And I thought the Forresters on B&B were screwed up...

One of the many awesome things about being at the LSE is the amazing speakers that come here and talk... for free! Today I attended a talk by Steve Coll, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of The Bin Ladens: The Story of a Family and its Fortune.

Ok, I'll admit it... I was extra excited to go to this talk because I'd seen him on The Daily Show last week and it was a pretty cool interview! And it feeds into my slightly odd fangirling (to put it very politely) of Jon Stewart.

But besides cool fake-news appearances, Coll was a really engaging speaker and told the most incredible tale of this incredible family.

Fun facts!

- Mohammed Bin Laden, Osama Bin Laden's dad, was born in absolute poverty in a canyon in Yemen, arrived in Jeddah just at the start of the Great Depression, had no formal education or training of any kind, yet rose, within his lifetime, to become one of the most prominent, wealthy and skilled contractors in Saudi Arabia.

- Mohammed had over 22 wives and 54 children. He had two 'steady' wives, and the other wives he married and divorced in a serial fashion, never having more than four at a time, as is forbidden by Islamic Law.

- He would marry a girl to establish business relationships with her family and tribe, and after divorcing her, arrange her re-marriage to a mid-level executive or business acquaintance, fully recognise any children she might have as his legitimate heirs, and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in alimony!

- Salem, Mohammed's oldest son and the one Osama was closest to, was the coolest, craziest character I've ever heard of. Incredibly fun-loving and charismatic, he played in a rock band called 'The Echoes', and collected private planes and jets and flew them himself all over the world, taking off to Paris or Rio on the spur of the moment whenever he got bored. Totally westernised and constantly surrounded by friends who were rock artists/pilots, he was a complete performer. He would travel around with a briefcase filled with $250,000 in various currency at all times, and whenever he landed up at a shindig where there was a band playing, whether it was a wedding or the Vanity Fair post-Oscars party at Los Angeles, he would bribe the band to give him the stage, and would then proceed to lead the party guests in a rousing rendition of Frère Jacques, his favourite song.

- He was killed when he flew a plane into some power cords in San Antonio, Texas. His father was also killed in a plane crash. Aviation is a strong recurrent theme in the story of the Bin Ladens.

- There apparently is something called a 'Where's Osama?' parlour game, which, I have to say, does not sound as cool as a 'Where's Osama?' giant picture book.

-Charlie Beckett thinks that Osama is hiding as a baggage handler in Terminal 5 of Heathrow.


Ok, heh.