The “Ikea Four” have finally been released by the Ikea government after repeated appeals from Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The four, a family from Essex, have spent the last three years imprisoned in the Wembley branch of Ikea, and say that they are “relieved to be home”.

The Axminster family from Chelmsford entered Ikea in 2007, not knowing that that cold January morning would be the last day they would breathe the crisp London air for three full years. Unable to find the exit, they lived in the store, and even developed their own form of language, a cross-breed between Essex English and Swedish.

Humanitarian groups had campaigned rigorously on behalf of the family who disappeared without trace after just thirty minutes in the store.

Shumi Chukkyberty of IkeaAid said “Today is not a day to be celebrated, it is a day to remember that by going out for a Billy bookcase, you may not return within three years. Quentin Axminster took his family to Ikea not knowing the risks he was running. He today leads his family out of the Wembley Ikea store and we can only imagine the hell he has been through.”

The family are believed to have survived on a diet of scavenged Swedish meatballs and cranberry. It is believed that they befriended a chef who regularly supplied them with mashed potato.

Youngest son Ryan, aged 12, is believed to have gone feral after twelve months, and frightened customers reported seeing a “wolf boy” darting among the Leksvik tables.

“Yes, we had heard stories of the Axminster family”, reported Ikea employee Sven Sverigesson. “But nobody really believed it was true that they were still in the store, despite what Gordon Brown was saying. It was like something Ikea employees tell their kids to scare them… I mean, we can’t find the way out either, and many of us live in the basement down by the kitchen units, but none of us ever saw them for real. Apart from one day, maybe, when I heard a voice saying ‘get me cranberries, get them now’. But we hear that a lot.”

Other Ikea employees, however, reported ghostly sightings of a woman dressed in nothing but Mokern bath towels.

For now, though, the family are just happy to be home. A spokesman for the Axminsters said that they “had been through hell and back” trying to find the exit, and gave up after a year of trying. They have no axe to grind with the Ikea government, though, and are reportedly looking forward to the opportunity to go back and finish off the “build your own” kitchen that father Quentin had started.

He added: “what’s more, they forgot to pick up the Bekvam kitchen trolley, which is one of the reasons they went there in the first place, so they’ve got to go back anyway.”