At home with Osama

If I had to date the precise moment when our national train notwork first went off the rails, I'd choose the day they first installed those "in case of emergency break glass" hammers in the compartments, and placed them behind glass panels so sturdy that you'd need a hammer to break into them.

But it was on a Virgin train last week that I realised the entire system had finally gone loco, as hundreds of us were crammed into a few overheated carriages (the seatbooking and air-conditioning systems had broken down again) and stood for hours trapped in the sweltering heat, our disconsolate expressions reminiscent of commuters on the Belsen Express.

My head was forced into mounds of moist puce hair protruding from the exposed armpit of a bull-dyke lesbian in a tank top who suffered from halitosis of the oxters, and shortly before I gratefully lost consciousness, I swear I heard the following announcement booming over the Tannoy.

"This is your buffer car steward speaking ... the buffet car ... selling tea, coffee, soft and licensed drinks, sandwiches, hot snacks and savouries, and a selection of sweets ... is now closed. That's the buffet car ... selling tea, coffee ..."

When I eventually asked one of the baked-bean faced teenagers running the show (the one that didn't ignore me) what the problem was, he simply shrugged, muttered something about "the war on terror," and moved on. That's not unusual, because the threat of an al Qaeda attack has been repeatedly hijacked by underperforming companies for the past two-andahalf years as an excuse for their own inadequacies, as though Osama bin Laden were the mirror image of Mussolini (a fascist leader who makes the trains not run on time).

Last night in I Met Osama bin Laden, BBC2 gave airtime to journalists who had interviewed the West's number one enemy, mostly back in the days when he and his Saudi fighters had our tacit support (because they were opposed to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan), and when Colonel Gadaffy was regarded as "the Mad Dog of the Middle East", rather than the "courageous statesman" Tony B Liar would currently have us believe he is.

Whereas nowadays, the al Qaeda boss is seen as an unprecedented threat to the peace of our global village, and we must all rely for protection on a global village idiot in the White House.

As it traced Bin Laden's development from conscientious student to international terrorist, the programme resembled one of those provincial news reports where bemused residents stand on their doorsteps discussing the neighbour who has just run amok with an AK-47 ("before turning the gun on himself ").

"He was shy, reserved," recalled a man who had taught English to the young Osama, and he apparently hadn't even been particularly religious until he attended Jeddah University (the Muslim equivalent of the LSE, I suppose) and encountered some radical Islamic thinkers.

Indeed, his early life seemed harmless enough, with him working as a financier while setting up house in Saudi, and I wondered whether he'd ever "invited readers into his luxury home" in the manner favoured by Hello! magazine. His early lifestyle certainly seemed so blameless that he could have "opened his heart" to the editor of Al Quds, with shots of him, his four wives, and his children huddled around the TV, watching Koran-nation Street, Middle East-Enders, and Who Wants to be a Mujahideen.