There are promising signs that humanity is beginning to wake up to the threat posed by Terminator-style cyberloos and hostage-taking telephone kiosks.

A blast yesterday decimated a state-of-the-art convenience in the city centre of Stoke-on-Trent, lifting the roof right off the digital dunny.

The authorities claim an underground electrical cable was to blame for the devastation, but the fact that the explosion occurred at 4am when the e-pissoire was almost certain to be unoccupied clearly points to sabotage.

There is no suggestion that the razed robocrapper had shown any propensity for the enslavement of mankind. However, those of us following the rise of the machines know full well it would have been only a matter of time before it claimed its first victim - caught literally with trousers round ankles in a harrowing, but sanitary, terror ordeal.

Mercifully, the good burghers of the Potteries have made certain that this particular merdurinous malevolence will neither in the near future entrap innocent shoppers, nor play any part in the widely-predicted war of annihilation between humanity and killer municipal toilet facilities.

The world, and in particular Stoke-on-Trent, is today a safer place for their actions. ®

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