The BBC has announced on its website that the gardener responsible for the upkeep of Teletubbyland has been dismissed for gross negligence.
Teletubbyland is the home of the Teletubbies - Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po - and a veritable paradise which the characters share with playful rabbits. It is a colorful, pristine environment with green, rolling hills, light undulations at ground level, and many beautiful flowers, which have won several awards. Aluminium Voice Trumpets that inform the four Teletubbies it's "Time for Tubby byebye", are dotted here and there.
Lately, however, the area has not been maintained as the BBC would wish. The grass has not been cut, the flowers have not been watered, the borders are no longer defined - it's a terrible mess.
To cap it all, poachers have stolen the rabbits.
One man, says the BBC, is to blame - the gardener, Reg Ribbentrop.
Ribbentrop, it's alleged, has turned Teletubbyland into something resembling a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, with overgrown plants and trees blighting every scene, weeds having run riot, and dandelions being the dominant form of fauna on the churned-up slopes. Several of the Voice Trumpets have been damaged - probably by vandals - leaving the whole sorry landscape looking like something from HG Wells 1895 novel 'The Time Machine'.
"The place," remarked one BBC executive, "looks like the Somme. Ribbentrop had to go."
