Review: 'Conspiracy Road Trip — 7/7 Bombings' Special

London - The 7/7 bombings were the most devastating and sinister terrorist attacks ever in these islands. Some people with more imagination than common sense believe they were even more sinister.

If you have a sense of déjà vu watching this programme, that is not surprising, we really have been here before with the Kennedy Assassination, the 9/11 Truthers, and for those with a sense of historical perspective the Protocols Of Zion or even the Monita Secreta, but please, let's not mention Operation Northwoods and all the other drivel about false flags - like the one that failed to materialise during the Olympic Games, mushroom cloud and all. In this series, comedian Andrew Maxwell takes a group of true believers from Leeds to London retracing the steps of the bombers. As might be suspected, he is far from the only comedian here, the big difference being that he can recognise a joke. He does though find it beyond the pale that the British Government would murder its own citizens for a PR stunt or to justify a war; this appears to be the official consensus on both sides of the Atlantic, even though governments have been murdering their own citizens since year dot, but to have done so here would have presented logistical problems nearly as great as those faced by the American Government had it set up 9/11, not least of which would be finding/recruiting/duping the perpertrators (alluded to here as patsies à la Oswald). At the time of the bombings, former would-be Mayor of London Brian Paddick was still a senior police officer, and was intimately involved with the investigation. They question him about the lack of CCTV coverage; his reasonable answers leave them unimpressed. We hear all manner of lunatic ideas here dressed us as conspiracy theories, which people who really know what they are talking about do their best to refute. One member of the group is a recent convert to Islam; it might be expected that many Moslems would be reluctant to admit that the people who nominally share their religion are capable of such shocking acts, but in view of what is currently happening in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, that sense of innocence is a little naïve. The final port of call is in the great outdoors where a man who knows about explosives is asked to refute the claim that home made explosives could not have destroyed a London bus. He does so in quite spectacular fashion. So was there no conspiracy? Of course there was, we know the names of the conspirators, two of them even taunted us about their deeds from beyond the grave. The 7/7 plot, or some version of it, was obviously in the making for some considerable time, and others beyond these shores almost certainly knew about it although probably only in a very general way. The British Government and its security arms though had no inkling of what was going on, because this was the first time suicide bombers had struck in the UK. Others have tried since, including a native born convert to Islamism, and others may yet try. Conspiracy Road Trip — 7/7 Bombings is currently on iplayer, but won't be for long.