So tell me who's the real clown?

TELL ME this. If you were a terrorist intending to hijack or blow up a plane, how would you go about getting through security?

Well, you would probably do your best to fit in, to make yourself look unremarkable and quite normal. What you probably wouldn’t do is wear a flashing police helmet, a red nose and size 48 shoes (unless it was a ridiculously clever double bluff).

That is how Dave Vaughan, also known as children’s entertainer PC Konk, was attired when he turned up at Birmingham International Airport, booked by the Variety Club to perform for disadvantaged children on a one-hour, circular Search for Santa flight. This clearly troubled the appalling jobsworths at security who (obviously suspecting a ridiculously clever double bluff) strip-searched the clown just in case and then confiscated … his plastic handcuffs.

“I couldn’t believe it when they told me to get undressed so they could search me,” said PC Konk. “'I showed them my police clown identity card, which had my picture next to my credentials as a member of the Criminal Insane Department, but I don’t think that really helped.”

No, I bet it didn’t. Sadly, we are rapidly turning into a country where arrogance and ignorance infests every aspect of life and where those with a little bit of power seem to take a perverse delight in routinely bullying the rest of us.

From the checkout assistant who refused to sell crackers to a woman she thought might be under 21, to the council clipboard-wielders who fine people for dropping a peanut, to the internet bank drone who couldn’t see why I might need some cash two days before Christmas … we’re under the heel of an army of unreasonableness. Of course, I blame NuLabour.

WHILE we’re talking about out-of-control tools of the state, I see that the BBC has been fined £95,000 in yet another faked phone-in scandal. The latest offences came in pre-recorded shows featuring Dermot O’Leary and Tony Blackburn, when the programmes were later broadcast “as live” and listeners were encouraged to call in and enter competitions they couldn’t possibly win.

(Never mind calling Ofcom; I’d call the police. That’s blatant fraud, surely?)

This means that the BBC has now paid out over half a million quid in fines in the past 18 months for fiddling competitions and lying to viewers and listeners. Of course, when I say “fined”, no-one at the BBC will actually lose any money. No producers will be sacked and no presenters will have to put their hands in their bulging pockets.

No, remarkably the people who will have to cough up for the fines are you and me – the poor bloody licence fee-payers. What’s the point in that then? It’s enough to make a cat laugh.

I’ll tell you what. Seeing as my dosh – currently in the possession of a hard-faced harridan at an internet bank – is subsidising widespread dishonesty at the Beeb, I want something back in return. How about a seat at the table amongst Nigella’s “friends”, when the well-upholstered, simpering, slobbering cook serves up her creations?

You know the ones I mean: the supercilious, middle-class twit in his M&S knitwear, the pretty, but not-too-pretty women, the trendy, bald North London gay, the actress Maria McErlane, the … yes, the actress Maria McErlane. Because these aren’t really Nigella’s friends at all. They’re from Rent-a-Crowd. And that’s not Nigella’s Kensington kitchen, either. It’s actually a mock-up on an industrial estate in South London.

It’s all a big con, and it’s called ‘television’, stoopid.

I SUPPOSE it’s a faintly festive thought, but more than 2,000 lives could be saved every year by the introduction of bowel cancer testing kits. In simple terms, you poo in a test tube and send it off to a lab, getting the results back two weeks later.

As ever, the Porridge Wogs are taking the other bodily fluid. While the test will only be available in England to those aged 60 to 75, in Scotland it will be freely available to over 50s. So that extra benefit for those north of the border joins free eye tests, free prescriptions (coming shortly), free hospital parking, free nursing care for the elderly and free life-prolonging drugs for Alzheimer’s sufferers and cancer patients.

The reason for this generosity is that the McMafia in Westminster continue to give the Scotch much more money to spend per capita than they do down here. I know all the women up there smell of fish and look like Jimmy Krankies, but this is getting beyond a joke.

DETERMINED TO avoid the nightmare scenario that happens when an over-ripe Christmas Stilton takes over your fridge well into Spring, making the baby mozzarella cry and reducing the Stinking Bishop to a nervous wreck, I battle my way into the Seventh Circle of Hell that is the cheese aisle at Waitrose intent on buying just a small piece this year.

I snatch a handy lump from the claws of a desperate pensioner and I’m about to stick it in my trolley when I notice the price sticker: £6.66 – the number of the beast. This is clearly a sign from old Satan himself, so I repent my recidivist ways and do the decent thing. I buy a big old wheel of Cropwell Bishop, which I swear I can hear purring on the way back to the car. By the time you read this, we’ll be engaged in hand-to-hand battle.