I got conned at the station this morning.

A smiling lady handed me a suspiciously thin copy of what appeared to be The Metro. Great service, I thought, I normally have to bend down and pick up a dog-eared one from the stand that she was standing next to. All was not quite what it appeared though.

London commuters (well, those in the anarchic hotbed of Finsbury Park, at least) were today handed a spoof version cleverly called Metr0, jam-packed with propaganda about the claimed injustice of the political asylum system.

The stunt is surely actionable, given how close it looks to the original. Yet chances are the real Metro will have bigger fish to fry and won’t want to get embroiled in any war of words.

Why did this grab me, apart from the Brown banner? Well these people could have used social media. It’d be the trendy thing to do, and doubtless some Hoxtonites could have been mustered for the purpose for next to nothing. But actually the more impactful approach was to rip-off the print media in order to make the point, rather than join a long list of digital bleaters.

I saw a lot of commuters reading it today, many with a wry smile. Job done I’d say, even if some of the subbing was rough as a badger’s intimates.