Peter Bradshaw on LOTR

The introductory section of Peter Bradshaws Guardian review of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is so insulting it deserves fisking. This is my first attempt at this rhetorical form, so bear with me.

There's no avoiding it any longer. It's time to drop the needle on the second disc in the biggest double-gatefold concept album in history: the next instalment in the Lord of the Rings saga, entitled The Two Towers.

A gratuitous attack on prog-rock. Not a good start.

Warning! Film contains intense combat and fantasy horror scenes, long-haired men smoking unfeasibly long pipes, women with pointy ears, and lots and lots of interminable nerdish nonsense.

When The Fellowship of the Ring came out last year I gave grave and unrecallable offence to the Tolkie fanbase with disobliging remarks about how the whole middlebrow mythology was dull and overrated, and how this admittedly beautifully designed children's movie was treated with baffling reverence by adults showing a misplaced, sentimental loyalty to their earlier, 12-year-old selves.

The standard response from a pretentious critic when presented with a work for which people like him are not the target market - attack the audience!

Like a couple of other writers on this paper, I was deluged with hate mail.

Which you deserved to writing drivel like your past review. You'll get more, because you're trolling for it.

Some seriously claimed that "Tolkie" was an offensive slur. Well, L Ron Hubbard's writings became the basis of a bona fide religion, so perhaps JRR Tolkien's will too, and this sort of raillery will indeed become incorrect.

In other words, if people insist on liking something you cannot appreciate, not only are they pathetic nerds and geeks, but they're dangerous cultists too.

Are you aware that the Blair government has recently passed laws banning hate speech?

I have had late-night arguments with pro-Tolkien friends, triggered off by rashly calling their need to establish an emotional relationship to this intricate but sterile world a symptom of regressive disorder. Do grown-ups need to worry their heads about Frodo and Bilbo, I asked

What sort of psychological inferiority complex do you suffer from such that you can only gain a sense of self-worth by claiming anyone that doesn't share your owne tastes in mentally ill?

at which point the Tolkies mounted a very effective counter-attack, assaulting the boring Prousties for banging on about the mythic backstories of Baron De Charlus and Robert Saint-Loup. Touch� .

Serves you bloody well right. It's a pity they weren't using real swords.