It's not often Sneak gets a chance to meet a real-life Olympian, so it was with great excitement that he greeted silver medal winning Roger Black at V3 HQ on Thursday, and even managed to persuade him to give Twitter a go.

Ostensibly here with networking firm Cisco to spread the word ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, which kicks off in just one year's time, Black was soon engrossed in a heated debate about all things technology.

Although BackleyBlack, the business training company he set up with fellow Olympian Steve Backley, has an account on the micro-blogging site, Black told us that he has so far shunned Twitter in a personal capacity.

"It's easy to get absorbed in it, but for every 10 people saying something nice about you there'll be one person saying something negative," he said. "I should use it to keep up to date with things in the Olympic world, though."

Black, who has also put his name to a range of running treadmills, voiced concerns that a personal feed may be abused by disgruntled customers.

However, Sneak suggested that Twitter could actually be an excellent way for Black to build his business and engage in a meaningful way with customers and fans alike.

Medal hoarder Black also shared his love of the iPhone with the V3 team, claiming that it had transformed the way he does business, and he gushed over the new MacBook Air Sneak showed him in the office.

The afternoon was tinged with sadness, however, as Black refused to take on school sports day runner-up and egg-and-spoon specialist Dan Worth in a 400m race round the streets of Soho.

Gunnell and Akabusi - consider the gauntlet officially thrown your way.

With 500 days until the start of the London 2012 Olympics, the organising committee decided it was the perfect time to unveil a giant digital clock to count down the days, hours and minutes until the momentous moment.

Clock-horror, though, the timepiece has stopped after just one day on 500 days, 7:06:56.

Let's all give them a big hand for that shall we? Although perhaps some of the pieces were second-hand knock-offs?

The company behind the digital sun-dial, Omega (which is set to be responsible for all event timings during the Olympics), has said it is a bit ticked off the bell has chimed so soon for the device.

"We are obviously very disappointed that the clock has suffered this technical issue. The Omega London 2012 countdown clock was developed by our experts and fully tested ahead of the launch in Trafalgar Square," a man with a clock for a face said.

"We are currently looking into why this happened and expect to have the clock functioning as normal as soon as possible."

Sneak wonders if really, what with technology these days being so fantastic, that there shouldn't have been something more impressive on display than just a bog-standard digital timer...that doesn't even work.

Perhaps they could have employed the speaking clock man to stand in Trafalgar Square, perhaps on the fourth plinth, to solemnly intone his way down to zero – he's been going for years.

Or maybe a giant Countdown-style clock that would have produced a satisfying "booop" sound at the moment the games began.

Best of all, though, would be a giant cuckoo clock, but instead of a cuckoo, a giant Boris Johnson would shoot forth and cry, "Come on chaps! The Olympics are starting! Last one on the whiff-whaff court is a rotten egg."

Anyway, Sneak's off to do some rigorous training until his personal trainer cries out, "Time gentleman, please!"