YOU can carry out all those stringent anti-terror reviews, the security drills and training exercises you want – but it seems all you really need to get access to one of the most protected men in the western world is a fierce commitment to fitness.
Perhaps terrorist organisations across the world are smacking their heads in disbelief this week. For years they have been trying to stage their attacks with elaborate plans, conspiracies and suicide bombings – all they really needed was an elite cadre of joggers.
The sight of Dean Farley accidentally dodging around the Prime Minister’s security detail only to collide with the man himself was, naturally, quite a funny one. Made all the more so by Mr Farley’s apparent bemusement at what he was supposed to have done. Apparently he was in custody for an hour before he was even told who it was he had bumped into.
Funny for us, of course – not so much for Mr Farley, who must have, understandably, been getting a bit worried. Indeed, considering he was only out and about in a bid to boost his day to day fitness and general sense of well-being, his blood pressure must have shot a bit further skyward than he would have been expecting when he got out of bed that morning. Still, the mishap has given him a tale he will quite rightly dine out on for the rest of his life.
Mistakes can be handy things though, particularly if they are ultimately harmless ones like this that serve to highlight a situation that is the very definition of ‘it could have been worse’. Far better that this incident resembled a scene from the masterful satire The Thick of It than the preposterous ticking clock thriller 24, in which a jogger bumping into a head of state could only possibly lead to loss of life and property damage of unimaginable proportions.
It means questions will be asked, security – hopefully – tightened, and the next time a jogger heading towards the PM gets distracted by something on the opposite side of the road he will instead charge into some hefty bodyguard, rather than the leader of Great Britain. Or, perhaps, be felled and tasered well before he makes contact by eager security service personnel.
Probably it was just the element of surprise that caught them out this time – as with Monty Python’s famous Spanish Inquisition sketch, no one expects the joggers.
And maybe we should all view these tracksuited health fanatics with a shade more suspicion in the future.
SPEAKING of David Cameron, all in our newsroom were pretty impressed when we saw the letter he sent to Claire Fifield-Moore, the mother of James Fifield who died tragically earlier this year.
David Cameron
When we heard she had received the letter from him, I suspect most of us here thought – without really considering it – that the correspondence would be something cobbled together by an aide that the PM himself might have scribbled his signature on – the only way, I would imagine, he can handle a great deal of the mail that comes his way while still hoping to get any sleep at night.
His reply, we thought, would probably be a nice gesture but perhaps a bit token and perfunctory.
Far from it, though. His letter to Mrs Fifield-Moore was warm, sensitive and extremely sympathetic. On reading it we were genuinely surprised at the attention he had clearly given this incident, ensuring he had drilled into the details of the terrible car accident in Zante before replying.
Whatever else you may think of David Cameron, it was a fine gesture and, hopefully, a much-needed comfort to a family that has been going through a truly awful time over the last few months.
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