now, whereas the Stealth Bomber does not show up on radar, the stealth fox didn't show up anywhere. It could blend in with its surroundings to a degree that made it virtually invisible. It was there all right, if you took the trouble to look hard enough for it (after all everything has to be somewhere and nothing can ever be anywhere other than where it is), but escaping notice was what the stealth fox did best.
That and escaping from secret government research establishments. Naturally.
Using the cunning for which it is famed, this new order of fox sought out its old adversary - the foxhound. It began to blend in with the packs, and in fact so convincingly did it do this that the pack took it for one of its own. In no time the stealth fox was cross-breeding with the foxhounds, producing a stealth fox/dog hybrid indistinguishable from the ordinary foxhound. Within a couple of years many packs of foxhounds consisted of nothing but stealth fox/dog hybrids.
This cross-breeding produced a larger, more powerful strain of stealth fox, roughly the size of a Great Dane (or small horse). The next step was inevitable.
The large stealth fox/dog hybrids began to blend in with the horses in the hunt, and soon the first stealth fox/dog/horse hybrid appeared.
Now the next step up the evolutionary ladder taken by the stealth fox may well be considered by those of a prudish disposition to be too distasteful to chronicle. But in the noble quest for truth, it must be told.
Those of you who have ever viewed the now legendary porno vid Down on the Farm will recall the episode of the lusty stable lass and the frisky stallion.
Enough said.
The stealth fox/dog/horse/human hybrid was born.
And it was one of these very stealth fox/dog/horse/ human hybrids who, several years later in the guise of a bloke in a bar, did my uncle out of thirty-five quid, which in turn led my uncle to bring down the British book publishing industry.
And how this came about, and what it all has to do with a voodoo handbag, a Holy Guardian Sprout and a threat to mankind from the denizens of cyberspace, will soon become blindingly obvious.
Although not, perhaps, in the most obvious way.