Unmissable show?
I always have a look at Question Time. It’s one of those programmes that’s good to watch in unison with Twitter. The way that the tweets unite with the discussion and the different reactions of anger and agreement – it gives an interesting third dimension to things.
Earliest TV memory?
The moon landings. I was born in 1968, and the mission was in 1969. My first TV memory is being sat on my dad’s knee and faced in the direction of the television, as if to be told “now, watch this. This is important.” And then I remember the later Apollo missions in the early 70s, when I was also watching The Clangers. I was hoping to see real Clangers. It did play its part in sparking an interest in astronomy.
Guilty pleasure?
Pointless is fantastic. Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong create an atmosphere in such a wonderfully understated way. Witty without trying too hard. And Only Connect is an ingenious gameshow. Some of those connections! “We have a housebrick, a Ford Mondeo, Guatemala and a Mr Kipling French Fancy”.
Bring back…
Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World. It was all about mysteries, such as UFOs. It had that 1960s Cinefilm-style film of a bigfoot walking through the edge of a Californian forest. Nowadays, it just looks like Boris Johnson in a gorilla suit.
Pitch us a TV show…
Build the rockets to get to Mars, and put together a group of scientists and science communicators – professor Brian Cox, David Attenborough, Dr Paul Abel and Pete Lawrence, the astronomers from The Sky At Night – just to keep us up to date with the astronomy. And some Nasa geologists and people like that, and let’s see if we really can find any micro-biological life on Mars. I think it would be a wonderful thing to confirm, and a fascinating thing to watch.
Newzoids begins Wednesday, 9pm, ITV
