Hello. Welcome to a brand-new series of Julia Zemiro's Home Delivery.
CATE McGREGOR: Now, you're taking your life in your hands, Julia.
I hope you know that. Oh, mate.
This series, I'll be meeting amazing people with extraordinary stories.
We'll be going back to their first homes...
It was a very special place.
..schools...
"Have you tried wagging?" "No." "Let's wag school!"
..first workplaces...
Still enjoy coming back here.
..favourite places... Nom, nom, nom.
Is it good? Mm-mm.
..and we may even let them show off their secret skills.
(RAPS) ♪ ..my palaces
♪ But your crib is so cramped you suckers suffer from paralysis. ♪
I'm in Oldham in the North West of England
to meet a man who's encouraged us
to look up to the majesty of the night sky
and challenged us to ask some of the biggest questions imaginable.
He's the particle physicist's particle physicist.
Yes, it's Professor Brian Cox.
Oh! And it's raining.
Oh, well, who should just be standing here waiting?
Hello, Brian. Hello. Lovely to see you.
Again. Yes.
Chadderton.
This is where you grew up? This is my home town.
You lived right up here. Lived just round the corner there.
And so this was the piece of ground
that you could run away from your parents to.
And what did you get up to, Brian?
Well, when I was very little I used to play football.
And actually, those were the goalposts.
So, it's kind of got a bit overgrown.
Aww! But it was much...
Last time I was here, it was much better tended.
And then, when I got a bit older,
then we used to go and sort of sit on the park benches around there
with little bottles of cider
and, um, snog.
Is that a word in... Snog!
It sure is. I think it's universal. ..in Australia? Yeah.
My first kiss was probably there... Fantastic!
..on that bench.
And how did you get your cider?
Well, we used to...
You know, in the 1980s in Britain, you could just go...
(HIGH VOICE) "Hello..." (DEEP VOICE) "Hello. I'm..."
(NORTHERN ACCENT) "I'll 'ave that." "I'm 18. Thank you."
And get out. And get out. Yep. So, that was basically it.
Are you ready for today? Yes.
Looking forward to it a lot, actually.
Great. You've come on the...
..the perfect weather, because this IS Oldham's weather.
Well, let's head off to your high school.
Why have you chosen a Ford Fiesta today?
Well, this is my first car.
But this is a beautiful, beautiful car.
♪ Jump in my car
♪ I wanna take you home
This is as fast as it goes - 35 miles an hour.
♪ Ah, jump in my car
See, it's like a classic car now.
♪ It's too far to walk on your own. ♪
You forget when you drive modern cars
how easy they are to drive compared to these things.
Professor Brian Cox is frequently described as a rock-star scientist.
♪ Things can only get better... ♪
As a powerful and passionate advocate
for the public understanding of science,
he has brought an appreciation of physics, astronomy
and the wonder of the natural world
into the homes of millions.
♪ Now I've found you. ♪
We are actually coming up to a lamppost here
that I, coming down this hill, failed to stop
and hit one of these lampposts.
What was the lesson there, Brian?
I learned to go very carefully down hills in Ford Fiesta 1.1Ls.
Wow.
My school. This looks very posh, Brian.
Was it posh in your day?
It was... I suppose you could say that.
It was...
Yeah, it's been here a long time.
Beautiful building right on the top of the hill.
It's gorgeous. Freezing cold most of the time.
We played football there and you could imagine
that when the snow was on the ground and the wind was howling...
It's made you the tough guy... ..it was freezing.
..that you are obviously.
It's made you resilient.
So this is the corridor, which hasn't changed at all.
In fact, the floor hasn't changed. Which is very beautiful, I think.
And did you enjoy your time here at this school?
Were you a good student? I loved it. I loved it.
It was a brilliant time, actually.
A really nice... a nice place to learn.
At the time this was the boys' school
and the girls' school was next door.
So what we used to do was we'd be in here and we'd creep down here,
and this door here was the door to the girls' school
and there was a curtain up.
A curtain even. So we weren't allowed to look.
So we had the big glass but you weren't allowed to look.
So what you would do is you would kind of sneak in, have a look around
and then you'd go out this and you'd go...
Get in.
..and you'd go like this and you'd go... and look at the...
I'll be the girls. I'll be the girls.
Here we go.
