[news.bbc.co.uk]

“Would I look less dodgy without my rucksack?” I asked. “Dodgy,” he replied. “What about if I wore a suit?” “You’d look like a dodgy bloke in a suit,” he said. “How about if I shaved my beard?” “Dodgy. Just face it – you look dodgy,” came the disconcerting reply.

Over the seven weeks I was stopped and searched three times under the terrorism act. But it seemed absurd to me, I mean what does a terrorist look like? Do they all have beards and rucksacks? Does making sweeping generalisations make us any safer?

No, said John O’Connor, who was in charge of the Met police flying squad in the late 1980s when London faced the threat of the IRA. He told me a terrorist will always do the unexpected and we shouldn’t fall into the trap of having reassuring stereotypes.

But people were making generalisations and it scared me, especially when the Met introduced a shoot-to-kill policy. If an innocent, beardless, Brazilian man had been killed, was I even more of a target?