by Ben Falk
But for a man who was still very much a professional academic at heart, the incident threw up some intriguing new dimensions as to the way he thought about presenting. ‘Television doesn’t have the same aims as science. Science is simply the process by which we seek to understand nature. It is utterly apopulist,’ he said. ‘In other words, when it comes to the practice of science, the scientist must never have an eye on the audience for that would be to fatally compromise the process. Now contrast that with television. There are customers, viewers, reviewers, consumers, so television must reflect to a certain extent the majority and minority views of the population. But what if the majority of the population doesn’t share the scientific view? What if the findings of science run contrary to deeply-held beliefs? What if the accepted scientific position might offend some viewers? I think, however, there are potential problems with broadcasters assuming a totally neutral position in matters such as this. Not particularly in trivial cases like my spat with the astrologers, where it’s clear that perhaps discretion was the better part of valour, but in areas of real import. This illustrates a real point of friction between the scientific view and the imperative for the broadcast to remain impartial whilst allowing the presenter or programme-maker to offer a view.’
He was becoming increasingly aware of the balance he had to tread as a mainstream BBC presenter and the responsibility it entailed with millions of people literally believing what he was saying, whatever that might be. Indeed, a 2004 MORI poll of adults over 16 suggested 84 per cent of them gained their information about science from what they saw on TV, on the news or in documentaries like his. He was particularly sensitive about being misconstrued, as he perceived some of the scientific stories in the news to be. One particular bugbear was the furore over the MMR vaccine, which had come under suspicion after being linked to autism in children. Cox thought it was ridiculous and bristled at the way it had become a genuine story.
‘For some reason that utterly mystifies me the practice of vaccination against disease has itself become controversial, yet the control and eradication of certain diseases through vaccination is arguably the greatest of all human achievements,’ he told the audience at the 2010 Huw Wheldon Lecture. ‘The classic example is smallpox, which was eradicated in the mid-1970s through a vaccination programme. Until that point, it had killed almost 300 million people in the 20th century alone.’ He couldn’t understand why people had latched on to the story, which he felt wasn’t borne out by the data. ‘And here is a real clash between broadcasting and science, because controversial means different things to a scientist and to a broadcaster,’ he added. ‘In science, we have a well-defined process for what is mainstream and what is controversial and it has nothing whatsoever to do with how many people believe it to be true or not. It’s called peer review. Peer review is a very simple and quite often brutal process by which any claim which is submitted for publication in a scientific journal is scrutinised by independent experts whose job it is to find the flaws. Only when they are convinced there are no errors in the experimental procedure or the theoretical reasoning can this paper be published – this is how science proceeds and it works. This is the method that has delivered the modern world. It’s good. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the current scientific consensus is of course correct, but it does in general mean that the consensus in the scientific literature is the best that can be done, given the available data.’
He then quoted left-wing American anchorman Keith Olbermann, who lambasted certain parts of television’s obsession with impartiality. In what might be construed as a knock against the conscientiously balanced BBC, he echoed Olbermann’s edict that this was ‘worshipping before the false god of utter objectivity’. In trying to be completely neutral, said Cox, it was easy to end up being more opaque. ‘It is recognised you can’t give air time to every contrarian on the planet, but there are areas which for television are clearly controversial,’ he argued. ‘Areas in which there is a high level of public debate for example, such as genetically-modified organisms. Therefore I contend that controversial in science broadcasting should be defined in the same way that it is in science, that is a controversial view is not one that runs counter to public opinion, but one that runs counter to the current scientific, peer-reviewed consensus. This means that the most objective and therefore impartial presentation of a so-called contentious story, such as MMR, climate change, astrology or even the so-called evolution debate is to give significantly more weight to the scientifically peer-reviewed position because this will leave the audience with the more truthful view of the current thinking. We’re dealing with issues like the life and death of our children and the future of our climate and the way to deal with this is not to be ‘fair and balanced’, to borrow a phrase from a famous news outlet, but to report and explain the peer-reviewed scientific consensus accurately. So for me, the challenge of the science reporter in television news is easily met: report the peer-reviewed consensus and avoid the maverick eccentric at all costs.’ Yes, things had certainly changed and this wasn’t something he had had to deal with when he appeared on This Morning.
