Earlier this week an enterprising London hairdresser offended  the North Korean Embassy by daring to insult their illustrious leader Kim Jong-un.  In an advertisement to drum up business the hairdresser, Mo Nabbach, placed a poster in his shop window featuring a photograph of North Korea’s fun-loving and happy-go-lucky leader known as much for his strange hairstyle (now compulsory for all male North Korean students!) as for his crazy politics.  Beneath the photograph a caption announced, “Bad Hair Day? 15% off all cuts through the month of April”!

Evidently, the Embassy dispatched some stern besuited officials, clearly unused to British humour, let alone freedom of speech,  to the shop demanding that the poster be taken down claiming that it was disrespectful to their glorious leader. I have no idea what threats were made to the owner; perhaps they threatened to casserole the shop’s labrador (Lab-au-vin is quite a delicacy in Pyongyang so I understand) but anyway, it did the trick and the poster was duly removed.

 It was then put back up when supportive customers reminded the owner that the United Kingdom, unlike North Korea, is a free and democratic country where the only likelihood of a politician such as Kim Jong-un gaining power would be as leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party. How lucky we are to live in the West.