If you know your Shakespeare well you are doing better than I am. If you know it a bit you will know enough to know that the jesters are very often the cleverest people in the play.

This film is another example of this.

At first glance Hans Blix, Ari Fleischer, Noam Chomsky don’t have that much in common. Even at second glance they don’t, apart from having silly names. What they do have in common is that they were duped by a sacked daytime TV producer (Joel Wilson) and an unsuccessful writer (Jamie Campbell) into appearing in one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

If you add Abu Hamza, Giovanni Di Stefano, Abdel Bari Atwan, the preacher from Dubya’s local Baptist church and plenty others into the mix you end up with something very amusing and insightful.

It was made in 2003, before the war started. The premise is that said writer and sacked TV producer need money so decide to go and find Osama Bin Laden in order to claim the 25 million dollar reward. Figuring that most conventional intelligence tactics are already being used, they determine to think outside the box and find him by unconventional means. In this cause they decide to “get behind the beard of the man and find out what really makes him tick”.

This was after their initial idea of phoning directory inquiries and asking for the “axis of evil” did not bring results. Unsuccessful yet unperturbed they carry on and begin to speak to a familiar group of people, many of whom have met bin Laden.

Rather than looking in the Tora Bora they begin in London. They first call on Abdel Bari Atwan (the editor of the UK’s largest Muslim Newspaper) with whom they discuss Bin Laden’s speciality dish of skimmed processed cheese “from basic milk…I was appalled” says Bari Atwan. He also believes bin Laden to be a master of disguise and said he would not be surprised if Bin Laden is in America wearing an Armani suit.

They move on Tavistock in Devon where they speak to his former schoolteacher Brian Fyfield-Shayler, who says he feels protective of all his students and on hearing Bin Laden was first in trouble thought “you silly sod”. He believes that “we in the West should be looking at what can turn and ordinary…a fairly ordinary… pleasant young man with perhaps a few little quirks into such a person”

Armed with their possible American link (from Bari Atwan) they head to Portland, where Mohammed Atta spent the evening. They spend the evening setting traps with processed cheese to see if this entices Bin Laden out of hiding - in doing this they are actually assisted by the hotel staff.

The bizarre questions and metaphors they come up with during their interviews are consistently funny and although some of their guests are suspicious of what it is all about none of them really catch on. It was broadcast on Channel 4, which might explain the access they manage to get. They are in the Whitehouse press conference, the United Nations (where they doorstep Hans Blix) and they get into trouble very near Bush’s ranch, long before Cindy Sheehan did the same thing.

Neocon author (and member of the American Enterprise Institute) Michael Ladine is next and he thinks (or says that he thinks) Bin Laden is in Iran. He says it is a mistake to call it war and it should rather be called ‘Democratic Revolution’. He is further convinced that what is going on is…

“like the movie ‘the Godfather’. Under normal circumstances mafia families fight with each other – even kill one another over turf and territory and honour and all kinds of things. When the government comes after them the heads of the five families sit down around the table and they make a war plan.”

From this point it has all become too clear to the investigators “Osama, Saddam, Kim Jong-Il, somewhere they were all sitting together, eating spaghetti and mumbling incoherently.”

Although they are being funny with everyone they interview some people do say some rather striking things. Robert Baer, the resigned CIA operative said that he could find Bin Laden within in a month but that it would need the cooperation of the Middle-Eastern governments and that is unlikely to be arriving any time soon. He is not however convinced that catching bin Laden would make any difference.

There are also a couple of voxpops where they have used photoshop to remove Bin Laden’s beard and ask the public if they recognise who it is. One person only wanted to say “I’m not snitching”.

They go to a church where Bush apparently worships. The preacher is making a tirade against homosexuality (apparently gay people are “senseless, faithless, heartless and ruthless”). Also, apparently we all either love god, or we hate god. You are with us or you are against… come on, you know this tune!

It really is a fantastic piece and covers other topics like the relationship of the Bush’s and the Bin Laden’s, the Carlyle group and more. I don’t want to spoil all the jokes and I have only mentioned a few here.

I also don’t want to spoil where there investigations take them and the grand finale.

Watch this, it is hilarious.

Watch it free… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVwTdPyxZhA

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