"If it pleases the court..."

 
The Observer covers the story of Gillian Gibbons' ordeal -- the woman who was jailed for naming a teddy bear Mohammed.

[She spent] eight days of fear in a Sudan cell as angry mobs demanded her death for 'blasphemy'...

At times, Gibbons found herself both terrified by her situation and simultaneously bemused by its absurdity. In a moment of almost farcical surreality, the teddy bear itself made a courtroom appearance. 'This clerk of the court got this carrier bag and produced this bear with a flourish, like a rabbit out of the hat,' Gibbons recalls. 'He put it down on the table in front of us and it flopped over, and the prosecution [lawyer] sat him up. And then he pointed at this bear in a dead aggressive manner and he said "Is this the bear?..."

Sometimes the material just writes itself.