BBC News subtitles have so much to teach us about the world. Last night alone I learnt that an EU mission is going to “rust police and justice services” in Kosovo, that the governor of Illinois has been trying to sell the senate seat of “President Lech Barack Obama” and that there has been more rioting today in “several Grix kitties”.

Veterans of Ceefax subtitles will know that using them can be a baffling experience. Current affairs programmes tend to be titled live by harassed stenographers, leading to countless lexicographical casualties: “The Prime Minister said that alkjf arbg zhnuf fekldp by the end of next week”, and similar alien transmissions. Occasionally it can be life-affirmingly daft, such as the other evening when Newsnight did a piece on the American private at the heart of the Abu Ghraib hi-jinks, the notorious “London Undergroundy England”.

So when Ceefax informed me a couple of months ago of ”rogue lemons in Sinn Fein”, I just thought it was more of the same. However, in the light of the fruit-based attack on the British Consulate ^[1], I’m no longer sure.

Incidentally, can it be credible that it’s just a coincidence missfrost posted about ”hot fruit salad” just two days before the attack? I suspect the NYPD won’t think so either.


^[1]New York's police commissioner has said that the fruit-alike “novelty grenades” used were of the type “that people might keep on their desks”.