I owe it all to him

Aaah – me old Da – what a fine gent and all. He would have been the original Laydeez Man if my Ma hadn't got hold of him first.

As well as building over 14000 miles of UK roads with just a megaphone, a cattle prod and an army of slave labour, he is a man of science.

His particular interest is in the future and how science might come to the aid of man in solving some of the most intractable problems we know. He remains particularly enthralled by the question of what makes us human in the context of artificial intelligence.

This has tried many great minds since the dawn of robotics and my Da was no different, racking his brains over how much we rely on emotional intelligence to distinguish us from thinking machines. Now retired, he spends many hours in his armchair debating himself on this thorny subject, determined to formulate a workable theory.

Living in a remote part of the Sapphire Isle, he does not have the kind of research facilities that many of us might enjoy through local universities and the like. As a result, all of his research into this matter is informed by – nay entirely dependent upon - his access to popular media such as television and the TV Times, his paper of record.

Asked about his research, he says “I was distraught when they cancelled Tomorrow’s World. But I was overjoyed when they reacted to the public outcry about its cancellation and put on a replacement popular science programme. To my delight it combined my love of roads, artificial intelligence, and speculating about the future. Knight Rider – will there ever be a programme to beat it? Well, maybe Robot Wars. Only time will tell.”