RoTM Emergency services were on Sunday obliged to cut free a TGV passenger whose arm was swallowed by the high-speed train's sucking dunny, the BBC reports.

The unnamed 26-year-old victim - travelling from La Rochelle to Bordeaux - dropped his mobe into the bog and ill-advisedly attempted to retrieve it from the lav's depths. Cue a unsheduled two-hour stop for the train as firemen detached the unit, still clamped firmly to its victim's limb.

Shaken witness Benoit Gigou recounted: "He came out on a stretcher, with his hand still jammed in the toilet bowl, which they had to saw clean off."

This is the first reported incident of cantankerous crapper attack across the Channel, where the machine uprising has until now relied on mephistophelean motors to do its dirty work. UK citizens are, of course, already fully aware of the danger posed by innocent-looking toilets following a spate of assaults which began back in 2001. ®