They turned up in Walthamstow. Yes, its the nutters who think that the UK should have Sharia Law imposed on it. Anjem Choudary and his sad taggle of groupies at 'Islam For The UK'.They bottled out of trudging around in the Westminster/Parliament area, taking in Whitehall, Downing Street and Trafalgar Square as the first step in their pointless campaign to demand the full implementation of sharia law in Britain. They wasted their breath in the Town Square instead.

As I have said elsewhere, sometimes the group's demands are so bizarre you have to suspect them of being on the CIA's payroll as agents provocateurs.

Having earmarked Buckingham Palace to be turned into a mosque, (it has better views than the Chingford Holiday Inn) they are certainly setting their sights high, but not much higher I suppose than some of the other eccentric groups who are attracted to this neighbourhood, like the Taiwanese sect who have turned the old Walthamstow Town Hall into a Yi Guan Dao temple, the dodgy Brazilian wierdos called the United Church of the Kingdom of God who bought up the EMD cinema, or even the El-Shaddai sect who have infiltrated one of the local Catholic Churches.

We love these peddlers of nonsense on stilts, all in their wierd eccentricities and charlatanism, just as we tolerate Anglicans who are more High Church than the Vatican and a Church of Spiritualists up in the village. This is, after all, a town with a centuries old tradition of nutty religious types seeking the limelight - home to dreamers and utopians like the rebellious Quaker and spoilt little son of Sir William Penn and even, dare I say it, William Morris. Maybe there is something in the water.

Anyway, back to today's headline act. Be aware that I have never yet actually met anyone who gave the likes of Anjem Choudary the time of day. None of his group of religious show-offs are representative of the muslims I know. The group's demands are so bizarre that one current theory is that they are really on the CIA's payroll as agents provocateurs, acting as a lightening rod for extremists, a good excuse for agents on expenses to hang about in London or even as cover for the agency's alleged drive to track down the real extremists.

One clue, for the Internet Connoisseurs of Conspiracy, to this American involvement, might come from some rather odd captioning on You Tube. This is for a clip of an interview with these people today, with an error that you might think only a New Yorker would make: the Town Square is described as 'Walthamstow Central Park':

"31/10/09 at Walthamstow Central Park today Islam4uk and Al-muhajiroun carrying the Call of the Deen of Allah to be implemented in Britain. Many of the Media came to interview Sheikh Anjem Choudary Head of Al-Muhajiroun UK Branch, along with Islam4uk:"

Not much to go on, I admit, but the history of the moon landings has been re-written based on less.