International fictional crime fighting duo Batman and Robin Tuesday issued a writ demanding exemption from UKIP’s planned blanket ban on burqas which the party also plans to apply to all full face coverings worn in public places.

A lawyer acting for the masked avengers said it was ridiculous to expect high profile male crime fighters like his clients to adhere to a ban designed to prevent terror attacks being perpetrated by masked female terrorists.

“How do you expect my clients to strike fear into the international crime community if the criminals can see clearly that Bruce Wayne has crows feet and Robin has bags under his eyes because he was out of the lash last night,” he asked.

The lawyer explained that the caped crusaders had toyed with changing their traditional bat masks for ones bearing the likenesses of senior UKIP politicians but had abandoned the idea as unworkable.

“It wouldn’t fly, they’d have to rebrand as “Twatman and Knobhead” and the merchandising people wouldn’t like that one bit,” he explained.

Separately a spokesman for the British Association of Costume Hirers
confirmed that they too plan to challenge UKIP’s policy in the courts.

“Seventy percent of our costume hires are of costumes with masks, ban the masks and we go out of business he said.

“Frankly UKIP has its “eyes wide shut” on this issue,” he punned adding that his members would be refusing future bookings from UKIP head office and local UKIP party groups

“I wouldn’t mind but for their Christmas party last year they hired half a dozen masked rubber nun outfits, a dozen sexy masked theatre nurse outfit and twenty gorilla suits,” he said pointing out the hypocrisy of banning religious face coverings but allowing politicians to cover their faces.

“Mind you, it’s not hard to see why they wanted the masks – would you vote for a party whose leader wears a skimpy nurse’s outfit to parties?”

“Not that the mask helped much, he forgot to take his tweed hat off,” he laughed.