Economic deprivation, social exclusion and family breakdown are often cited as the underlying reasons for why increasing numbers of young British Muslim men are driven into religious extremism.

But for Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the fertiliser bomb plot, terrorism appears almost to have been a career choice.

The grandson of a British Army colonel and the son of a wealthy businessman, he enjoyed a comfortable middle class childhood in a secular household in the West Sussex commuter town of Crawley.

Like many British schoolboys, he loved those twin pillars of English life - Manchester United and fish and chips.

Although his parents were divorced, he was still part of a close family, studied hard at school and was mad about cricket - a sport at which he excelled. According to some, he dreamed of playing for Sussex, or even England.

The idea of Khyam walking out in cricket whites at Lords seems extraordinary now. Instead of playing for his country, he stands convicted of plotting to bomb it.

The story of his radicalisation is a cautionary tale because it proves that even in the absence of poverty, social isolation and the influence of a malign peer group, religious extremism, death and destruction can still seem like an attractive option for a young middle class British Muslim in modern Britain.

Khyam’s family claim he was “brainwashed” at an impressionable age by religious extremists. Undoubtedly this played its part.

What is known is that Khyam became interested in radical Islam at an exceptionally young age - several years before the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that are blamed for inspiring the post 9/11 generation of terrorists.

Khyam was just 22 at the time of his arrest in March 2004 and was already in the final stages of preparing a major al-Qaeda-inspired attack.

Compare that to Mohammed Sidique Khan, the ringleader of the July 7 suicide cell, who was 30 when he blew himself up on the London Underground.

In one of the pair’s secretly-taped conversations, Khan once told the young Khyam: “There is no one higher than you.”

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