Stephen King once wrote that horror and humour were two of the most difficult story forms to master, because funny gone wrong is almost always horrifying, while a bungled horror story runs the risk of eliciting shrieks of laughter in place of terror.

It didn't take long for the narrative threads of "Death Cult in the Suburbs" to unravel and the snickering to begin. And so we find, a few weeks after September's terror raids, that the mystery sword that featured so prominently in everybody's fever dreams of jihad come to Martin Place was not in fact the mighty blade of slashening; woe be unto the infidel. It was just a plastic toy, according to its owner. A replica artefact, as common in Shiite Muslim households as sun-faded happy snaps of Pope St John Paul II in the homes of Polish Catholics.

Illustration: Glen Le Lievre.

I guess it's a lucky thing the raids only turned up a plastic sword then. What if those 800 cops had found a toy light sabre? The headlines would have screamed "ISIS develops terrifying Stars Wars capability". The SAS might have been despatched to Tatooine.

There was always something dodgy about the scale of those raids, especially given the thin pickings they seemed to turn up. Very few arrests and now a prime piece of "evidence" negated.