Born on this date in 1923 was Sir Patrick Moore, best known as the fast talking monocle wearing presenter of the long running BBC show The Sky At Night. Here are 10 facts about him and the show:
- He was born in Pinner, Middlesex but grew up in East Grinstead. His interest in astronomy began at the age of six. At 11, he joined the British Astronomical Association, and by 14 was running a small observatory in his home town after the person who was running it was killed in a road accident.
- He had heart problems as a child and was educated at home. He started wearing a monocle at 16, and had a full set of dentures by the age of 19.
- Eye problems didn't prevent him from serving in the RAF during the second world war and becoming a pilot. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in December 1941 at 18 and was called up for service in July 1942 as an Aircraftman, 2nd Class. He trained in Canada and was a navigator in the crew of a Vickers Wellington bomber, engaged in maritime patrolling and bombing missions to mainland Europe.
- The reason he gave for never having married was connected with the war, too. He was engaged to a woman named Lorna who was a nurse in London. was killed in London in 1943 by a bomb which struck her ambulance. "There was no one else for me," he said. "Second best is no good for me... I would have liked a wife and family, but it was not to be." It probably also explains his lifelong hatred of Germany, making comments such as "We must take care. There may be another war. The Germans will try again, given another chance." He would have been a rabid Brex-shitter had he lived a few more years. He was a supporter of UKIP and an admirer of Enoch Powell.
- His political views were a mixed bag. On the one hand, he wrote that "homosexuals are mainly responsible for the spreading of AIDS (the Garden of Eden is home of Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve)" and thought that the BBC was ruined when they let women run it and when he appeared on the show Room 101 he banished female newsreaders into the room of hate. He even stopped watching programmes like Doctor Who and Star Trek when "they went PC – making women commanders, that kind of thing". That said, he was completely opposed to blood sports and Fox hunting and supported animal welfare charities. He was an animal lover, and once said that "a catless house is a soulless house". He had an answer for people who called him a Dinosaur because of his views: "I may be accused of being a dinosaur, but I would remind you that dinosaurs ruled the Earth for a very long time." Perhaps surprisingly, he didn't think astronomy should be taught in schools. He believed those destined to be interested in it would gravitate to it anyway and that it would inevitably be badly taught and put many would be astronomers off.
- He had many more strings to his bow than holding the Guinness World Record for the most prolific TV presenter in the world, having hosted all but one episode of The Sky At Night between 1957 and January 2013. He taught himself to play the xylophone and Piano, and composed Music, including two operettas. He performed at a Royal Command Performance, and once accompanied Albert Einstein playing The Swan by Camille Saint-Saens on the Violin (sadly, it wasn't recorded). He wrote books, not just on astronomy but science fiction as well. He was also an amateur actor, cricketer, golfer and Chess player.
- His first television appearance was in a debate about the existence of flying saucers following a spate of reported sightings in the 1950s; Moore was quite vocal in his opposition to UFO conspiracy theorists. He was irritated when asked questions like "Why waste money on space research when there is so much to be done here?" or "What's the difference between astronomy and Astrology?" but he would personally answer every letter he was sent and his telephone number was always listed in the Telephone directory. Moore believed himself to be the only person to have met the first man to fly, Orville Wright, the first man in space, Yuri Garagrin and the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong.
- Some facts about The Sky at Night: It has an Asteroid named after it: 57424 Caelumnoctu. The number is the date of the show's first broadcast and the name is The Sky at Night in Latin. Moore himself has an asteroid named after him as well, 2602 Moore. Guests on the show have included Harlow Shapley (the first to measure the size of the Milky Way galaxy), Fred Hoyle, Carl Sagan, Arthur C Clarke, Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees, Michael Bentine, Brian May, the Queen guitarist and astrophysicist, Eugene Cernan, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. It is the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history. It's now presented by Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Lucie Green and Chris Lintott, and the theme tune is At the Castle Gate, from the incidental music to Pelléas et Mélisande, written in 1905 by Jean Sibelius.
- Moore was often a guest on other shows, such as Just a Minute, and once took part in an April Fool joke on BBC radio, in 1976. He announced there was a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event which meant that if listeners all jumped at that exact moment, 9.47 a.m. on April 1 1976, they would experience a temporary sensation of weightlessness. The BBC received telephone calls from listeners claiming that they had indeed felt it. He also appeared on a show called GamesMaster as a character who knew everything there was to know about video games and would answer questions sent in by viewers. However, the show's presenter claimed Moore didn't know or understand the first thing about video games and had no idea what he was even talking about; but nonetheless always managed record his contributions in just one take.
- His mother, Gertrude, was a talented artist who drew pictures of friendly little aliens called bogeys and wrote a book called Mrs Moore in Space in 1974.
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