I called Apple support again to lodge another complaint with regards to the MacBook not booting properly and pointed out that my fantastic 'ultrabright widescreen display' was flickering. I powered up the machine and instead of a grey screen of death, this time I got a deep blue screen of death (I was wondering if Microsoft was going to take Apple to court over the use of such intellectual property).
Anyway, after some PRAM refreshing hand calisthenics I was back up again...