Once you start looking at the world rationally, it becomes much more exciting.

To be paid, to be employed to be an enthusiast and be excited about existence is fantastic.

If the Royal Variety Show was put in a matter transportation machine with the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, this is what you'd get.

Not since Jimmy Carr have I seen a cold computer programme on stage generate so much laughter.

I have a theory that evolutionary biologists are more vain than particle physicists.

I don't have any hobbies because my working job is my hobby. What I do is I spend my whole time looking through telescopes and having brain scans and buying books about various different ideas and I just sit around, that's my life.

My life is constant revision but it's not revision, a lot of it is for the first time.