So you would kind of peek up like that and go...
(LAUGHS)
Oh, my goodness.
So this is where we used to have assembly every day
and just enjoy ourselves.
This is beautiful. It is nice, isn't it?
It's very beautiful.
Your parents, what job did they have?
What did your parents do? They just worked.
My mum was a cashier in a bank
and my dad worked in the bank as well.
Mmm. So that's where they met.
And so did you ever perform or speak on the stage, Brian?
Um... I don't remember ever being on the stage, actually.
Wow. I was quite quiet.
I used to sit at the back.
You know what's incredible to me, though, is that now
you say you were a shy kid
but now you actually talk to thousands of people.
I don't know how I made that transition.
Because it would've scared me to death to stand here
as a... you know, 16-, 17-, 18-year-old
and speak to even that audience there.
I would have been absolutely petrified.
So I suppose it's practice.
You end up maybe...
I ended up at university and you have to lecture.
Mmm.
So you get used to it and maybe that's it.
I was basically a goth.
A goth? I became a goth.
So when I was about 16 or 17 I started wearing overcoats
and I actually dyed my hair dark purple in this school,
which was frowned upon.
In the school?
So I was trying to be kind of a member of Bauhaus,
but you couldn't quite be
because you had to have your hair not too long.
So I had this kind of weird thing
that morphed into some sort of purple mullet type structure
on the front of my head.
So really it's the opposite of performing
because you wander around like that
thinking about sort of the landscape on the Yorkshire Moors
and thinking about Joy Division.
And would've said, "What will ever become of him?
"He can't even hold his head up in public."
I think that's what my school report says.
Really? Something like that yeah.
It was something like, "Doesn't really pay attention enough
"to maximise his potential."
When was there a first spark of excitement
about science or astronomy?
Oh, that from way back.
So, as far back as I can remember I wanted to do astronomy.
So at 5 years old, 6 years old I enjoyed looking at the stars.
Carl Sagan, one of my great heroes, talked about that
and said that the thing is,
once you realise that they're more than points of light,
that they're worlds,
and now we know that there are solar systems around them.
So you look at every point of light has planets like our sun has.
From then on, your imagination takes flight and it's a magical sight.
The more you know, the more magical it is.
And I somehow connected with that early on.
To the point where I wanted to come here, to senior school,
at the age of 11
because I wanted to do physics,
'cause I knew that astronomy was something to do with physics,
and I almost excluded everything else.
This is the reason probably for my reports.
'Cause I remember being atrocious in French class
'cause I felt that anything that got in the way
of doing physics and maths
was just a complete waste of time.
When you're here
and you're heading towards that final year of high school
did you know what the next step was going to be?
No.
I got, like, as a lot of 16-, 17-year-olds do, you know,
"What is the... what is the point of existence? What should I be doing?"
So I got into that...
As I said I became a goth and shuffled around a bit
and took a few days off
and went into Manchester and had a little bit of a...
So I was not entirely the model pupil,
and then got into music.
And so I'd just about got into university but then didn't go.
I went and joined a band instead.
So... and by the time I was supposed to be in university
I was in Hong Kong, actually,
in this band, playing in some club.
So I sort of deviated a bit.
Took about four years off
and then came back
and realised that what I really wanted to do was be an astronomer
and applied to the University of Manchester
and went there to do physics with astrophysics.
Was education important in the family?
Yeah.
I mean, that's why I came here
because it's the classic 20th century story actually
in the north of England,
which is grandparents work in cotton mills,
parents are the first people to do A levels but not university
and they wanted my sister and I to go to university.
What about your grandparents? Were you close to them?
Very.
Because when I was growing up my mum and dad worked
and so at lunch time
when I came out of St Matthew's School
we used to walk down,
they'd come and meet me and take me down to the house,
which was very close
and I really liked the company of my granddad
and he used to collect rainwater
and collect coal and things like that
because I think he'd lived with the First World War
and the Second World War
so he thought there was going to be another one.
So he kind of had stuff stockpiled
and he still had his air raid shelter.
He didn't think stability would last that long.
So you grew up with this kind of,
"I will give you some advice. You have to look after yourself.
"You know, you have to collect your own rainwater."
"And your own coal." And it seems so alien now.
Oh, this will be good.
(GASPS) Music room! Yeah.
Did you do music at school as a subject?
