Knee-jerk reactions to the attempted US plane bombing on Christmas Day have not been fast enough, prime minister Gordon Brown has claimed.

“If we hope to catch terrorists off-guard, we must demand much swifter deployment of strategic anti-terrorist knee movements,” he said on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show. “By delaying, we are only giving them a chance to cover their crotches, so to speak.”

The prime minister used the interview to pre-empt his own hastily commissioned review, by announcing the immediate roll-out of protective measures at Britain’s airports. They include the use of racial profiling and full-body scanners. The moves are in response to the alleged attempt by student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate a bomb on a flight bound for Detroit.

“It is absolutely critical at a time like this that we move quickly to target Middle-Eastern and Sub-continental Asian terrorists from carrying solid explosives onto airplanes,” said Brown. “Those who point out that the Christmas Day bomber was a black Nigerian man carrying a liquid device that was probably not dense enough to be picked up by the new scanners are simply splitting hairs.

“The important thing is that we take down whoever’s groin is in kneeing distance first.”

Brown also responded to recent debate about the role of Yemen in the bombing. It is believed that the London-based bomber trained in the impoverished Muslim country before boarding his flight to the US in Amsterdam.

“It is clear that we must make every effort to improve intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism strategies in Yemen as a matter of urgency, and at the exclusion of all other countries,” he said. “That is why we have taken the first opportunity to label it a failed state and close our embassy. That will hit the terrorists where it hurts – right in the ‘nads.”