Loathe as we are to give coverage to the blithering twit, this was a yarn too good to pass up. Convicted racist and serial pest Neil Erikson is currently in the middle of being hauled over the courtroom coals for breaching several previous court orders. And in the process of that hearing, Erikson, a far-right lunatic and vehemently Islamophobic moron, almost swore an oath with his hand on the Koran.

The backstory of the yarn goes thusly: Erikson was fired from his job as a forklift driver with Toll in 2014. He briefly worked for them again in 2017 in Tasmania, before the company sacked him again after they realised who he was.

Erikson, however, kept his high-vis Toll-branded work shirt, and he began wearing that shirt in a series of publicity-seeking videos in which he accosted people to spout inane racially-tinged nonsense at them. Notably, this was the shirt he was wearing in the infamous confrontation with Sam Dastyari in a West Footscray pub.

Toll, as you’d imagine, took exception to a dingus who doesn’t work for them being incredibly racist in public while wearing their shirt, so they took him to court in December to compel him to hand it back.

The court agreed to the order, but Erikson has yet to comply, childishly asserting he’d either “discarded” the uniforms, or passed them on to other idiot far-right colleagues for whatever reason.

That action has seen him hauled before the Federal Circuit Court on charges of contempt, and this is where the religious mixup went down.

While on paper it might seem likely that Erikson was trying to play silly buggers by swearing on the Koran, court reports indicate that he initially picked the book up, but sheepishly swapped to a Bible after court staff pointed out the difference.

Or, to surmise it another way: He simply does not know what a Koran looks like.

Erikson also told the court he was “just a forklift driver” with a year-8 education. Make of that what you will.

Barristers for Toll told the court to more or less ignore everything Erikson says, painting him as an egotistical show-off with no respect for the court system who’ll say anything that comes to mind if he thinks it’ll help his case.

In my submission, the court ought to be very, very wary of taking any uncorroborated evidence of Mr Erikson at face value. He has a willingness to say whatever he thinks might help his cause at the time.

Erikson was previously charged, and convicted, of both stalking and racial vilification.