A dingy community hall in the back streets of Bethnal Green on a cold and miserable winter’s evening. We’re all here waiting for the weird, hook-handed fundamentalist cleric Sheikh Abu Hamza al Misri, the most loathed man in Britain, who is about to hold a public meeting.
When I say ‘we’re all here’, I mean the infidel scum from the Daily Mail, a bunch of whores from the BBC, a cockroach from the Standard and a lower-than-cattle news agency chap. We’re all present and correct.
What we’re really short of at the moment is fanatics, fundamentalists or, indeed, Muslims of any gradation of fervour. When I last looked in the hall, there were three people, two of whom work for the sheikh, including his cheerful and likable press officer, Abu Aziz. (Yes, everybody these days has a press officer.) It’s a thin turnout.
Abu Aziz isn’t planning to let the whores, infidels, etc. into the hall; except me, because I asked nicely in advance and we’re making a film for BBC4 about Hamza which I’ve assured them will be ‘intelligent’. Ha! They fell for that old ruse! I am, then, for this evening at least, a richly favoured whore and take my seat a little smugly.
But Abu Aziz has got a tricky problem. ‘I kept telling myself not to question people when they come in just because they’re white. It’s racist. I mean, they might not be press, they might just be interested people off the street, mightn’t they?’
Nope, Abu, they’re all press. Including the one you let in a few moments ago, the smart young man with the nice short hair, suit, tie and large notebook. That’s what you get for being politically correct, Abu; you get done over.
By the time Hamza arrives – big billowing cloak, big nasty-looking hook – there are about 12 people inside the hall, including me and the cameraman and the young man with the notebook.
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