Chris Morris helps train spies

MI5 agents told: Watch Four Lions

British intelligence agents have been told to watch Chris Morris’s Four Lions movie to get a better understanding of home-grown terrorists.

A former CIA spy who provided research for Morris’s comedy about a hapless English jihadist cell told the satirist that MI5 operatives were being ‘encouraged’ to watch the film.

Morris made the revelation during a Q&A session at the Latitude festival this weekend, two nights after his latest meeting with Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer in Afghanistan and now a forensic psychiatrist and author of the influential book Understanding Terror Cells.

The comedian reiterated that the script, also written by Peep Show’s Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, was inspired by real-life stories from reformed fundamentalists.

He said: ‘We spoke to people who walked the path and came back, so we could paint an accurate picture. There’s a guys’ dynamic, even in a terrorist cell.’

Morris cited such real-life situations as an Algerian terrorist summoned to Bin Laden in the late Nineties. But at the meeting the visitor told the Al Qaeda chief that he would have nothing to do with his plans as he had his own atrocities, and delivering a withering put-down. ‘Bin Laden was left sitting on a rock looking like a slapped child,’ Morris said.

He also said that Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the man convicted over the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, used to spend forever getting dressed as he was obsessed with appearing fat – and that when he quoted from the Koran he’d often get it wrong leaving his ‘co-plotters pissing themselves laughing’.

And, Morris, says, it wasn’t just the would-be mujahideen he learned about that could come a cropper, but the security services as well. He recalled: ‘Once on surveillance operations in Northern Ireland, one of them was locked in the boot of the car – and the car got jacked by some youths.

‘In virtually any job you will have people say, “You never guess what happened at work today”.’

Morris said of the terrorist characters in his film: ‘There’s something ridiculous about them, as there is with every bunch of average blokes. They are basically going to balls it up as they go along.’

‘But we felt that as silly as things got, we would never lose sight of the fact the these guys were playing with serious consequences. Being ridiculous doesn’t stop you setting off an explosive. We hope we kept hold of both elements.’

He added that no topics should be off limits to comedians. ‘It’s not the subject, it’s how you approach it,’ he said. ‘Any subject can be joked about, it depends if the joke is good enough. You ask, “Are you being funny?” If the joke doesn’t gel, then you take it out. You don’t stop yourself looking at topics because it has a warning on; if it touches a raw nerve, then people tend to be overprotective.’

Morris also said he was heartened by the reaction Four Lions had received in the States, where he feared a backlash for joking about terrorism.

‘We were perhaps overly concerned about the States,’ he admitted. ‘It’s played at three festivals and gone down well. We felt slightly guilty for having judged them.’