It might be a strange thing to think about, but even the most horrible people we’ve shared the planet with have enjoyed the same entertainment as us.

For example, did you know that Hitler was a big fan of Laurel and Hardy? That’s right, and Stalin loved him some Charlie Chaplin; he reportedly even cried at the end of City Lights. Yet another connoisseur of the arts we can add to that list is al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.

According to Kola Boof, who was bin Laden’s former sex slave, the terrorist leader would talk to her at length about his favorite TV shows and entertainers. In her 2006 memoir, Diary of a Lost Girl, Boof revealed that bin Laden was particularly interested in Whitney Houston, despite supposedly believing that music was evil. Bin Laden confided in Boof that he would be willing to break his “color rule” (referring to skin color) in order to make Houston one of his wives, as long as she was willing to have her tubes tied. He also apparently spoke of having Houston’s husband, Bobby Brown, killed so as to achieve his goal of marrying her.

As for his taste in American television, one show bin Laden told Boof he was especially fond of was the 1980s crime drama Miami Vice, starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas. Evidently, he had a similar appreciation for the popular action-adventure series MacGyver. A notorious criminal spending his free time watching stories about other criminals? Not totally unusual, we suppose.

Osama bin Laden Was Apparently a Huge Fan of The Wonder Years

You know what it is, though? Bin Laden’s love for the hit family sitcom The Wonder Years.

To underscore just how odd it is that bin Laden was into such a show, let us break down the premise of The Wonder Years for the uninitiated: The series covers the teenage life of Kevin Arnold (as played by Fred Savage), a typical middle-class suburbanite growing up in the ’60s and ’70s. Throughout the show’s six-season run, Kevin faces various obstacles at home and in school as he navigates his way through adolescence with his best friend, Paul Pfeiffer, and his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Winnie Cooper.  

We’ll go ahead and drop an old promo for The Wonder Years down below. Check it out for yourself, and then picture the last person you’d ever expect to be a devoted fan tuning in to watch that week after week.