Um... yes, but I wasn't really interested.
I didn't really have much time for anything other than physics.
Maybe chemistry, biology and a bit of maths.
But I realised that I was interested in girls
and I went to a Duran Duran gig with my sister...
Did you...
..and noticed that quite a lot of girls liked the band,
and I think, quite honestly actually,
that's when I thought, "Hang on. I should be a pop star."
I learnt keyboards.
I taught myself at the age of about 15.
So I had no artistic interest in the beauty of music at all.
And I appreciate your honesty.
And so could a kid from Oldham be an astronaut or a pop star
or meet the Queen?
I never thought, well, because I'm from this small town
that I can't do the things that I wanted to do.
I was always and still am very optimistic.
So I thought I could be an astrophysicist
and then I thought I could be a pop star
and I was very lucky
because I happened to meet a guy who used to be in Thin Lizzy
who lived down the road.
So I'd like to say that this tremendous vision I had
and this talent and drive
took me into a record deal
but actually it was more that the guy from Thin Lizzy down the road
met my dad in a pub
and gave him a demo tape of my band,
which I had formed when I was 16 with people from this school.
Thin Lizzy split up and he went to form a new band
and he remembered there was this guy who lived somewhere just up the road
and so he rang me up and said,
"Do you want to come down and audition for the band?"
So much great music has come out of this area.
Yeah.
Is it because it's cold all the time and people are inside
and they're thinking about the world and love?
It's more... I mean,
because I then got very heavily into the Factory Records bands
and I listened to Joy Division or New Order.
I think they were making the music that accompanies that view.
This view is incredible. Look at it now.
That's the centre of Manchester...
I know, yeah.
..which is more high-rise than it was when I was here actually.
But you see it's the moors in the background
and that contrast between the sort of bleakness.
It's a bleak landscape. Mmm.
But the mills are in between it too, aren't there?
Yeah, you can just see one or two.
You can see some of the chimneys but this was built on cotton.
So it's cotton textiles
and it was extremely rich for a very short space of time.
I used to be a bus spotter as well. OK, now... Really?
So I had a little book of bus numbers
and I'd tick them off when I'd ridden on them.
What's going on in your mind when that happens? I'm serious.
What's a little kid in his mind going,
"What am I... Am I proving a theory? Is it just about keeping lists?"
Like plane spotting for someone who doesn't live near an airport.
Mmm. (LAUGHS) It's basically...
You know, I mean, planes were very exotic in those days,
you know, so...
Did girls like nerds?
I had more luck when I became a goth.
So I think the sort of walking around listening to the Cure...
And the hair. ..kind of worked better for me
than trying to engage them in a conversation
about the class 51 part railroad bodywork bus.
So in all, really, school was a good time for you?
Very good. I have really happy memories of it.
Which is fortunate, you know, I think,
because it is such an important part of your life.
In those days
there was significantly less pressure, I think.
You could be a child and you didn't...
We weren't constantly thinking, "What am I going to do next?
"What's the... Do I have to go to university?
"What grades do I have to get?"
For myself and I think most of my friends it wasn't about that.
It was just about having a good time and learning stuff
and the social element was important.
So we were all waiting for the end of the day for the bell to go
so you could walk out and get on the bus with the girls, you know.
So that kind of stuff, you know, but that's sweet in a way.
That's being a kid. But that's being a kid too.
Now, we have the opportunity
to actually meet your physics teacher.
Should we go and find him? Yes.
Brian, you choose to have Peter - Mr Galloway - here today.
Why was he your favourite teacher?
Well, partly because of his consummate skill as a teacher,
of course.
But also a lot of reasons.
I wanted to do physics and to the exclusion of everything else.
So was he a bit of a younger, hipper teacher?
Yeah, and also interested in physics
and happy to speak much more widely about
when we had questions about electronics or something like that
that we got interested in because we wanted to do music.
Is that your memory of it too, Peter?
That you were a bit broader in your approach?
Yes, that's the way I like to... like to... like to start out.
We... I mean we always had the syllabus to cover in the end
and we had to get back to it sometimes,
but, yeah, it was very interesting
and stimulating to be able to talk to intelligent students.
What was Brian like as a student?
I don't think it would be fair to say he wasn't a science nerd.
He was... But he was...
