While there’s nothing remotely funny about the most recent bomb threats in London, I did raise a brief smile when I discovered that the government committee overseeing the response to the situation is apparently called … are you ready for this? … Cobra!!

I don’t know why this tickled me so much, beyond perhaps reminding me of a time when I used to run around in my underpants [1] carrying action figures and yelling things like, “Mister Amazing Super Ultra Man is not afraid of Cobra! He laughs at Cobra, and he buries the head of Cobra in the sandpit of despair!” Later, of course, underpants-wearing-Murray would forget that Mister Amazing Super Ultra Man had buried Cobra in the sandpit, and he would be utterly inconsolable until someone promised to buy him something expensive and shiny. And then he would bury that in the sandpit of despair as well.

Ah, childhood. I remember it as a golden age of underpants-wearing hysteria intermingled with the death threats of various action figures. All of which probably explains a lot about me as a grown man…

But back to the here and now.

If there’s one thing I know about the nature of men, it’s that we were once all boys [2], and as boys we all ran around with dreams in our heads of saving the world from The Bad Guys.

And this is why I smiled a little when I read about the existence of the Cobra Committee; because part of me would be willing to bet the house I don’t own on the fact that at least one man on that committee is secretly very chuffed that he really did grow up to be part of an organisation called Cobra.

It’s the kind of thing you’d wish you could brag about to the kids you used to live near when you were a boy.

Of course, you’d probably find out that they’d been part of a much cooler sounding committee for years, damn them.