This is The Guardian.

This article contains some strong language.

Welcome to The Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture, politics and new thinking.

For the text version of this and all our long reads,

go to the Guardian.com forward slash long read.

The snail farm, Don.

Is this the most brazen, tax avoidance scheme of all time?

By Jim Waterson, read by Nicholas Cam.

It is a drizzly October afternoon and I'm sitting in a rural Lancashire pub drinking pints

of Moretti with London's leading snail farmer and a convicted member of the Naples Mafia.

We're discussing the best way to stop a molluscology.

The farmer, a 79-year-old former shoe salesman called Terry Ball, who has made and lost

multiple fortunes, has been cheerfully telling me in great detail for several

hours about how he was inspired by former Conservative Minister Michael Gove to use snails to cheat

local councils out of tens of millions of pounds in taxes. His method is simple.

First he sets up shell companies that breed snails in empty office blocks.

Then he claims that the office block is legally, against all indications to the contrary,

a farm, and therefore exempt from paying taxes.

"'There are sexy things,' chuckles ball in a broad blackburn accent,

describing the speed with which two snails can incestuously multiply into dozens of specimens

if they're left alone in a box for a few weeks.

"'Snails love group sex and cannibalism, he warns.

...