Eeeek! Has anyone seen my camel!?

There’s an old Jasper Carrott comedy routine called ‘The Nutter on the Bus’ that starts something like…

When the nutter gets on the bus

(pauses for audience laughter)

When the nutter gets on the bus

Why does the nutter always sit next to me?

I was on the bus the other day and I could hear this nutter getting on behind me. I can tell he's a nutter because he's calling out...

'Eeek! Has anyone seen my camel!!?'

And everyone on the bus is praying quietly ‘Please God don’t let the nutter sit next to me. I’ll do anything you want but please don’t let the nutter sit next to me’

And then he sits down next to me and says

'Listen, I've got an atom bomb in 'ere!!!!'

And he shows me a corned beef tin …

'I have a tin of corned beef and
I'm not afraid to use it'

This routine was considered hysterical back in 1978, possibly because there were 28 years less comedy to choose from than today.

Now, in 2006, I can only conclude that popular comedic taste has either changed significantly since then or that the sketch really wasn’t that funny in the first place

The basis for my conclusion is the fact that there are no reports of anyone breaking down into hysterical laughter at Woolwich Crown Court during the trial of Dhiren Barot over the last couple of months

As I type, a presenter on Channel 4 News is teetering on the brink of anoxia as he tries to list all of Barot’s fiendish plans in one breath

Barot

not Barot

Barot was going to

• Set off a dirty radioactive bomb in London or New York
• He was going to pack limousines with gas canisters
• He was going to destroy eight London hotels
• He was going to attack the IMF, the World Bank, the New York Stock Exchange, the Prudential Building and the Citigroup’s headquarters
• He was going to destroy a train in a tunnel underneath the Thames

His planning is being described as daring, meticulous and extensive. The word ‘mastermind’ is being bandied around a fair bit

The best quote of the trial came from the prosecution lawyer who, apparently quoting Barot, said

Imagine the chaos that would be caused if a powerful explosion were to rip through here [London] and actually rupture the river itself

Fuck it, if you’re going to start imagining the hypothetical impact of imaginary weapons of mass death that you haven’t the faintest possibility of getting your hands on, why limit yourself to diverting the course of the Thames? How about whistling up a fucking Death Star instead? You can destroy entire planets with one of those




The only thing holding Barot back from unleashing a full scale, synchronised ground war on the United States and Great Britain (combined population 360 million people) was that he had absolutely no means to carry any of this out and that he’s a nutter

To my knowledge, he couldn't afford even a tin of corned beef.

He might have had a camel though


(See also - Lyman Faris, still my favourite spook-controlled, media-hyped, post 9/11 nutter. The bloke who was going to demolish the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch but bailed because 'The weather is too hot'... priceless)