Though proud of what he’d achieved, even Cox himself was slightly thrown by the level of attention now focused on him. As a rock and pop star, he had become used to female attention, but now that dissection of his looks and handsomeness was spreading across the internet and brought up at every interview. When I asked him about his heartthrob status, he laughed, arguing: ‘It’s one of those things you can’t change, what you look like. I’m not particularly vain. Making the series, it gets harder and harder to make them because it’s just week after week in more and more unpleasant conditions and in the last one, I look like I’ve been in the jungle for a year! Completely unshaven, just don’t give a shit. The last thing we did was in this cave in Mexico with these life forms which secrete sulphuric acid – like Alien! – and it was full of mosquitos and bats, and you wouldn’t say [I was a hunk] if you saw that. You’d just see this gradual falling to bits.’ But he would have to get used to the love. ‘The challenge is not letting that success bother me,’ he added. ‘There’s no point doing that again so let’s do something else.’
Something else? Music to the BBC’s ears, who were so delighted with Cox’s efforts that they had already started developing a new project even before Wonders of the Solar System hit screens. In my interview at the time, he only hinted at what this might be as he prepared to head off for shooting the following month. ‘It’s called Universal,’ he said. ‘It’s about the universal nature of the laws of physics. We can talk about black holes and the beginning of the universe and the end of the universe, quantum mechanics – all the more esoteric stuff. The same style as Solar System, so we want to go to spectacular places and use places on earth to explain these things that are happening, but it’s a bigger challenge in a way because there’s not as much geology, it’s more real cosmology. But we’re going to have a go.’
And the results would be even more spectacular than imagined.
CHAPTER 9
MEGASTARDOM
When you’re as hot as Brian Cox, it would be foolish to stick to one medium. Why Does E=mc2? was released in hardback in July 2009, but began to pick up in profile and sales once it the paperback came out and the first Wonders series had made him a television star. The title was a question Gia had asked and her husband realised it might make an interesting book. He suggested it to Professor Jeff Forshaw, a close friend and confidante, as well as his partner in academic papers. The aim of Cox and Forshaw’s book was pretty explanatory: explain why Einstein’s most famous theory – that of relativity – is true and then examine what it means for the universe. As the introduction observed: ‘Difficult as it may sometimes seem, science at its heart is not a complicated discipline.’ This philosophy underpinned the book – the aim was not to use any mathematics harder than Pythagoras’ Theorem (which was explained) and while application was required, this was a book for everyone.
The
style of writing often echoed Carl Sagan. At the beginning of Chapter One, they wrote: ‘Perhaps you picture space as the blackness between the stars as you turn your gaze toward the sky on a cold winter’s night. Or maybe you see the void between earth and moon sailed by spacecraft clad in golden foil, bedecked by stars and stripes, piloted into magnificent desolation by shaven-headed explorers with names like Buzz.’ The book became a popular science bestseller and was nominated by the Royal Society as one of the science books of 2010. It made the shortlist, with the judges saying: ‘It’s the most famous equation that exists but few people actually know what it means. This book could change that – it’s beautifully written and not afraid to tackle really challenging physics.’
