Gangsta's paradise

Not for the first time, Alex Thomson didn’t know what to do, so he drove to the heart of Col Gaddafi’s Tripoli power base. And he found a party.

Looking around in gawping amazement, it needs a Royal Marine to sum it up. We have one, handily enough, 19 stone-worth of Daz, our security adviser.

“Blimey,” he opines, “all they need now is an ice-cream concession and they’ve got Gaddafi World.”

You just drive in, through the outer blast walls, second outer blast walls, third mid-perimeter blast walls, fourth mid-inner sangar-protected blast wall, fifth inner protective – well you get the idea and suddenly you’ve made it, you’re in.

Welcome to Bab al-Aziziya, The Colonel’s Compound, the ultimate expression of the State Paranoia School of Architecture.

There, dead ahead, Col Gaddafi’s main HQ building.

Already covered in graffiti, its windows  blasted out by war. Some lads have turned up and (stylish this) have set their Kalashnikovs to single shot and are banging off bullets to the punch of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” blasting out from the Toyota pick-up.

Others bring the wife, kids, gran and a picnic would be on but it was Ramadan (so there went the ice-cream bit, Daz).

The point is to come, be here, savour, watch, drink it all in after 42 years of The Colonel.

Wave your flag. Whack off a blast from your anti-aircraft gun. Hug a friend. Hug a total stranger. Wear a daft hat. Dance around the ruins.

Joy! Relief! Hope!

“I love my flag. It’s amazing,” says 12-year-old Miram Zintan in wonderful English. “I’m so so so so happy now for all Libya and I want to be a doctor coz you help people and your country and it makes your heart all cosy.”

Who is to deny such hope, and young hearts the chance to feel cosy at last, right here in the ruins of the gangsta’s paradise?

@alextomo