Boat protester Trenton Oldfield admitted his hopes of disrupting the Bahrain Grand Prix are in tatters after failing to secure a reasonably priced airfare on lastminute.com.
Mr Oldfield said: “It is very disappointing that I can no longer make a statement against the elitist rulers of … what country was I going to again? Anyway, I feel for the people of, um, wherever I was going, as they are now powerless to oppose the oppressive regime.”
Bahrain ruler Shaikh Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa was understandably ecstatic at the news: “Now that the threat of protest has disappeared, the Grand Prix can go ahead as normal, and I have given the army and police the weekend off.”
Members of the Shiite majority were, however, distraught and took to drowning their sorrows in their Molotov cocktails as the realisation sunk in that they would no longer have an Australian educated at the London School of Economics to draw attention to their plight.