GREAT work, Batman. Kapow! Deploying nothing more than your bat-ladder, you exposed feeble security at Buckingham Palace.

Zap! With one blow you knocked a great hole through the police commissioner's credibility.

Oh, and you also made a protest about fathers' rights.

Here is the problem with the increasingly surreal Fathers 4 Justice campaign. The audacious stunts often end up diverting attention away from the group's cause.

Discussion of yesterday's astonishing piece of live theatre has focused on the security implications. In the light of dire warnings that Britain is next on al-Qaida's target list, the whole country is on alert.

So we might expect that the official residence of Britain's head of state to be all but impenetrable.

Yet a portly superhero was able to position himself underneath the famous palace balcony for several hours. We are left to ask: what if he was wearing explosives rather than a cape and bat ears?

A comedian dressed as Osama bin Laden has already gatecrashed a royal party, and a newspaper reporter became a Buckingham Palace footman. Terrorists must now be aware that our royal family are an easy target.

Meanwhile Fathers 4 Justice are promising more "spectaculars".

We hope they think again.

They are beginning to harm their crusade. Jason Hatch - aka a former York Minster protester and Batman - could easily have been shot dead by armed police yesterday.

He should consider how that would have traumatised the children he is so desperate to see.

Updated: 10:39 Tuesday, September 14, 2004