Yesterday London’s Daily Mail reported the disturbing story of Harraj Mann, the 24-year-old mobile phone salesman from Hartlepool, Teesside, who was hauled off a plane and questioned for three hours by terrorism investigators after listening to the Clash in a taxi on the way to the airport.

“The taxi had one of those tape deck things that plugs into your digital music player,” said Mann to the Daily Mail. “I played Procol Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade Of Pale’ first, which the taxi man liked. I figured he liked the classics so put on a bit of Led Zeppelin—‘Immigrant Song’—which he didn’t like. Then, since I was going to London, I played the song [‘London Calling’] by the Clash and finished up with ‘Nowhere Man’ by the Beatles.”

After his impromptu DJ gig, Mann boarded a plane at Durham Tees Valley Airport. Before takeoff, police raided the plane, marching Mann back to the terminal for the aforementioned three hours of questioning. Police told Mann he was being questioned under the Terrorism Act because his choice of music had aroused suspicions.

“It turned out the taxi driver alerted someone when I arrived at the airport and had spoken about my music,” Mann told the DM, which cited allegedly troublesome lyrics from both the Clash song—“London calling to the faraway towns, now war is declared and battle come down”—and Zep’s “Immigrant Song”: “The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands, to fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!”

“The lyrics to both tracks made the driver fear his passenger was a terrorist,” reports the DM.

This isn’t the first time that Clash lyrics have landed an Englishman in trouble with British terror investigators. Back on June 3, 2004, The Guardian reported the story of Mike Devine, the 35-year-old punk musician from Bristol who was questioned as a terror suspect after text-messaging Clash lyrics to a bandmate.

The lyrics in question were from Give ‘Em Enough Rope’s “Tommy Gun,” whose lyrics indeed read like a terrorism red alert. But in this case, the sender wasn’t a terrorist, just a member of a Clash tribute band (which is its own kind of terrorism), texting lyrics to the band’s lead singer. It didn’t help that Mike Devine sent the text to the wrong number, thus setting in motion the bogus terror alert.

Full story on Harraj Mann here.

Full story on Mike Devine here.

Full story on the Clash here.