“BUPA takes over failing NHS terror cell,” declared the headline in yesterday’s Daily Mash above a picture of a startled-looking man in a black balaclava.

“Private healthcare firm Bupa is being parachuted in to take control of the NHS’s failing British terror campaign,” said the story. It added: “Dr Stephen Malley, head of Bupa’s NHS task force, said: ‘The NHS terrorists are good people with good intentions and they are doing their best to incinerate themselves and the public in very difficult circumstances. But it is clear they need private sector expertise. There is too much red tape and form-filling involved in NHS fanaticism. We will outsource that work to a call centre in Pakistan and let terrorist doctors be terrorist doctors.’”

During a week that has seen their airport targeted by suicide bombers and their city turned into the latest battleground in the global war on terror, the people of Glasgow have fought back with their own unique weapon: black humour. The stories on the Daily Mash, an online satirical newspaper based in Scotland, speak volumes about the ability of Glaswegians to laugh in the face of adversity.

Within hours of a Jeep Cherokee being driven into the terminal building at Glasgow Airport last Saturday, the website was attracting visitors from around the world.

Reporting that the UK terror threat level had been raised from “spacehopper” to “underpants”, the Mash’s first reaction was a story posted on Sunday under the headline “airport attackers to be charged under antismoking laws”. It read: “Two men who drove a lit car into the main concourse at Glasgow Airport are to be charged under Scotland’s tough antismoking laws. The attackers were caught on CCTV as they lit up a Jeep Cherokee and then allowed it to burn in an enclosed public space.”

Over the past week a steady stream of stories – including “bomb doctors struck off for working Saturdays” and “London bomb ‘not scary enough’, Brown tells MI5” – has given the website a fivefold increase in visitors to around 50,000.

Written in the finest tradition of satirical news websites, its postings over the past few days have combined sharp writing with a peculiarly Glasgow touch. On Monday it had 25,000 visitors, with about half from the US, as people from across the world clamoured for a taste of Glasgow’s gallows humour. Its readers’ forum page includes the posting: “spares/repair: L-reg Jeep Cherokee, needs paint, no battery, gas conversion, charcoal interior, tinted windows. . . bargain £2,500, will exchange for air miles.”

Paul Stokes, the Mash’s co-editor, said: “It helps that nobody died in the attack, but within hours people were laughing and joking. We’re supposed to be terrified by these people [the attackers] but to be honest they’re a joke.”

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