The work received rapturous reviews, most of which highlighted the universality and lack of ego. ‘[It’s] clear, sparkling in places and totally without vanity, anyone with an adventurous mind should be intrigued by what two smart physicists say about it in plain language,’ said The Huffington Post. ‘[A] delightful little book.’ They garnered praise from celebrity quarters too, reiterating how Cox had entered the mainstream consciousness. ‘I can think of no one, Stephen Hawking included, who more perfectly combines authority, knowledge, passion, clarity and the powers of elucidation than Brian Cox,’ wrote Stephen Fry. ‘If you really want to know how Big Science works and why it matters to each of us in the smallest way then be entertained by this dazzlingly enthusiastic man. Can someone this charming really be a professor?’ But while all this was pleasing, Cox in particular must have been ecstatic at one plaudit, which came from Ann Druyan, barely known to the general public, but to him a heroine because of her work in co-writing the Cosmos television series with Carl Sagan. ‘Cox and Forshaw take the equation that all of us know and few of us understand – and make it crystal clear for all of us,’ she said, carefully noting the contribution of Cox’s fellow scribe and collaborator. ‘A thrilling experience of passionate comprehension.’
He couldn’t put a foot wrong, it seemed. In the 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, Cox was awarded an OBE for his work in promoting science. The announcement came as a bit of a shock, despite receiving the British Association Lord Kelvin Award in 2006 for a similar feat. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ he admitted. ‘I totally 100 per cent didn’t expect it. I really am chuffed because it’s a nice honour, but more than that, recognising that promoting science to the public is an important thing will hopefully encourage more people to do it.’ This may have been a subtle broadside at the scientists who snidely criticised his style of academics and foray into the public domain but it could also have been an admission that while he might not produce any more great research work, there was a definite purpose to his scientific career. After all, he admitted: ‘It’s still unconventional to have a relatively large part of your academic career spent in public promotion.’
Going to Buckingham Palace was a blast. Dressed in a top hat and tails, he was joined by his parents. ‘My dad hadn’t been to London since before I was born,’ said Cox. ‘It was literally in the Fifties, the last time he went to London.’ At the ceremony in October 2010, he was pictured grinning and holding his medal in the courtyard. Afterwards they went for lunch and spent the day sightseeing. For his parents’ generation, the chance to visit Buckingham Palace in an official capacity was almost incomprehensible. Perhaps the only negative was that Cox thought his grandfather would have loved the opportunity to attend – ‘If I could have chosen one thing to happen, it would be that my granddad would have been able to come to that,’ he said.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t quite believe it when the Queen asked how the Large Hadron Collider was doing. He replied it was progressing well. Amid all the fanfare, he was typically self-effacing, though. ‘This is a wonderful accolade for me personally, but credit must also go to the University of Manchester and the Royal Society as well for allowing me to pursue these projects,’ he said. ‘Many employers would not have gone so far to support me, or could have made it hard for me to have the freedom to do the TV work, but the university has been totally supportive. I could never have dreamed when I was a student here that I would be receiving such an important honour as an OBE. Every time I receive an award or honour such as this, I feel as though it is further recognition of science. I feel there is a need to take science more seriously in this country and hopefully we are beginning to turn around the public perception. This is a fantastic way of promoting science and I am delighted to accept the honour.’
The fame that had followed the first series was just as unexpected. Already he had been voted onto the list of People magazine’s Sexy A–Z (under ‘Q’ for ‘Quantum Physicist’), but he now began to get spotted – or rather stared at – in the street. ‘Someone said to me once that it depends what channel you’re on as to what shop you can’t go into without people coming up to you,’ he told journalist Rebecca Hardy. ‘If you’re on BBC2, you can’t go into Waitrose. If you’re on BBC4, it’s Selfridges.’ Gia, too, found it strange when women came up to talk to her husband in the supermarket (for the record, their usual was Sainsbury’s). ‘The only thing she doesn’t like is people staring,’ said Cox. ‘She’s not the kind of woman who wants to put make-up on and straighten her hair when she goes out, but she’s decided she can’t look like she’s just got up.’