He was interested in other things as well, like his music,
and so we sort of had
a good working relationship, didn't we, from the start,
where we could talk about all sorts of things,
not just... not just physics, you know.
You helped Brian out with a particular project,
the noise gate, tell me about that.
Something to do with...
Well, it was something to synchronise... There were...
Did you have pulses from a synthesiser?
It was a drum machine that I think drummed out
96 pulses per quarter,
I think if I remember rightly.
So it puts out pulses and we wanted to go... dig-dig-dig-dig...
like that and trigger along with it,
so we can program a high hat on the drum machine to make it trigger.
And I scratched my head a bit, I suppose,
and thought, "Well, he needs to...
"It's a fairly simple application of digital electronics."
I sketched this circuit out and I said, "It's something like this,"
and it seemed to work.
You know, it gave the right... it gave the right traces on the screen
and so I think then
you probably took it away
and resold it and made it neater
so that it was more reliable.
And I met Billy Currie from Ultravox years later -
he was a keyboard player -
and I said, "How do you do that?"
and he went, "Well, we got this circuit,"
and it was exactly what we did.
Because it was the only way, the only way to do it.
Brian spends his life making science a bit easier to understand.
How hard is science to communicate?
It's a matter of going in at the right level
and choosing the right demonstrations or analogies
to bring out.
I was only thinking about this the other day actually
and I was struck by one of...
..something I'd seen in one of Brian's earlier programs.
You were in a desert somewhere, I think,
and the sun was beating down
and you focused the sun with a mirror,
stuck a thermometer in it and measured the temperature rise
and then you said, "Well, from that temperature rise
"it's a fairly easy calculation to work out
"the amount of energy the sun gives out to the earth everyday."
Something like that.
But at the end of that experiment you said, you stood back and said,
"Well... and that's why I love physics."
And I thought, "Yeah, he's right there."
You don't need fancy equipment,
which can sometimes be a distraction for you.
Does he do OK as a communicator of big ideas?
Oh, more of less. More or less.
"He's alright, yeah."
Well, I was taught well. You were taught well!
Well, thank you so much, Peter, for coming today.
My pleasure.
We are now going to go off to the hall
where you did play your first gig.
Yes. Look forward to that.
Thank you.
So lovely to meet you.
Well, Brian Cox, in a Home Delivery exclusive,
I've got the demo of your first band.
We've actually got a cassette player here.
I'll pop it in. I found it last night, actually.
It was the only one that I could find and it's got one song on it,
the song we recorded, at a studio.
(SYNTH POP MUSIC PLAYS)
Oh, a bit synthie. That's nice.
It's synthie and it's kind of...
I wrote the lyrics. Did you?
And the opening lyric is "Alone in the hills tonight".
♪ ..tonight... ♪
Even at the age of 16,
I was feeling that existence was something
that had to be considered very carefully.
Our existence is temporary and we are a very...
We live in a finite speck of dust in a possibly infinite universe
and I think I knew that even then.
♪ Beneath the Diamonds Road
♪ And things we... ♪
(GASPS) This is so pretty.
Upper Mill Civic Hall.
So I had a band with my school friends when I was...
How old would I be?
I was 16 years old.
And we rehearsed... And what was the name of that band?
Um, it was very boringly called New Game.
Our first gig was on that stage there.
Look at that.
And it was just we played about three songs
because I think we only had three songs.
We had one synthesiser that would play one note at a time.
So it was kind of one note, one finger, one note.
And what was your style? What was New Game's style?
It was sort of attempting to be a cross between...
We were into OMD and Ultravox and those kind of bands.
But the demo tape we recorded
was the thing I gave to my friend Darren Wharton,
who was the keyboard player from Thin Lizzy,
so without this band I would not have got into Dare,
which was the rock band that I was in,
and I wouldn't have been a musician at all.
Look, it's pretty incredible to think Thin Lizzy were huge over here
and they had number ones in Australia.
I find it incredible that just from that little tape
where you say you're literally going
one note, two notes,
he has gone, "Mmm, that's the musical genius I need for my band."
Well, he just remembered...
I think he just liked the way that I looked
'cause I had quite a, you know, kind of a... kind of...
I don't know... attitude at the time.
Is it true they were a bit like Oldham's Bon Jovi?
Yeah.
So are you thinking about physics at all
or you are just enjoying being...
