dark beige

By Aaron Barshak, the briefly famous "comedy terrorist"

Think back to June 2003, that long hot summer when I hilariously gained worldwide notoriety after gate crashing Prince William’s twenty-first birthday party, looking like Osama Bin Laden in drag, the basis of my whole amazing act.


THE SALAD DAYS

After that I went on a three month non-stop roller coaster of the occasional press interview and two stage shows at that year’s Edinburgh Comedy Festival, not to mention "constant writing" based around my comedy terrorist persona.

Then sadly the worked dried up, as people failed to find a needy unfunny comic in a silly terrorist beard as funny as they should have done. I became burnt out after all the great writing and performing I'd been doing. It wasn't as easy as you'd think to constantly come up with more ways that terrorism could be a bit funny, but in a fairly non-threatening, light entertainment style. And worse of all, without a major recent atrocity to cling to, work soon stopped.

I thought the July 7 bombs in 2005 would lead to the phone ringing off the hook, but all I got was an offer to appear on The Farm, which was even below me. My theory is that the more tawdry small-town British terrorists had taken the creepy Middle Eastern sheen off Islamic terrorism, so vital for my casual racism.

But I promise I'll be back, as soon as true international terror strikes again. One of the great things is that no-one knows what the next six months might bring, terrorism-wise. For all we know, we might have another September 11th tomorrow (or September 30th, to be exact). The amount of material that could give me is almost endless!

So come on Osama...do your worst!