Milinovich herself was more blunt, writing on Parentdish: ‘I’m a scruffy bugger. I’m usually in jeans, my hair tied back in a messy ponytail. These days when I go out with my husband for a walk or a coffee, everyone stares at us. Suddenly, I’ve started to feel very self-conscious. It won’t be long before “they” start talking about what a frump my husband is married to. So, now along with looking after both the kids, doing all the shopping, cooking, laundry, etc., I’ve got to put on freakin’ make-up and wear something vaguely “nice” to go out of the house with him. If only to avoid having to read something about how I look “twice as old” as my husband.’ But it would only get worse.
Even far away from home, Cox was being recognised. ‘We were filming in the middle of Oklahoma somewhere, just nothing there and we drove past a petrol station and we went in,’ he said. ‘And we were buying, like, wine gums and the cashier said to me, “String theory. I’ve got a question about string theory.” He didn’t even say hello! This was in the middle of Oklahoma.’
He was away from home to film the next series. The name had been changed from Universal to, unsurprisingly, Wonders of the Universe and was due to be broadcast in the spring of 2011. There were only four episodes this time, four hours of science-based, yet philosophical programming which looked at some of the fundamentals of mankind’s existence. The spectre of Carl Sagan loomed even more in his approach this time around. ‘Cosmos was on TV in the UK when I was 12, in 1980,’ he told The A.V. Club, ‘so that would be the perfect age for a kid who is into astronomy anyway, as many are. And to have that series capture your imagination at that age, it makes an indelible impression on you. I think one of the reasons that Sagan is still relevant today and one of the reasons he’s very relevant in television, is that his shows were partly polemic. They were not simply – as is the fashion today – these kinds of presentations of what we know and don’t know about the universe, which is exciting and spectacular, but there’s more to it than that. There’s an agenda. Not to science, but to him – he had an agenda. He thought he would build a better world if everybody understood the value of the world and behaved in a scientific manner; he really believed that. He was passionately involved in that perspective and that perspective is not that we’re very small or insignificant.
‘To Sagan, the perspective was that because civilisation is so rare in the universe, then our rarity could have value. Stepping away from the earth, observing our existence on earth and putting our place in the universe in its proper context, for him, should make us on the planet behave in a more sensible and rational way. He recognised that we’re a village. I agree with that. [Wonders of the Universe] has that approach; it has mess
age in it. It tries to contextualise these discoveries as well as present them – and why not? In the UK, I am quite political. I work at university and I am involved in the political process. I lobby really hard for funding and support for scientific and engineering programs because I feel that those are the ways that we will progress as a civilisation and as a country. That’s what I share with Sagan’s view, that you can be an activist – a scientific activist – and you should be able to do that on television and in books.’
Filming was just as tough as before with expansive locations, lots of time spent away from home and large concepts to try and disseminate. Each episode took between four and five weeks to shoot, which meant he was away for 20 weeks throughout the year. Though he had more leverage to increase his free time and spend it with his wife and children, his schedule was an exhausting one. ‘You should see some of the outtakes,’ he told the Daily Telegraph. ‘They have one outtakes film which is just me swearing. Five minutes. It would be great to get it out there, but the BBC would never allow it.’
They had to wait a week at the beach in Costa Rica to capture footage of giant turtles crawling out of the sea to lay their eggs and an ambitious experiment in Brazil, though scary to shoot, ended up being highly satisfying. ‘Something that really worked was the prison demolition sequence in Rio,’ he remembered. ‘We used it as an analogy for a collapsing star, a star at the end of its life that has run out of fuel and it collapses under its own gravity. It does that in a matter of seconds, on the same timescale as a building collapses when you detonate it. Wandering around a building that is full of live dynamite and explosives is not very relaxing! It was all wired up and ready to go but when we blew it up, I thought it really worked well and I enjoyed it a lot actually, as a television piece.’ Not everything worked, though. ‘We had a catastrophic time filming in Bolivia,’ he explained to Shortlist, ‘so catastrophic, in fact, that the particular section didn’t even make it into the series. We all got altitude sickness, it’s very unpleasant to shoot at 5,500 metres. Truthfully, Universe was much more of a challenge to make than Solar System.’
