There was an article in the local paper a year back that made me laugh.

Firstly a large front page story about a dawn raid on a local house, dozens of armed police offficers, man dragged out and whisked away, men in white suits come in and strip the house bare. Lots of activity.

Interviews with locals, ranging from "nice chap, helped repair my car once" to "he's a bit weird, keeps himself to himself, doesn't seem to have a job" etc.

Anyway, about a week later they have an interview with him - he was taken to Paddington Green (high security police station in London) and interviewed for a long time, asking about anything and everything. Then they released him and I think he had to beg for a train ticket home.

He said that on return from a coach trip to France a couple of weeks earlier everybody was ordered off and taken away before being let back on a bit later. He suspects there were radiation detectors at the port and the alarms went off. When they didn't find anything they must have done background checks on the passengers and turned up him. Apparently he was an engineer for Boeing and worked on some very sensitive projects in the US for quite a while (hence no job - must have been good money). That was presumably enough for the police! Anyway, must be some red faces from the neighbours when he read the papers...

Gareth