Manchester airport have unveiled their latest device to counter terrorism, or at least this is what they claim.
The terrahertz scanner, or Counter-Terror Hurts Scanner as it has been dubbed by insiders, is the X-Ray glasses that were always advertised on the back of comic books. Using a much shorter wavelength than X-rays, it can strip away clothing, revealing the bare flesh underneath, in images only, passengers remain clothed as they come out the other side.
"We can check for concealed weapons," Jim Bojet said, "no matter whereabouts on the person they are hidden. The machine is so sensitive it can detect piercings, breast implants and even artificial limbs."
Although Manchester Airport are keen to stress that all pictures are anonymous and sent to an off-site location for analysis where they are destroyed after scrutiny, some people are not convinced.
"Face it," said Civil Liberties spokesperson Cyril Liverty, "if you know that some big named celeb is coming through the airport, which you can by looking at the Heat website, you can copy off the pictures of naked celebrities either for your own pleasure or for sale to dubious magazines. They don't even have to be celebrities, they just could be hot looking."
All the images are from the neck down prompting the Sun to start running page three 'stunners' also from the neck down, under the banner "Is this you?".
Cyril Liverty is also not convinced that it will stop terrorism. "They'll just hide their weapons in their mouth, surely?"
The first passenger through the device, grandmother of seven, seventy-two year old Daisy Flower did not like the experience: "I don't know why they kept asking me to go back through it, what do they have a wrinkle fetish?"
