Random play: I hate hobbits!

You don't need to toe the party line on The Lord of the Rings, says MICHELE HEWITSON (but she only made it up to page 53).

Even in a nation of people with a reputation for liking eyeball-popping adventure sports like bungy-jumping, my guess is you'd be hard-pushed to find anyone foolhardy enough to stand up in a crowded cinema come December 20 and shout: "I hate hobbits."

That would earn you a reception as warm as the one which met the guy who stood up at the Labour Party conference and shouted: "What about the bloody war?"

I would rather have dinner with the sibilant, slimy Gollum than bungy jump, but - and I say this in a quietly in a little, hobbit-sized voice - I do not like hobbits much at all.

Actually, having tested this heresy a couple of times in crowded pubs full of hobbit-fanciers and having lived to tell the tale, I am emboldened to whisper: What I really do not like is The Lord of the Rings.

At which point, outside the window, I saw swarming black figures: there seemed to be hundreds of LOTR fans. "They brandished spears and scimitars which shone red as blood in the firelight. Doom, doom rolled the drumbeats, growing louder and louder, doom, doom."

Saying you don't like LOTR is tantamount to treason in these frenzied days.

I have tried. I have approached, and recoiled from, the trilogy a good half a dozen times in the past decade. Partly it is snobbery. Any text which leans so heavily on italics and the dreaded exclamation mark for emphasis is going to make me shudder. Why, by way of random and admittedly picky example, does a character have to say "Laugh and be merry!" or "Enter, good guests!" It is a little thing, that exclamation mark, but like a little tinny laugh which goes on and on, it has the power to incite powerfully violent urges.

But, aside from a personal dislike of books with covers (at least in our house) which look like things stoned tree-huggers who have imaginary friends would find something deep and meaningful in, it's hard to believe that even the most over-excited fan has not already tired of the trite promos which have proliferated in a way that Tolkien's sex-shy characters would have blushed at.

Purists, and those who love Tolkien for his hatred of the "rawness and ugliness of modern European life," will no doubt reject that credit card promoted by a jostling crowd of hobbits. What would they buy with it? An ounce of pipe-weed, perhaps? Depilatory cream for their jolly hairy little toes-ies? As far as I know, there is nothing on a Burger King menu which might entice a hobbit, nor would they pull up to fill up at service stations.

But I am falling into the LOTR trap. When I asked a devotee what sort of thing a Gollum was, the response, which was long and detailed, began, "Gandalf is of the opinion ... "

"Um, he's not real, you know," I attempted. Tolkien might have snorted. He hated the idea of clubs of people who gathered to talk Elvish.

And, "a Burger King tie-in," he might have muttered. "What an evil fortune! Already I am weary."

Knows how he feels. The pressure to buy in is relentless.

It's the filmic equivalent of the expectation that when that rugby team wins, we all feel uplifted. And the tedious flip side that we are all expected to feel suicidal if they lose.

The other wearying aspect of the LOTR hype is that the circus attracts trainspotters the way the greater spotted warbler attracts tweeters.

At the London premiere, as the lights were going down, somebody shouted: "What about page 53?" That was funny.

But my bet is that as the lights come up in an Auckland theatre, somebody will shout: "What about page 53?"

He (it will be a he) will not be joking.

It'll be that guy who got strong-armed out of the Labour Party conference.

Feature: Lord of the Rings

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