If ironic self-awareness is the last quality one expects to find at the most maniacal end of the religious extremist spectrum, the three Birmingham men convicted on Thursday of planning a bombing atrocity to dwarf all predecessors were hardly your average jihadis. They were so blessedly sub-standard, in fact, that they appeared to be graduates of an obscure West Midlands affiliate to Al-Qaeda University by the name of Three Stooges College.