Because then I was 18 or 19 and in a rock band,
you know, Los Angeles,
and then we toured with Jimmy Page and Gary Moore, ah, Europe.
Oh, Europe! I wouldn't skite about that.
Final Countdown.
(PLAYS INTRO FOR 'THE FINAL COUNTDOWN')
That one. (LAUGHS) That's so good.
So we toured with them.
Oh, my God! Did 58 gigs with them.
I read somewhere that you said
those five years of being in that rock environment
made your character.
Well, you grow up quite fast
because it's... especially when you're the youngest in the band
and it's a very intensive thing to do,
as anyone who has been in a band that's done anything like that,
has toured and done hundreds of gigs knows.
So I think I learnt to be confident and to get on with people
and all those things during that time
because you have to.
But I left after the second album.
Almost overnight just thought,
"Well, I don't want to do that anymore.
"I've done that now and that's enough.
"I want to go back and do astronomy."
And that's what I did.
So where does D: Ream fit in?
I needed a job so I got a job as a sound engineer with D: Ream
and then got a TV show, to be on in London,
and didn't have a keyboard player,
and so he said to me, "Well, you can play keyboards, can't you?
"So why don't you just stand there
"and play the keyboards on the TV show?"
So I accidentally joined that band
and then we got to do Top Of The Pops,
five times actually.
♪ Things... ♪ Five times.
Which was brilliant
because it had always been my ambition to do Top Of The Pops.
Oh, it hasn't? Oh, it had.
No, when I was growing up,
because I used to watch it every week
and I thought, "I really want to do Top Of The Pops,"
and I never thought I'd do that.
And do you still get pleasure from the piano?
Yep, I like playing piano.
From playing your one at home?
Yeah, I sit there... It's in the kitchen.
..at home.
So I sit there and tinkle away. You remember...
(PLAYS 'THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER')
Oh. That's nice.
These things, things can only get better.
Oh, I love it!
(LAUGHS)
Oh! That's nice.
Things can only get better.
Oh, I love it!
Oh, ladies and gentleman. Thank you. Thank you.
He's here all week. I'm available, I'm here all week.
Thank you. Oh, that was great.
I would love to go somewhere wild and exotic now.
Should we go to the moors? I think we should.
Oldham and this area is about the moors.
So it's quite a dark and powerful presence
but it's also I think very beautiful.
But it's a bleak landscape.
If you're 16 or 17 years old you go and sit there
and think about existential angst and the meaning of life.
Oh, this is so beautiful. Look at that.
It is, isn't it? It's just so beautiful.
I mean, as a place to grow up it's spectacular,
and this is... once... particularly once we got cars
and we could drive
and we could get away from our own parents and your mum and dad's house
where would you come?
It's here, isn't it?
I mean, this is... this is Wuthering Heights
and the Brontes and just, yeah, a powerful and desolate place.
Did you walk to the top?
Oh, yeah, yeah, we used to scramble up to the top of the hills
and freeze on the top.
Oh, yeah.
And take our little bottles of cider.
We used to drink sweet cider. Oh.
I don't know about you but it's kind of...
No, I really didn't drink sweet cider at all.
And this is a nice day. I mean, it's freezing cold.
You can probably see... (LAUGHS) ..the expressions on our faces,
but it's actually quite a nice day.
It snows a lot here and it gets wild and the weather changes a lot
so it's almost like...
It's like you would imagine northern Scotland.
Brian, you're a leading figure, obviously,
in spreading a public understanding of science.
What's the biggest hurdle in communicating science?
I think it's sometimes people think it's not for them
because they think it's complicated
and you have to be some kind of genius.
You have to be Einstein,
and Einstein very famously said once in a school's talk,
"When I was your age I was no Einstein."
You know, so it is not...
You don't have to be a freak
to understand a little bit about science.
Which is actually nothing more than the study of nature.
So we want to understand this.
We want to understand why the grass is green
and why the water looks blue.
Those things. That's... that's science.
And often those very simple, childlike questions
lead to very deep answers,
and that's what characterises...
I think more than anything else,
a scientist is someone who doesn't lose that child... childlike wonder
and tenacity to keep going
and go, "No, I really do want to understand why the sky is blue."
If you look at topics like global warming and immunisation
let's say,
are people choosing more and more now stupidity over reason?
