There’s no place like gnome

Some people are committed collectors, indulging in a hobby. Others simply take it too far.

You can decide which of those categories Ron Broomfield belongs in.

The retired window cleaner has turned his Lincolnshire cottage into a real gnome from gnome after collecting no fewer than 1,700 of the little fellas.

His collection fills his garden and every room of the house, which Ron’s renamed Gnome Cottage.

And when you ring him up, he even answers the phone: “Ron the Gnome.”

“I just keep repeating that whenever I get a cold caller, they ring off pretty sharpish then,” admits the man who states his age as “79-and-a-half”.

“I’ve got about 1,700 gnomes. What you’ve got to remember is that this started 50 years ago when I went out and bought seven.

“The whole lot cost me £9, but every one of them now goes for £20-25 if I wanted to sell them.

“But I haven’t paid money for all of them. I’m the youngest of nine, I’ve got nephews and nieces all over the place what do they buy me at Christmas? What do they buy me for my birthday?

“I was on the Alan Titchmarsh show and after the interview, he gave me a one-off gnome cast as himself!

“My spare bedroom’s now a repair workshop where I repaint and repair them.

“At the moment, I’m finishing painting up a couple of gnomes but there’s a gnome hospital in there, too I’ve got little beds with gnomes in them.”

Ron’s enthusiasm for gnomes extends to dressing as one for his twice-weekly shopping trips, which double as fundraisers for his favourite charity.

“I go out on Tuesdays and Fridays, and special occasions,” he explains.

“We’ve also got quite a few craft people around this area and on bank holidays, they set up a shop in the grounds of the local manor house and I’m the mascot.

“Every time I go out, I’m collecting for the NSPCC.

“I’ve got a box on top of my ‘gnome-mobile’ as I like to call it my shopping trolley which is a little pram with a couple of gnomes on it.”

As we’re getting near Christmas, I can’t help but wonder if there’s a gnome/elf crossover?

“I do help out Santa,” says Ron.

“Some of the local shops asked me to take over as Santa Claus but I told them: ‘All of the children in the district know me as Ron the Gnome I can’t be two things.’

“I always tell the kids that I’m very busy two to three weeks before Christmas, and I’m out in Lapland at night helping Santa pack toys.”

Ron is just one of the collectors featured in a new TV documentary, Excessive Compulsive Collectors.

His fellow enthusiasts include an American woman who keeps her 2,000 pairs of shoes worth $1 million in a password-protected saferoom, and a Nottingham man so obsessed with vacuum cleaners, he created his own museum.

Excessive Compulsive Collectors is on Channel 5, Wednesday, December 18 at 8pm.