Border Security Protection Authority Customs Officer Police Enforcers have revealed that they discovered precisely some illegal stowaways in a lorry-shaped shipment of vegetables.

Border Agency officials became suspicious of absolutely everyone, as this is their function.  Yet one suspiciously suspicious vehicle aroused their suspicions even more than the usual run of alcoholics and smokers trying to lessen the financial burden of their vile, pathetic substance abuse addictions.

For it was, in a large Spanish-registered pantechnicon, which was stopped by an uniformed official of average length, because he believed that the driver looked 'a bit shifty', that up to and including eighteen illegal immigrants were discovered hiding in some crates of delicious, ripe crunchy salad, which would be an ideal accompaniment to some lightly grilled chicken, or perhaps warm chorizo.

Sprinkle on some ground black pepper and grated Parmesan, drizzle with olive oil and you have a tasty lunch or light supper for under a fiver!

Where were we.....?

Oh...yes!

We asked someone who knows what happened,

"What happened?"

The person who it was that answered the question that we asked him, was one Norman Gorman, an official officer of the Border Agency Office.

What happened?, is what it were that we asked Norman.

What happened, Norman?

"Well, when we inspected the lorry, we pulled out a few crates and looked in them.  This is what's known as a 'search'.

When we did that, we lifted up a few lettuces and other miscellaneous salad vegetables, and out they all fell! They were running about all over the shop!"

Norman was in a shop?

We told him that we had assumed that he had been at the ferry terminal, examining vehicles.

"Erm, that was merely a figure of speech.  What I meant was that they were trying to run away in many different directions."

We thanked Mr. Gorman for his clarification, and suggested that in future he might confine his attention to the matter at hand, and refrain from resorting to colloquialisms and other non-standard forms of English usage and just get to the ruddy point!

"Right you are.  We eventually rounded them up, and discovered that they had been hiding on the inside of an hollowed out cucumber, for up to, yet not exceeding thirty-eight hours!"

How can eighteen immigrants fit inside a cucumber?, we asked.

Was the cucumber very large?', we also asked.

If so, did said cucumber contravene European Union regulations on the size and bendiness of produce?, we continued to ask, until Norman replied,

"It was a normal sized cucumber."

Norman continued speaking from his face,

"They didn't have passports, visas or even any form of identity-style documentation, so we don't know who they are, or from where it is from that they originate.  From."

That's as maybe, we actually said back at him, but we still couldn't get our brains round the alleged 'fact' that there were eighteen of them concealed in a cucumber.  We were fairly sure that we would require further evidence.

"Oh, we took photos!", professed Mr. Gorman.

He showed us the photographic evidence in question.

Unfortunately, all suddenly began to come clear.

We pointed out to Norman Gorman that he appeared to be holding a snapshot of a bunch of cockroaches.

"Yes.", he agreed.

"But not a single one of them had a passport!  We can't have all these foreign insects coming over here and doing our honest British vermin out of a job, I mean, where will it end?"

Mr. Madman then thrust a picture of a bunch of bananas under our noses.

"See that?", he ranted.

We strained to make out the image of a small spider, cowering in the shadows, no doubt traumatised by his long and arduous journey.  Possibly frightened, confused, fleeing from who knows what oppressive regime?

We were aroused from our well of maudlin pity by Mr. Gormless, spouting,

"These bloody foreign spiders!  They come over here, stealing the flies from under the noses of honest-to-goodness British spiders!"

We had to stop Mr. Moron there, as when we asked whether, actually, do spiders have noses?, he started to have convulsions and could only be sedated by repeatedly beating himself about the head with a rolled up copy of The Daily Mail.

We asked Ken Libido of the Road Haulage Association whether he thought that the port authorities were being over-zealous?

"I think that the port authorities are being over-zealous.", he said.