I mean, 'stupidity' is quite a violent word, isn't it?
But I think that there's a lack of trust in expertise
but in really modelling,
where we say, "If we carry on doing this then it is likely that
"temperatures will rise or sea levels will rise."
So we're not able to predict the future with any level of certainty
but we're able to do better than nothing.
And there's a lot of scepticism about that kind of modelling
and I think that's the problem.
There's this obsession with
you need to be giving both sides of the argument.
If you give that kind of side of the argument,
what I have termed as stupidity,
is that kind of taking us down kind of a new dark age in a way?
Yes, it will.
Because there is no balance between
a community, in this case the scientific community,
who have spent... well, hundreds of years trying to understand
how the atmosphere and the oceans respond to temperatures etc, etc,
there is no balance between that
and... and some person who has held a minor office
in some government post for a while, you know.
There's no equivalence,
and it's like the analogy I always use is with an aircraft.
So you rarely get the passengers in the back of an aircraft saying,
"Well, actually, this is our democratic right,
"We have opinions as well. I think we're going to land the plane.
"You move over, captain. We'll land it."
How did you make the transition to TV?
It was partly because I got involved...
We had one of our regular funding crisis, crisES, in the UK.
You know where the government cuts the money for science,
which is cutting the foundations of our civilisation and our future
and, ah... There you go.
So I got quite involved in 2007
in arguing very loudly with our government
and I went on some television programs and radio programs
and argued with politicians,
and someone at the BBC saw me and thought,
"Well, that's kind of nice, this young guy" -
I was young at the time -
"who will stand up and argue for science."
I didn't choose it.
I think it is like... like politics in a way.
Anyone who wants to be a politician probably shouldn't be,
and it's the same thing with a TV presenter in a way.
But you enjoy it. I love it.
You have made so many shows, though. What show haven't you made?
I want to make some programs about our future.
How could we manage this planet more effectively?
We are a single global civilisation now.
We are on the verge of becoming a multi-planetary civilisation.
So I'm interested in that.
So how do we make that transition?
Because once we become a civilisation
that is not only confined to this planet
but exists out there amongst the solar...
..the planets in the solar system and ultimately the stars,
we become an immortal civilisation.
Is there any idea, any scientific idea,
that is too big to communicate via TV?
The best you can do on television is inspire people to find out more.
I mean, you can't give a lecture course in general relativity
on a television program
but you can make it interesting enough
that people might go and... you know, go to a library.
As a scientist you write, you research, you lecture.
Which part do you most enjoy?
All of it, actually.
And I am just about to go and lecture now, actually.
I know, I know! In one hour's time.
I know. In one hour's time, that's all we've got you.
I will be down there somewhere
talking about quantum mechanics and the Schrodinger equation
to a load of 18-year-olds,
which I love doing.
Of course you do. I love doing that.
But I love the research as well.
Research is really invigorating
because there is always a moment when you are doing research
where you know something that nobody else knows.
And nobody has ever known. That's what research is.
And that's... that's wonderful, and it happens...
It's usually something tiny,
some little minute detail of nature,
but it's something...
It's a piece of knowledge that only you possess
when you discover it
and that's a beautiful thing.
Where do you feel at peace?
Certainly here. This is a great spot.
I mean, it's gorgeous.
You couldn't sit on top of that mountain...
Well, you'd be at peace briefly until your nose fell off.
Until you got cold enough and had to leave.
So we should...
But, yes.
So elements of peacefulness if you are appropriately dressed.
Yes. Yes. I think that's my sort of thing.
That's a great answer.
And finally, what does the adult Brian Cox have in common still
with the 14-year-old Brian?
Oh, I think curiosity and a sense of wonder.
And awe at the... this.
By this I don't just mean this place, I mean the planet itself.
The universe is an awesome thing. Mmm.
And a friend of mine said...
..a physicist said,
"I am astonished at the existence of a single atom
"and from then on you give me an atom
"and I will give you a universe.
"But the reason for the existence of a single atom is a baffling thing."
Brian Cox, what a delight.
Now I'm going to let you get back in that car.
I think we should both go and get back in the car.
Yes, and go to your lecture.
Turn the heater on. Yes, come on. Let's get you back.
Let's get you there.
Captions by Red Bee Media
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation