News

Twenty years ago this month, Ayatollah Khomeini had a heart attack and died. Where I lived, just off the Hendon Way, I have to say we took the news stoically. We knuckled down and got on with our lives, exhibiting a surprising degree of sangfroid. Not so the people of Iran. They poured on to the streets, two million of them, gnashing and wailing. And they grabbed hold of the Ayatollah's body, which bounced around the crowd, falling out of its tiny wooden open coffin, each mourner ripping at the shroud. They all pushed to the front, unwilling to wait until the guys near the corpse sold their scrap of fabric on eBay. It was chaos. The authorities had to start the whole thing again, with a sturdier coffin and fewer people. We saw the pictures on the television and in Hendon we were a little bit shocked. And more than a little bit amused. Those Iranians with their beards and their carrying on, we clucked. They're bonkers. Imagine behaving like that. How different they are from us.