Artificial Intelligence: MacIntyre undercover ... again

His infamous series of undercover programmes had just been broadcast. In one of them he pretended to be a thug in order to infiltrate a particularly vicious group of Chelsea football "supporters" who fought for a living.

Quite a constipation cure, he revealed. But he had learned his lesson. "Next time, it will have to be someone else," he said.

When do we next see him? On TV. Wandering about the most (statistically) dangerous place in Britain for street crime. At night. He’s wearing a joke-shop specs/moustache face, carrying a fortune in electronic stuff and saying: "Hi, kill me, take my incredibly expensive mobile!"

Well, not quite. The words are made up, but the sentiment is spot on.

His attempts to become a victim were, of course, cringe-making. It took three days to get mugged. Then he cried. The nation heard it was trauma. We recognised it as relief.

Old Donal, the twinkling-eyed bhoy, hasn’t learned his lesson from the first series of MacIntyre Undercover because he cannot.

He may deprecate the macho-man image TV created around him, but he loves it, the glamour of being in danger.

Who can forget that Radio Times cover? His manly torso exposed to reveal the wire-tap equipment. Don’t know what it did for his journalistic street-cred, but it did get him on to a gay web site as "the man you’d most like to wrestle with!"

Then, there were the carefully placed references to him being forced to live in hiding because his life was at risk. Again, it was lightly dismissed with remarks like: "My mother brought up a family single-handedly. That’s stress."

For the next few weeks there will be other exposures, more dangers and more opportunities for viewers to wonder whether MacIntyre really is the craziest man on TV. By this time next month he’ll be sharing a flat with Osama bin Laden.