Brace yourself - following Kevin Warwick's derisory appearance at the Royal Institute's Christmas lectures, he has gone on another media frenzy.

Today he gets a spread in The Sun. There's not much new in his crazed ramblings - it's the usual robots-will-take-over-the-world stuff - although we did spot one interesting snippet we hadn't come across before.

"Kevin and his 20-strong (???!!!) research team at Reading have already created a 'disobedient' robot that runs away when anybody in the laboratory tries to switch it off," says The Sun.

So what's the angle? Because this theoretical robot runs away, that means that robots will soon not pay attention to their creators and so, of course, they will decide to destroy humankind. Just like that. Oh, brother. And we'll all be dead (or in zoos) by 2095.

But there are two paragraphs (numbers 4 and 5) that really hurt and confirm all our greatest fears. After a short intro and summary on what Kev's "beliefs" are, The Sun prints in italics: "But do not make the mistake of writing off Professor Warwick as an oddball."

Why not? (Here it comes). "He is sufficiently highly regarded to be invited to present the Royal Institution Christmas science lectures on Channel 4." Arrrrrrrgggggghhhh! And so all our hard work over the last year is set back. This must be the most inappropriate use of the words "highly" and "regarded" we have ever comes across.

Incidentally, if you're wondering why we haven't done a review of Kev's TV lectures over Christmas, don't fear - it's in the pipeline. It's just that there was five hours of it. We watched them all when they were on. But it's only today that we feel strong enough to return to them. ®

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