Taking my shoes off for airport security at Austin airport, I cursed the shoe bomber (Richard Reid, I think his name was—a completely incompetent suicide bomber - he’s still alive). He has contributed to worsening the air travel experience. I guess I should have been grateful that he wasn’t an underwear bomber. May he rot in prison.

A Texan once declared to me that convicts have it too easy—being fed hamburgers and watching television all day. If that’s what US prison life is like, then I beg to differ. If they have to watch US television, it counts as a cruel and unusual punishment—let the shoe bomber have many years of it. Even better, put him in advertorial confinement, and force him to watch just the adverts. (Side-effects are headache, nausea and diarrhea).

If you’re looking for airport security hell, then I strongly recommend a journey to Israel. I’ve been there several times. On one occasion, I had arrived from Stockholm and having given a presentation, I returned to Tel Aviv airport to head off for London.

I got the third degree from some 24 year-old female security tyrant—an experience made far worse by the fact that she was attractive. She tore my luggage to pieces taking care to examine everything—even dirty washing. She scanned my laptop and mobile phone personally. Then she started to dissect me. Who was I? Where had I been staying?

“If you came from Sweden, why are you not returning to Sweden?”

Because I live in the UK.

“If you live in the UK, why did you not come from the UK?”

Because I had business in Sweden.

“If you had business in Sweden, why have you come to Israel?”

On business.

“What business?”

Computer business.

“What do you do?”

I analyze technology and technology trends.

“What was the business in Israel?”

A presentation for IBM.

“You have this on your laptop?”

Yes.

“Show me.”

I load up Powerpoint and the presentation I had done.

“Now talk me through it!”

I looked her in the eyeballs and said “Are you serious?”

She gave me a look that said “I’ve got all the time in the world and your plane is leaving soon”. So I started to present, and I did it as if I had an audience of a hundred. I got to the third slide and she said “enough already.”

“But you don’t get it”, I said, “I’m about to get to the major point here. It’s OK having a powerful desktop, but the browser interface makes most of that power unnecessary. And when every application gets browser enabled, the desktop becomes much more manageable.”

“Enough,” she said.

“I don’t think you’re buying my argument,” I said.

But she shot me a look that smelt of handcuffs, so I decided not to accuse Israel of being in the pocket of Microsoft and started, instead, to reconstitute my luggage.

That ought to count as my most bizarre airport security experience, but it isn’t. The strangest was landing in Montevideo and having my luggage scanned for bombs, as we left the plane.

This completely fazed me and I actually thought I must be dreaming. I still can’t work it out. So they don’t mind if you blow the planes up, but they have to stop any bomb that failed to explode getting into Uruguay. You get the feeling that someone wrote a directive wrong, but no-one dared to question it.