The media has been full, in recent days, of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and its aftermath (of which more a little later) The police would like us to think that this kind of thing is rare, but I beg to differ.

The story's very simple. Diabetic chap in Leeds is going home on the bus when he has a hypo and falls into a coma. The driver finds him at the end of the trip, on the top deck and slumped over a rucksack. Those were nervous times, just after the 7/7 bombings in London, so the driver calls the police. When the police can't get a response from the chap (because he's in a coma, you see) they taser him. Twice.

Chap comes round in handcuffs and thinks he's been kidnapped.

When it's all sorted out and he's belatedly taken to hospital for treatment, he finally gets a half-hearted explanation that he was tasered because he `looked Egyptian.'

There was a picture of Nicholas Gaubert in the print edition of The Times this morning, but it isn't in the online edition. But take it from me, if he looks Egyptian, so do I. So does everyone. As he points out in the article - and it sounds bizarre to say this, in the circumstances - he was lucky. An ocean and a continent away, Robert Dziekanski was not so lucky.