[Omah]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14218654

Tiswas' Phantom Flan-Flinger Tiswas' Phantom Flan-Flinger did not have political motivations

A protester disrupted Rupert Murdoch's appearance before MPs, allegedly attacking the media tycoon with an improvised custard pie. Why do protesters throw pies?

All it took was a shaving foam-covered plate for an occasion of high political drama to turn into a spectacle of low comic farce.

By apparently trying to plant an improvised flan in the face of Rupert Murdoch as the tycoon appeared before a Commons committee, one activist guaranteed a place on the following day's front pages as well as his arrest.

Of course, this "custard pie", as it was invariably described, contained no custard and little else that might qualify it as a pie.

But the attacks fitted a familiar template of reducing the prominent and powerful to the status of child actors in Alan Parker's celebrated musical Bugsy Malone - or, indeed, youngsters on the set of 1970s Saturday morning show Tiswas who fell foul of the Phantom Flan-Flinger.