Spartacus has blown up Robin Hood Airport!

Sounds like a mash-up time travel movie doesn’t it? Actually it’s slightly more surreal than that. The famous book, 1984 by George Orwell, appears to have crash landed in Judge Jacqueline Davies’s head – there was enough room - in a bid to punish the aspiring terrorist Paul Chambers.

Now there are crap jokes and there are crap jokes. "Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!" I hope was one of Paul Chambers’ worse ones.

But a fine of £2,000 for such a limited sense of humour, seems, even to me, fairly absurd.

Paul tweeted this immortal phrase when his dirty weekend to Northern Ireland was postponed due to an excess of snow at Robin Hood airport. It took our brave officers in blue a full week to track him down at his home address and arrest him. Arrested under the terrorist act, he was then taken to court and convicted of a minor infringement under a law the Crown Prosecution Service found down the side of the sofa, namely one dating from the 1930’s and aimed at protecting “female telephonists at the Post Office.”

Judge Jacqueline Davies then effectively called him a liar – which he might be - most of us are, before refusing his appeal and fining him £2,000.

And that was when the twitterverse exploded (literally. Tweets fell from the air) with thousands of tweeters (bear in mind that these are not real people – only electronic simulations of them) repeating his tweet under the banner of “I am Spartacus”. A real thumb in the face to the no doubt technologically challenged adntherefore unaware Judge Jacqueline Davies.

All these surreal shenanigans have been reported in the newspapers, and the twitter being Stephen Fry has offered to pay off Paul’s fine. Paul himself has admitted it was a crap joke and he maybe should have been told off for being stupid. Leave the stand up to Stephen, Paul.

A storm in a thimble? Undoubtedly, and I wish it had been about a decent joke at the least. But with other, similar cases looming one can hope that a case is being made for the repealing of some of Labour’s more draconian laws. We are, currently, living in a post-1984 world. The new clone government has done some good by, for example, cutting the ID card scheme but a lot more remains to be done. They can continue with cutting the Judge out of Judge Jacqueline Davies – I imagine the NHS would cover the operation.

The twiiterverse is a naval gazing indulgence for the media class, and while the Iran “green your icon” campaign did revolt me in it’s ineffectuality, in cases like this – where it is not a life or death matter and indeed, not very important, - then I think it is strangely apt. The story started in 140 characters, but I wonder where it’ll finish.