Jackiey Budden, 51, was detained for 45 minutes and strip searched after joking about having a gun when asked if she had "anything dangerous" in her bags at an airport. Maybe if I were more judgemental, I'd just say "serve her right for having parents who spell 'Jacky' wrong."
I would be inclined to laugh it off as "only in England" if it weren't for the fact that a few years ago, I witnessed an almost identical event with my own mother. We were travelling to New Zealand, and while going through our second pre-boarding screening at Perth International Airport, we had (once again) to plonk all our stuff into the plastic conveyor belt box thingy. Mum held on to the plastic ticket pouch, which was about the size of a cheque book. The guard ordered her to put it in the tray with the other stuff and, being my mum, she replied "oh yeah, because I've got an Uzi in there!"
An Uzi. An antique submachine gun that's almost half a meter long and weighs 3.5 kilos. Not very subtle. Good for shooting Nazis and ruling small African nations with an iron fist. Not good for concealed carrying. Tucked in between our boarding passes in the 8-inch-long ticket pouch that she's waving around with one hand. Yeah. I laughed, the security guard didn't. He detained her for about 15 minutes (almost causing us to miss our plane), and if his superior hadn't told him to stop being a dickhead and let us go we'd probably still be there to this day. She got a massive angry lecture about how it's "no joking matter" and a "very serious offense to threaten security staff"... fer' chrissake, some people just aren't smart enough to be let loose on polite society.
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