10 minutes with… Brian Cox

2 months
2 weeks ago

During the Science Festival we caught up with particle physicist Brian Cox, and asked him about his recent rise to fame and what it’s like to be a Guest Director.

What does it mean to you to be Guest Director of the festival this year?
A: It’s wonderful because it is the biggest science festival in Britain and I assume it will get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. It’s the 10th anniversary next year isn’t it? So I’ll probably be asking to be Guest Director again because I’ve enjoyed it. It’s brilliant! I’ve done a lot this weekend. The Wonders [of the Solar System] event was great. I did two of those. [The Infinite] Monkey Cage, which I really wanted to do live – well, it was the first time we’ve done that in front of a live audience and it was brilliant, so brilliant that I think we want to do it always in front of an audience now. And I gave my usual talk, except it wasn’t my usual talk because I decided to invent a new one for Cheltenham and did a load of relativity and made it really hard. So I think everyone sat there going ‘Oh God, it’s maths’. I actually did vector identity. The vector, the differential form of Maxwell’s equations and derived the space-time interval. So there we go. I think it was alright.

Why do you feel events like this are important?
A: Science is of primary importance. I honestly think that economically and culturally speaking, it’s the most important thing to be doing in Britain. I think we should make Britain the best place in the world to do science. I think that should be an aspiration. David Cameron should stand up as Prime Minister and say ‘I will make Britain the best place in the world to do science’. The thing is, it’s affordable. We only spend, in total, about ten billion a year on universities, about three and a half billion on R&D. If you were to be bold and double it, Britain would be the best place in the world to do science and you wouldn’t notice in the bottom line of the country. Well, it wouldn’t impact the bottom line downwards. What it would do is impact the bottom line massively upwards. But I think in order to evolve and want to do that in Britain, you need massive public support because it’s a great bold project. And so things like Cheltenham and science on TV are building support for science. We’re going to lead the revolution and make Britain a better place in the world to do science and it will start here. In fact, this is probably the capital of the new Britain. It’ll be Cheltenham Town Hall if I have anything to do with it! Is that a bit overly ambitious?

Is this your first visit to the Cheltenham Science Festival and what do you think of it?
A: No, I was here last year. I did some stuff with Jim Al-Khalili. It’s brilliant. I actually like the fact that it’s quite informal. I like the fact that there’s this room in the Town Hall and everyone mixes together. There’s not a kind of a separation between speakers and the public and there often is at big festivals because it kind of has to be arranged that way. But I like here the fact that you just meet everybody.

Congratulations on your OBE. How does it feel to have shot to fame so quickly?
A: It’s actually beyond odd now. I was in a band before and we had a number one single so I’ve seen it a little bit, but not actually on the scale of after Wonders of the Solar System. I actually have to change my lifestyle because it’s a lot of hassle. That’s good because what it really means is that people are engaging with science. I’m kind of lucky in a way because I seem to have been the first person for a while who has managed to take these wonderful ideas and I’ve been kind of conduit for them. And although a lot of people have been doing it for a long time, you get over critical mass with viewing figures with the BBC. That’s what it is. Usually, you’d get at most about two million people – if you’re lucky, three million – watching a big science show and we had six and a half, if you add them up, for each episode. It’s still on. They just keep repeating it so it’s just consistently picking up an audience. That makes a huge difference. I’m really surprised because suddenly, you do get genuinely noticed like a celebrity rather than a scientist. In fact, my wife found a blog where someone had written ‘The BBC should stop having celebrities like Brian Cox presenting science programmes, they should have scientists’. That’s the funny thing – you get an audience that don’t know who you are. They don’t actually know you’re a scientist. They think you’re on Jonathan Ross so therefore you’re some kind of television presenter. It’s kind of an accolade in a way isn’t it? There’s a definite jump which I wasn’t expecting that has been made because of that programme.

