Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A particle physicist and TV presenter whose programmes sparked a surge in university science applications.
On the island
Eight records
Queen BitchFavourite
I've chosen Queen Bitch by David Bowie because that's from the Hunky Dory album which is I think it always has been my favourite album for as long as I can remember. The musicianship is brilliant. Rick Waitman who's one of my favourite piano players plays on the album.
I suppose, like most people growing up, my dad and my granddad actually had records. And this was one of them that I remember growing up with a big cover of Sinatra on the front with this remarkable pose.
And this comes from the time when I'd started getting seven-inch singles. So I must have been asking my mum and dad for the money. And this is one of the first ones that I got. Absolutely loved it, played it over and over again.
Joanne Duran were the first band that I got into in a big way, you know, as a fan. And it was accidental, it was because my parents had asked me to take my younger sister to a Joan Duran concert. ... I just was blown away by the spectacle. And that's the moment when I thought, I want to be a pop star.
Well, this is actually a song from that band Dare called King of Spades, and it's a song that Darren Wharton wrote as a tribute to Phil Linnet. Phil Linnet had had died sadly, and it's one of those anthemic rock tracks.
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys
Well, this is going way back to one of the the first bands that I was into called OMD, Orchestra Maneuvers in the Dark. It's actually the first concert that I went to. But this is a song from their first album, a song called Messages.
And my wife actually introduced me to the song, but we used it in the first episode of Wonders of the Solar System. ... I thought it beautifully expressed the idea that the sun will die at some point in the future, but then that's the chemical elements that are released from that death will be rebuilt into a new series of planets.
I've always when I first started really wanting to learn to play the piano, um the uh Billy Joel and Elton John were two big influences because I used to sit there and and play along to these songs. If I sit down at a piano and I can't think of anything to do, then I play New York State of Mind.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:08Given that you are a proper scientist, as long as you are making television programmes, of course you're not doing your research. Is that a constant bugbear for you?
Yes, it is actually. I mean, in in a sense, there's an embarrassment of riches because it's great fun and interesting to make television programmes. But I've always seen myself as a physicist. So it is very frustrating not to use your brain in that way and to be sidetracked in a sense.
Presenter asks
2:57Do you manage to push open the political doors these days, given that you're such a well-known face, and say to them, come on, cough up?
Yeah, a little bit actually. And it does work like that, unfortunately, in a sense. If you're on television, you get access. And I do try to use it. For me, it's almost because the intellectual argument's won, it's almost a case of saying to them, you know, this will also be politically popular. If you invest in our universities, in our knowledge base, in our young people in Britain ... you'll get a electoral kickback as well.
Presenter asks
9:49What are your earliest memories [of childhood]?
Um, I get confused about real memories and memories from photographs. You refer to the lunar landings. I I remember growing up in a house where they were prominent. I remember my dad still has actually one of one of the newspaper covers from that day in July 1969. I remember a photograph on the wall of I think it would be Apollo 8, which was my first Christmas Eve in 1968 when it famously went round the dark side of the moon.
The keepsakes
The book
John David Jackson
because you could just sit there for years and not understand everything, and probably decades and not do all the problems in it.
Presenter asks
11:31You have said that your family's story is the typical twentieth century story of the North. Tell me more about that.
Yeah, I think so. My dad was the first person to do A levels and he went to a grammar school. Before that, as I mentioned, my my granddad and grandma both worked in cotton mills and then I was the first person in my family to go to university. So you see that kind of twentieth century story of leaving school at fourteen to work in a mill, their son goes to grammar school, gets A levels and then his son goes to university.
Presenter asks
19:35When you said [to your parents] I'm taking a year off, I'm going to California, recording an album, and we're doing a gig here, there and everywhere, what did your parents say about that?
They actually were really supportive and and I think they loved watching us live. ... And I think they were quite upset actually when the band split up and I I went back to university. I think they kind of enjoyed their their time in the rock and roll sun.
Presenter asks
29:07How much does the criticism [you get] bother you?
It it doesn't. I mean, I I I suppose you it would be dishonest to say it doesn't bother you at all, but it actually angers me more than anything because I think. There's a history of scientists being criticized for attempting to publicize their subject, particularly when they get successful or popular.
“Science is about celebrating the edge of our knowledge. It's certainly not about celebrating what we know. I suppose the job of a professional scientist is to break down those great pillars of understanding.”
“I want to say nature is beautiful, number one, right? Notice that. And that's the door that allows you to then decide to go and have a career exploring it.”
“I think even being in the presence of the Queen in Buckingham Palace, you don't think that that's gonna happen to you, you know, that you so so so I yeah, I I he would it's if I could yeah, if I could have chosen one thing to happen, I think it would be that my my granddad would have been able to come to that.”