There are loads of mind-boggling facts in Brian Cox’s two-and-a-half-hour arena show. That our nearest neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5m light years away. Or that super-massive black holes may be colliding as regularly as every couple of months. Cox’s story is almost sci-fi too. He was the keyboard player in 90s dance act D:Ream (whose song Things Can Only Get Better soundtracked Blair’s 1997 election campaign) before he did a PhD in high energy particle physics, got into TV and is now presenting what is essentially a university lecture with knobs on in venues more accustomed to Elton John. As Robin Ince – Cox’s comedian sidekick and co-host of Radio 4’s Infinite Monkey Cage – puts it: “Isn’t it fantastic that on a Wednesday night people decide to not go to the pub and instead turn out to watch a flamboyant dandy particle physicist?”
It is pretty fantastic and while Cox has been criticised for monetising science, his significant achievement is to democratise it, making complex cosmology accessible to ordinary people. The flamboyant dandy stuff helps. His designer jacket buttoned just so, his teeth glistening like the stars behind him. His hair is so immaculate that one audience uses the Q&A to ask what conditioner he uses. Cox looks less like a scientist than a rock star (specifically Jeff Beck, with a hint of Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel) but this adds to his engaging body language, all: “Wow. And look at this!”
He starts by explaining that the show will address where we are in the universe and what it means to be human, reminding us that with 2tn galaxies in the observable universe we are “physically insignificant”. And during an enthralling section on space and time he uses a photo of his young self with his grandfather to explain that all our pasts – even his stint in 80s big-hair band Dare – are still out there in the continuum. Such jaw-droppers hit home amid explanations of Einstein’s theory of relativity, stunning cosmos photography and occasional blokey banter. The planet Mercury is “a black blob”. He asks whether there are any amateur astronomers in the house. “No? Good, so I can make this shit up.” He doesn’t need to, because fact is so fantastic.
In the second half he explains how Earth and then life were created by random collisions of atoms. This cues up Ince – whose role so far has been to provide light relief – to deliver a truly moving monologue on parenthood, time and the preciousness of childhood.
By now Cox has moved from the chances of life on Mars (once, possibly, in microbe form) to his final flourish. The universe is decaying – Earth is finite – and the billions of years of stable planetary conditions needed to create a civilisation means that if life does exist elsewhere, it will most likely be as slime. Fantasies of little green men are swatted away, but by the time Cox concludes with “the planet is all we have, so let’s treasure it”, you’re left in awe of the rarity and preciousness of humanity, the skies, our Earth, and the magic all around us.
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Professor Brian Cox plays Manchester Arena, 13 September, then tours.
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This article was updated on Friday 13 September to correct an error – Cox’s PhD is in high energy particle physics, not astrophysics.
