There are historically a number of documented cases of human beings bursting into flames... an event referred to as "spontaneous combustion". Whilst I recognise that this is not "quite" the same as "exploding" do we not now have reason to ban all humans from internal and international flights?

I suggest they fire a gun into the air at the same time as pulling the cracker. Same effect, and according to the RAF, safer all round.

P.S. Your 'Remember me on this computer' still doesn't work.

You could use a paper bag to save the MoD money? Rather than firing the gun? For extra comic effect you could do this whilst a colleague is clearing a mine-field.

I've just had an image of a couple of Jihadis in a heated argument about why their home-grown RPG (firework rocket, Christmas cracker and tape) has failed to blow a Land Rover to pieces.

Thanks for the surreal moment.

See why waste 300 squillion pound on a surface to surface missile? All we need to do is throw a few brightly coloured paper cylinders at the buggers. Then if the explosive fails to kill them, the sounds of laughter and bright hats will give their positions away, making it easy to target them with more advanced weapons, such as the fearsom cap gun or the brutal party popper!

"The troops will just have to go 'bang' themselves when they pull them," said Ian Dalzel-Job of the Scots Guards Association

Brilliant. I stopped reading at that point and thus have no interest in this story in case it doesn't turn out the way I assume it does.

I thought it was just the sailors that were into all that saucy stuff? I can see I've been grossly mis-informed over the years.

A few years back I was at a foreign army display along with a member of the BAT team who had been in-country instructing. Everything went fine until the twenty-one-gun salute went off nearbye, and our suave pongo promptly ducked in reflex, giving himself a nasty cut on the head when it came in contact with the back of the seat in front. This was all the more amusing given that he was the only one there to duck! Obviously, the MoD fears Christmas crackers could spawn a serious shortage of frontline troops if the same training has been applied....

what with it being a standard training method, and about the only way to get a noise when you pull the trigger of an SA80...

Does this tie in with Radiobonce's proposed WW2 austerity measures? ISTR Spike Milligan saying that in the opening overs of WW2, the Royal Artillery had to shout "BANG" in unison when training, due to a shortage of ammunition.

No, thats just silly.

Surely during the 1940s the RAF were the carrier of choice and among the leading importers of explosives into Germany.

Must be a health and safety thing.

I suppose thats what happens when people called Rupert with his handlebar mustash, leather flying helmet, and windswept wooly scarf who flies a spitfire made from paper mache, balsa wood, cow glue and canvas is replaced with people called Norman who wears a hi-vis jacket, and hard hat, carries a clip board and flies a desk.