Now I shouldn’t make light of the terrorist menace, but The Chaser’s War on Everything highlighted how ridiculous circumstances can be on occasion when the boys nearly ended up in George Bush’s lap after a stunt went for better or worse – depending how you look at it.

I mention this for a pure personal reason, brought on by a recent plane trip when I had time to reflect how our airport security works.

It all started when I was attempting to fly to Gladstone a few weeks ago and then go on to Townsville the next day.

Sadly, to get to either destination by plane you have to go to Brisbane and then fly north, waving to the Sunshine Coast as you fly over.

Arriving early at Brisbane, I was met with three problems: the baggage belt had broken down, there was heavy fog and the self-serve ticket spitter wasn’t working, so I had to check in.

Now here is my first observation.

Bin Laden could check in using the ticket spitter, but if it wasn’t working he would have to go up, like I did, to the counter and produce ID before being checked in.

How does that work?

It looked like it was going to be a lengthy delay so instead of checking my bag in, I put it back in the car and just took a toothbrush and deodorant and crammed these into my carry-on laptop bag.

My reasoning was that if it was going to be a long delay, I could simply just go home and I wouldn’t have to try and retrieve my bag.

But as soon as I pulled off the master stroke, everything started moving and the fog lifted.

Then I had to go through security and two things slowed me up.

First, as my bag got X-rayed it was discovered that I was carrying an illegal container.

Yes folks, the lid of my deodorant was somewhere in the boot of my car, so the container was confiscated, which normally wouldn’t have worried me, but with the no clean clothes it was to prove to be a problem.

But I wasn’t the only one being searched by the highly trained staff. There were the shoeless, the beltless and, like me, the hopeless.

My second problem was the security who stop you after you have been everything but strip searched.

Now if my strike rate was as good at punting as it is at getting randomly searched for bombs, I would be a rich man.

Nearly every trip they get me.

Is it because I have a bad head or that I look like a Kiwi and most of the security staff, being from the Land of the Long White Cloud, are just pulling me up for a chat?

The rest of that trip was eventless, apart from being a bit smelly.

But the next morning out of Gladstone bound for Townsville, more fog and further delay.

After a couple of hours of sitting and sweating, we board.

I might add that underpants and socks washed in a motel hand basin do not have the same feel.

Now here is the next glitch: there are no security screening facilities at Gladstone.

So after taking off over two hours late, we had to land at Rockhampton to pick up passengers and then get off the plane and check back in through security.

This doesn’t make much sense to me.

It seems that a lot of our security measures are set up to monitor the 99% of passengers who are honest.

Because if you weren’t, you could check in online under the name Mr D Duck and jump on in Brisbane – as long as you have a cap for your deodorant.

In provincial airports you can get on with whatever.

As for my return trip, nothing much happened until I left Brisbane airport and encountered the three sets of lights that had just been installed at the roundabout leaving the joint, which lengthened my journey and shortened the life of my underpants considerably.

I reckon there is a job in airport security for the genius who wrecked a perfectly good roundabout.