On Sunday we were performing Horrible Histories in the West End, when a cold thought crossed my mind.

Holding a severed head in my hand, I was busy explaining to a delighted and horrified audience that two thousand years ago the ancient Celts stuck severed heads onto the gates of their hill forts, when my mind wandered over to a British extremist who had tweeted a photo of himself holding the decapitated head of fellow Muslim who he had apparently slaughtered that day. This deluded and self-important Brit who was working in London just a few months ago, used the most modern form of communication to take us all back to those brutal times when cutting off your enemy’s head was de rigueur 

I’ve always thought that predictions of the West having to fight off Muslim extremists was a futuristic and fanciful vision dreamt up by a neo-con fantasist. It is starting to lose its fanciful tinge.