One of the strangest rumours in Booshdom emerged last night… with unconfirmed reports that recently assassinated terrorist Osama Bin Laden watched The IT Crowd.

Speculation was rife on Twitter for some time that the man behind the 9/11 attacks, who was killed in a special ops mission last weekend after an almost ten year manhunt, had been caught on videotape watching television, and that amongst the shows he had been watching was the cult Channel 4 sitcom.

Show creator Graham Linehan got in on the act, initially tweeting: “Does anyone have confirmation that Osama was watching ‘The IT Crowd’ in these home movies? Amazing if true. Don’t know how to feel.”

He followed this up with: “Obviously, a monster, but still. Was he all bad?” and continued to tweet about the subject as Twitter became filled with confused messages from fans of the show asking for confirmation.

Matt Berry also got involved, stating: “I’m receiving lots of tx re. Bin Laden and the IT Crowd? I assume I’m having my plonker pulled?”

And as of right now, we’re still not entirely sure if Matt’s plonker has fully recovered.  What we do know is that CNN and other American news networks aired a clip of the terrorist leader watching broadcasts of himself on satellite television.  At one point, the screen is unable to be seen as Bin Laden bats through television channels, and with the audio removed from the clip, it’s hard to ascertain what he is watching.

Nevertheless, it seems pretty likely that this is all a massive joke from Linehan, who has now claimed to have been sent uncut footage from the Irish Embassy that suggests it wasn’t The IT Crowd but The Big Bang Theory – before tweeting: “Mostly exhausted from laughing and freaked out that some still buying it.”

Whilst TVO decided to wait for the story to unfold before commenting, it seems many did buy it.  Twitter was, and still is, awash with comments on the subject, and news websites began to run with the story too, including the Dallas Morning News and respectable comedy website Chortle!

If you’re still intrigued, you can see the clip aired by CNN here, but it seems we can put this bizarre rumor to bed now.  Or you can play around with it here...