What can people expect from the show? Everybody knows the story of Galileo being persecuted and disbelieved, but the stories that we start with in the first episode are of the three fathers of rocket science, who are still very obscure figures. We wanted to bring those people in to the public consciousness, while at the same time making an entertainment programme. The second episode, we go into Wernher von Braun and John Whiteside Parsons, Satanist and Nazi, so it kind of writes itself. The show has been around in some form since 2008 when you took it to the Edinburgh Fringe, and you returned with it again in 2010. Yes, I went back to Edinburgh with a rejigged version of it. There were quite a few new bits in it, and it was really nice to bring it back, because it was the first show that I’d done and it felt like it had grown a bit. Most people, when they do their first hour show, they get all their material and stick it together and usually put a bit of filler in and give it some sort of implausible title. And I knew that wasn’t going to work for me, so my first show was pretty much written from scratch, which was a bit of a steep learning curve. So, what had you done before? I’d done bits and pieces of stand-up, but me and my writing partner had won a Channel 4 competition, which we thought was going to be a gateway to fame and fortune which, of course, it wasn’t. So, we were doing a lot more of the writing side of things. That was how I got into stand-up, but it was primarily driven by wanting to be a writer and write scripts and make programmes, rather than specifically wanting to show off. How easy was the show to adapt for radio? And that’s a familiar simple concept I guess, a series of voices in a studio in front of an audience. I wanted there to be a story, I didn’t want it to be “Oh, this is just someone talking about space.” I like the idea of the world behind it. Obviously, an implausible world, and I couldn’t build a space narrator that sounds like Peter Serafinowicz in my bedroom, sadly. I wish I could! Really late on, actually. I remember initially feeling so embarrassed talking about this idea of having this space narrator. I was an only child, so I had a lot of imaginary friends. So, I think it kind of grew out of that, but Gareth really liked it and suggested Peter for it. I think they go back quite a long way, because they worked together on Spaced, so they’ve known each other for years. There’re Robin Ince’s yearly Lessons And Carols For Godless People events, and his Infinite Monkey Cage show, and Josie Long adapted her science show for Radio 4 last year. Why is comedy so drawn to science lately? When I was at school there wasn’t a lot of popular science that you could just go into bookshops and pick up. I was working in a bookshop when Simon Singh’s Fermat’s Last Theorem was coming out, and since then, there’s been this big explosion in popular science books. I compèred Bright Club in the Wilmington Arms, so about room for a hundred people, and they were turning people away. They had fifty-odd people wanting to come in who just couldn’t. There’s the whole sceptical movement and I guess they need something to laugh at in their spare time. Yes, when they’re not debunking! I stood in for Robin Ince last minute at a conference in Manchester called QEDCon and it was brilliant. I was quite nervous about it, because everyone’s heard of Robin Ince and no-one’s heard of me, necessarily, and they were a brilliant audience. I’m not a huge active part of it, but it interests me, because this whole aspect of looking into things and cutting through the bullshit you get in the media. I think everybody kind of loves space. You get people bringing their precocious kids who’ve got telescopes who come along and say ,”Yes, I was aware of Tsiolkovsky. Did you know…” and you’re just thinking, “Wow, you’re eight and you’re wearing a bow tie. You’re a bit freaky.” And you get older people who remember the fifties and sixties really well and remember the optimism at that time, and they really like it too. That’s the wonderful thing about space, and you see it on a much bigger scale with things like Wonders Of The Universe, and how popular that’s been. A picture beamed back from Hubble is one of the best things to see and you don’t need to know anything to look at the picture and go, “Wow, that’s really beautiful. That’s out there, somewhere.” There’s this little contraption that looks like it’s made from tin foil which has opened its eye and taken a picture for you and beamed it back to Earth. I tear up just thinking about it. And also, I’ve got a cold. There was the recent thing of someone filming the launch of the Discovery on an iPhone from their plane window. Yes, the technology now is so much more widely available. There was a thing about a year ago where there was a father and son in America and they put an iPhone in a balloon and sent it up and they got these amazing pictures of the curvature of the Earth. It’s mind-blowing that you can do that with a piece of technology which is in the grasp of most people with a reliable income. I would love to. I must admit, when I was a kid, I had unrealistic expectations of what it was going to be like in the future. I didn’t even want to be an astronaut, because I thought it would’ve gone beyond that. I thought I’d be able to go and live on Mars and that would be completely normal. Can you tell us some of your influences, both scientific and comedic? Brian Cox is brilliant and Wonders Of The Universe is amazing, but I still hope there’s some kind of niche somewhere for people who are coming at it from a slightly different angle. Sometimes I think it’s quite nice if you can just fall into something because you’re interested in it. I had a recording when I was growing up of Woody Allen, who talks about all kinds of weird things and philosophical complexes, and that gave me the idea that stand-up is about anything. It doesn’t have to be immediately recognisable, because you can make it relevant. On the 12th of April, it’s Yuri’s Night (celebrating fifty years of human spaceflight) and I’m doing a show called Spacetackular with a chap called Matt Brown, who’s a bit of a space nerd and also the editor of The Londonist. I hope we’re going to have some comedy and some proper science and we’re encouraging people to come in fancy dress, dressed as their favourite spacecraft or figure from space history or figure from science fiction. A niche comedy gig for space geeks who like dressing up! I’m working on a new show, which is kind of again a bit science-y but not so much space this time, more about the future, quite a nebulous broad theme. I’m quite into robots and there are links there with space. Thank you, Helen! It Is Rocket Science airs on Radio 4, Wednesdays at 11pm.
