The history of the exciting new developing sport of toe waggling is also that of the triumph of the human spirit over the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the path to perfection. The sport developed from the ancient bathing rituals practised for centuries among the highly respected warrior-monk class of the Drai Tho province of China during the reign of the Wang dynasty. Drai Tho was essentially a rural community, and it's warrior-monks resided in the temple of XXXXXX where they dedicated their lives to protecting the closely-guarded secrets of the Drai Royal family's elaborate bathing rituals. The monks duties also including perfecting its techniques and tutoring the royal offspring in the Way of the Waggle. Yes, as with so many things, the Chinese were way ahead of Europe when it comes to getting out of the bath without getting the floor all wet. Some 1500 years before the time of the writing of the Gospels, when even the Greeks weren't really getting going yet on the civilisation front, a strange thing happened. Apparently, within a fifty year period, two events occurred - and despite being some 3000 miles apart, all the evidence suggests that they were very closely related indeed.

Firstly, the whole community vanished from Drai Tho, never to be seen again. It is around this time that the province xxxxxxx so similar it can only be from the same root sprang up in the Sahara desert, due east of Thebes. Archeological evidence is in short supply but many theories exist based on hieroglyphical research and local legend. There seems little doubt, in any case, that against all the odds, the wagglers made the great trek from northeastern China to the barren wastes of the Sahara desert in order to settle there and continue the Way of the Waggle. Although it has never been incontrovertibly proved, it has been suggested that Queen Cleopatra was initiated into some of their secrets (even if she did have some funny ideas about what to bathe in).

Meanwhile, back in Rome...

So, for many centuries all this had been going on without most of Western Europe even considering splashing a bit of water under their arms from time to time. As primitive personal hygiene gradually drifted northwestwards, Persians, Greeks and Romans progressively passed on the baton (in this case made of soap, perhaps!) of cleanliness and bathing flourished. Everyone knows what bathing fanatics the Romans were. They really got things moving. Many assume that this was a natural part of the gradual development generally known as civilisation. Few are aware that there were forces in motion behind the scenes, working to bring bathing to the masses. Faced with the Catholic Church and natural human filthiness

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, the Wagglers had their work cut out for them in Dark Age Europe.
For this reason toe waggling was a rare activity in the western Europe, mostly only enjoyed by a very limited and privileged few.

As the lot of the average individual improved and bathing became widespread the toes of Europe began to stir. By the end of the eighteenth century the forces set in motion by the spread of bathing had caused violent bloody revolution in France where thousands of regular bath-taking nobles were summarily tried and executed publicly, to the great delight of the unwashed masses. In the aftermath and a fit of megalomania, Napoleon took it upon himself to bring bathing to all Europe, with a scheme that made Machiavelli's Prince look like a benign philosopher king. Some have said this was brought on by a massive inferiority complex brought on by his diminutive stature, but there are other theories. Napoleon was a Corsican and had spent a lifetime in the army; why this sudden interest in bathing. It has been strongly argued that he was contacted by agents from a shadowy international organisation and initiated into the Way of the Waggle.

The nineteenth century brought the industrial revolution and by 1900 baths were commonplace in every corner of W Europe, even the poorest areas

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. In the last hundred years mass industrialisation has brought the bath into every home, in some cases several baths. In today's virtual age, baths are one of the few things you cannot get through the Internet and toe waggling has finally freed itself itself from the secretive clutches of the mysterious monks of the Way of the Waggle.

Today, it is a recognised Olympic sport, managed and monitored by the International Toe Waggling Federation (ITWF). The ITWF is the international non-governmental organisation recognised by the International Olympic Committee as administrating the sport at world level

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. Based in the Alsace region

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in northeastern France, the executive committee convenes for one week in every month at their spanking new, ultra-modern and luxurious administrative headquarters in Strasbourg, the administrative and cultural centre of Alsace

⁵. It was in that self-same city that waggling was first established as an official olympic sport, and many of the professional waggling fraternity's biggest stars reside there.