Hilarious article from the Scottish Daily Record on Dom Joly’s latest Tintin antic. Rather than trying to summarize it for you, here it is in all its glory:

Exclusive: Comic Dom Joly sparks terror alert after dressing up as Tintin

Jan 24 2010 Alan Carson, Sunday Mail

FUNNYMAN Dom Joly sparked a terror alert while filming a TV stunt dressed as cartoon boy detective Tintin.

The Trigger Happy TV star had his skean dubh confiscated by officials while filming a documentary on the Belgian junior reporter. He dressed up as the cartoon character during a trip to the island of Barra – complete with red kilt and blue beret. But Joly was nabbed by officials at Glasgow Airport after trying to take the clothes and knife through security.

He revealed: “We hired a kilt and all the trimmings, including a homemade beret with red pompom. But airport security is a problem for Tintin.

“Firstly the X-ray machine showed up the replica knife that traditionally accompanies Scottish garb, which was immediately confiscated.

“This led to a thorough search of Tintin’s suitcase.

“The official tried not to look too closely at the bottles of orange hair dye and the copy of Men’s Muscle Weekly.

“They asked who the bag belonged to, so I said: ‘It’s Tintin’s technically. It’s a prop suitcase.

“Staring at our group in which only one of us was wearing plus-fours, a sky-blue jumper and had dyed orange hair, she asked: ‘Which one of youse is Tintin?

“I looked a little more like Tintin’s unhealthy elder brother than the real thing but at least I made the effort.

“She was clearly not a fan. It was all getting very surreal.”

Joly and his production crew were finally allowed to pass through and boarded the tiny aircraft to Barra. He is shooting a documentary for Channel 4 about Tintin and was keen to find the Black Island that features in the book of the same name.

The star visited the village of Castlebay, which Tintin writer Herge used for the village of Kiltoch in the 1938 book in which Tintin dresses in a kilt. After touring the island, Joly spent a wild night in an island pub before heading back to Glasgow and catching a ferry to Arran.

The visit north of the Border was the final piece in his forthcoming programme about the character. Tintin nut Joly is making an hourlong documentary to mark the 80th anniversary of the first story.

Joly said: “It’s not easy this Tintin lark.”

A Glasgow Airport spokesman said: “It is unfortunate that the skean dubh, despite being made of plastic, could not be taken on the aircraft.”

Famed French cartoonist, collaborator of Herge’s, and one of the leading lights of the Ligne Claire style died today at the age of 88. A sad day for comics.

A quick wiki bio:

After being initially forced into engineering studies as a young man, Jacques Martin began in 1942 to draw his first comic stories. In 1946, following the end of the War, he travelled through Belgium in search of an editor for his work. Soon afterwards he met Georges Remi (aka Hergé) with whom he collaborated on several albums of The Adventures of Tintin (and more specifically on Tintin in Tibet and The Red Sea Sharks) while working on his own albums. It was from Hergé that he learned of the ligne claire style and, under Hergé’s guidance, began to use it in his own work. He would later be considered one of the great five of the ligne claire style, along with Hergé, Edgar P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor and Willy Vandersteen.^[1]

In 1948, he created Alix, his most famous series, published in the magazine Tintin, whose adventures – extremely-well researched – occur in Roman antiquity. This historic comic soon became one of the most popular of the genre and went on to be published in several countries worldwide.