Do you think the media’s recent love of science has been responsible for your rise to fame and do you think that will continue to happen with more and more people?
A: Definitely. It was a conscious decision by the BBC to have the World of Wonder season – which is this kind of year of science – and commissioning programmes with scientists. I mean Kathy Sykes did programmes, Jim Al-Khalili has done them, Marcus du Sautoy, Alice Roberts. The great thing is, because of programmes like Horizon, you can take people who are academics and allow them to grow. It’s not automatic that you can make TV programmes. It takes some practice. You have to learn. And the BBC are excellent at doing that. So it’s not a random thing. I think it’s been building interest for a while and it is primarily down to the BBC I would say.

Which part of your job do you love the most?
A: I love it all. I get frustrated because I like doing physics and I do less of it at the moment. I love making TV programmes, although it’s very hard work indeed, and I like writing more and more actually as well. I’m enjoying writing the books. I enjoy everything. The regret is that I don’t have enough time to do everything. So at the moment, it’s very TV orientated because we’re making a new series – Wonders of the Universe – and that’s going to take up a lot of time until the end of October. Then I’m having essentially 6 months off, apart from Wonders Live that we’re going to do in January. It’s probably a secret, but you can say it.

Do you have a favourite physics fact?
A: My favourite thing is that we can even speak of what the universe was doing 10-36 seconds after it began – so a million, million, million, million, million millionths of a second after the big bang. I mean, we don’t exactly know, but we can use the physics we know now. It’s not just random thoughts. We have some guidelines in the measurements that we’ve made and the physics that we know, to talk about the universe just tiny fractions of a second after it was made.

What came first – playing the keyboards in the band D:Ream or your academic career?
A: I was in two bands. I was in a rock band called Dare from 18 to 23 and that was really a rock band. We toured with Jimmy Page, Europe and all sorts of bands. We made two albums and then split up. I went to university and did a degree. I joined D:Ream accidentally when I was doing my degree and then did my PhD. So I got a PhD whilst I was in D:Ream. I became Professor a couple of years ago as a result of – I ran an upgrade project at the LHC called FP420 which was where you put these little detectors very close to the LHC beams, about half a kilometre away from where the protons collide. So that was my project. We wrote that at CERN and that’s what got me the Professor. And then after that really the TV stuff kind of kicked in.

How did that come about?
A: I’ve always done bits of it. I did some radio stuff really early on when I was doing my PhD and then I think I was a guest on Horizon. This is a way a lot of people come through actually, the BBC. And then they like that bit so then you make a Horizon, and then another one, and another one. So it’s kind of a process. It is learning. You look back at the early stuff you do and it’s really naïve in a way. You find your style changes and becomes more professional, but not in a bad way. It’s just you get better at being in front of a camera, basically. No-one is good at it immediately. So the fact that there is a vehicle at the BBC to allow people to develop is so important.

One of my favourite scenes in Wonders of the Solar System is the solar eclipse in Varanasi. Was it really as magical as it seemed on TV and how did it feel actually being there?
A: Totally unbelievable. I wasn’t ready for it at all, you know, how incredible it would be – which is why I think in the show we just filmed my reaction to it. When you put a TV programme together you have some idea of what you might say but what I said had got nothing to do with that… I was completely carried away by it. And I did feel…I say it…you feel you are on this ball of rock. It has that effect on you. You suddenly become isolated and exposed to the solar system. You just can’t imagine that you’d feel like that. It’s an incredible thing to see.

Do you still play the keyboards and have you ever thought of forming a science super-group with Patrick Moore on xylophone?
A: I do play a bit, but not a lot because I haven’t got time. And I did actually do a piece of music with Patrick Moore on xylophone once with a friend of mine called Graham Massey who’s in a band called 808 State, absolutely years ago. We took some samples of pulsars from Jodrell Bank and turned it into a beat thing and Patrick Moore played over it in Manchester at an event that we had. So I have already had a band with Patrick Moore!

Sue Harris is our reporter in residence at the festival this year. Sue is a science writer and communicator based in London. She has a background in the healthcare industry and medical writing, although her experience spans a broad range of scientific subjects and she enjoys communicating science face-to-face. www.susanmharris.com

Photographs by Conor Cahill

We’ve tagged this post with Brian Cox, Conor Cahill, guest director, interview, science, Sue Harris on Tuesday 22 June 2010.