Hopes that Kevin "Captain Cyborg" Warwick might finally be towed away and broken up for scrap were dashed last night when the ubiquitous robopundit made an extended appearance on BBC TV's Jeremy Clarkson's Inventions That Changed The World.

Clarkson will be familiar to UK readers as the host of the Top Gear motoring programme and a range of other technology-related series. His latest offering is a typically flippant gander at the kit which has radically advanced the human species.

True to form, Clarkson yesterday set about the computer, at one point venting his spleen by taking a hammer to a laptop. All highly entertaining, until Captain Cyborg trundled onto the screen to give Jeremy the benefit of his vision of a cybernetic future.

Backed by archive footage of his famous chip-implanting stunt, Warwick stunned a boggle-eyed Clarkson with his apocalyptic vision of a computer-driven armageddon.

At least we think that's what he said. Suffice it to say most of Warwick's performance was drowned out by derisive laughter punctuated by occassional light abuse.

Unforgiveably, Mr Clarkson fell for the whole thing hook, line and sinker, and at no point deployed his sarky tongue to dismantle the publicity-fixated cybercharlatan's prognosis.

This is indeed a black day for television. Jeremy: you've let your friends down, you let your family down, but worst of all - you've let yourself down. Enough said. ®