Oh no, not the bomb joke

I stand with arms outstretched, like Jesus on the cross. But unlike Jesus, I am scared my jeans will fall down. The belt that usually holds them up is passing through an airport X-ray machine. As are my bag, jacket, wallet, pens, coins, keys, reading glasses, nicotine gum, cigarettes and lighter. Unless, that is, I am in the Philippines, where the lighter will have been confiscated.

An officer frisks me with hands like questing butterflies. Up my legs they flutter, then over my buttocks, my back, my chest and along my arms, but not, I notice, over my crotch. So there's the answer. When my anger at being pointlessly searched in airports finally reaches such incandescence that I feel compelled to act, I'll tape a bomblet behind my scrotum with the detonator clenched between my cheeks. It will kill no one except myself and I won't make a pretty corpse, but I will make damn sure I take out a particular notice. You know the one I mean. It's the only notice in human history to forbid, on pain of imprisonment, the making of jokes. I am not allowed to crack a joke about bombs.

Jokes are essential to mental well-being. But all authorities hate them because jokes pierce to the truth. Jokes see through bogus seriousness and say, "oh come off it". The instinct to make jokes is a natural reaction to overweening authority.

The authorities have an obvious response. Airport security, they will say, is no laughing matter. Do I want planes to be blown up?

Well, no, but jokes won't blow them up. I acknowledge that the jokes might get tedious for the security staff, but there are plenty of professions in which bad jokes from the public are an occupational risk, not the least of which is being a columnist. And anyway, my point is that the security staff shouldn't be there to find the jokes tedious. There is no need for airport screening. (At Heathrow they even make you remove your shoes. It's an olfactory horror show.)

Last week I caught a plane from Tauranga to Auckland. I was not screened. I could have boarded that plane in a fully primed explosive waistcoat and with a Kalashnikov down each trouser leg. The plane had about 40 passengers, including a member of parliament. Many a suicide bomber has gone to his grave for a far smaller and less impressive bag.

Again the authorities have an obvious response. They will say that a line had to be drawn somewhere and it got drawn at Tauranga. Besides, terrorists would not bother with a little plane like that. They want a bigger splash.

Well now, we flew to a crowded terminal at Auckland, where even the most obvious psychotic – sweaty, unshaven and muttering ecstatically about a gross of virgins to come – could join a check-in queue unchallenged. Though why he would bother to go all the way out to the airport to kill people is unclear. He had only to board a bus or train in the rush-hour to guarantee a massive cull of the innocent.

Terrorists have been with us in one form or another for centuries. They change their ideological plumage, but not their nature. And they have always been spoilt for choice of targets. Vivaldi concerts, Women's Institute conventions, bridge clubs, dog shows, all are open to any dingbat dressed in dynamite and all are splendidly newsworthy.

Terrorism has two purposes. One is to frighten the public and the other is to disrupt it. So the best response is to carry on as normal and ignore it. Intrusive, time-wasting, expensive airport security is a victory for the dingbats. And what's so special about planes? In 2005 39 people were blown up on the London Underground. The Tube still has no security screening.

The only answer I can think of is that planes brought down the World Trade Center. So the whole infuriating business of frisking at airports is, at best, a sop to the cowed American consumer. At worst it's a way for various governments to justify unjustifiable foreign policy.

In the light of that, are you willing to take the tiny risk of boarding planes unscreened? Good, because so am I. If every X-ray machine were biffed into the sea, the only problem would arise in the Philippines.

Outside the smoking room in Manila airport sits a security guard. He has a fistful of lighters that he rents to smokers who have had theirs confiscated. The lighters he rents are the confiscated lighters. For a slightly larger consideration he'll even sell you your own lighter back. That enterprising man would need to be compensated. And with a generosity born of irritation, I am offering to foot that bill. So how about it?