Oh my days! I’m all a-flutter! I couldn’t be more excited if I woke up to find Brad Pitt rifling through my knicker drawer. It’s all kicking off in the world of space and astronomy. And I’m nothing if not topical and informative (cough) as regular readers (cough) of this column will know, so today we’re talking about space and that.
What with last night’s Shuttle launch, this week’s peak of the Leonids meteor shower and the news that Galloway Forest Park has been officially declared the first Dark Sky Park in the UK. Not to mention the discovery that the ejecta from NASA’s LCROSS mission that blasted on to the moon’s surface - triggering a mass worldwide bout of off-kilter PMT amongst women of child bearing age - contained water. (What do you mean HOW? It just did. OKAY? I said not to mention it. I HATE YOU. Etc, etc)
All that aside, let’s talk about that great long running astronomy magazine programme - The Sky at Night. My first crush was Patrick Moore. There, I’ve said it and I refuse to be judged for it. I’m a sucker for the posh voice and be-monocled man. When all around me were plastering their bedroom walls with dodgy posters of Donny Osmond and the Bay City Rollers, I was snipping fuzzy black and white photographs of Patrick Moore out of the Radio Times with my mother’s nail scissors. I still get a bit giddy when I hear the monthly sombre opening bars of At the Castle Gate that herald another 30 minutes of Patrick.
This month Patrick, and the young pretender Chris Lintott, were taking a trip down memory lane, reviewing the last thirty odd years of stuff we know about Mars. Young Chris is obviously being groomed to take over from Patrick when the unthinkable happens.
I’m thinking of putting myself forward to fill Patrick’s big manny shoes. I could do a coquettish Nigella Lawson style delivery to attract a fresh new audience to the BBC’s longest running programme. Wearing a white lab coat with the collar turned up and a few buttons teasingly undone, all cinched in with a big belt, to emphasise my waspish waist. What? I could have a waspish waist. I could deliver lines in husky tones. Lines like “…and in next month’s Sky at Night, I’ll be pointing my probe at Uranus” with a cheeky Anne Robinson wink. What do you think? Does it sound like a winner, readers? I could totally capture the funky astronomical zeitgeist.
So anyway, they’re talking about Mars this month. A Mars retrospective from 1960 to the present day. Full of brown polyester suited boffins with mustard socks, conducting incomprehensible and unconvincing experiments with old Fairy Liquid bottles and insides of toilet rolls.
The highlight of this month’s programme for me was seeing the normally unflappable and stern Patrick exclaim "Blast and hell" when his hat blew off in a desert somewhere, in which they were filming to demonstrate what the surface of Mars “might look like”. A sort of low budget Capricorn One. I sniggered.
I also sniggered when a previous programme was revisited which excitedly reported the first pictures from the surface of Mars. Patrick was overcome with emotion, and blurted "Look at the detail on that!", much like a mucky builder would yell at a passing piece of totty. I half expected him to add “PHWOAR!” and deliver an inappropriate gesture to camera.
You can catch the Sky at Night on Wednesday at 730pm on BBC Four. To set the mood, you can get up before dawn tomorrow and look towards the South East – see if you can spot a few Leonids. If it’s not raining. Which it no doubt will be.
Lindsey Mason is a finalist in stv.tv's The Write Factor competition. The views expressed are not necessarily those of STV plc. If you would like to read more from this writer, use our comment system below.
