Apparently having been in a coma or a cave for the last ten years, one Paul Chambers, 26, decided to post a bomb threat at a UK airport as a joke last week, leading to his arrest and interrogation by police.
Chambers had been due to fly to Ireland from Robin Hood Airport but discovered that it was closed due to snow. Choosing to ignore current social conventions, Chambers promptly tweeted the following message, "You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"
It seems that one of his followers did not have the same sense of humour as Paul, however, as they were so shocked that they rang up the plod. The result? A few days later the coppers showed up at his office and promptly felt his collar under the Terrorism Act.
"I would never have thought, in a thousand years, that any of this would have happened because of a Twitter post," he told The Independent. "I'm the most mild-mannered guy you could imagine." Mild-mannered and threats to blow up airports do not usually go together, Paul, as we're sure he is now coming to understand.
According to The Independent, things started to get a bit surreal for him during the interview process. "Mr Chambers said the police seemed unable to comprehend the intended humour in his online comment. 'I had to explain Twitter to them in its entirety because they'd never heard of it,' he said."
"Then they asked all about my home life, and how work was going, and other personal things. The lead investigator kept asking, 'Do you understand why this is happening?' and saying, 'It is the world we live in.'"
The cops took away his Iphone, laptop and home computer, and he's been bailed 'til mid-February. We do not know how many chuckles his ill-considered tweet caused, but we do know one thing. Chambers will not be flying anywhere anytime soon.
