'I'm not anti-religion. I'm anti-maniac'

Author: Brian Cox

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8330863/Brian-Cox-Im-not-anti-religion.-Im-anti-maniac.html

As a visual metaphor, Brian Cox’s fingers are hard to improve upon. They are long, slender and supple and, as he talks through some of the knottier problems of quantum theory, he crosses two of them at once, on the same hand.

That he earned a living as a keyboard player in a band before becoming a professor of particle physics does not surprise. Indeed, with his dark, floppy “Madchester” hair he looks like a missing Gallagher brother. He still dresses like the pop musician he used to be. Diesel jeans. Black, long-sleeved collarless shirt. No watch.

On the subject of which, he once said that the correct answer when someone asks you the time is to say you don’t know, because no one really knows. It was a philosophical point, as well as a scientific one. “I can’t even tell you at the moment what ‘at the moment’ means,” he added, just to clear things up. But when I ask if that is the reason he doesn’t wear a watch, he says: “No, I just use the clock on my mobile.”

Harry Hill did a sketch about how Cox tends to over think things. Does he mind being teased in this way? “There is a strange nexus between physics and comedy that I seem to be a part of. It’s a powerful if strange alliance. Dara O’Briain did mathematics and physics, and is passionate about it. Ben Miller did a PhD in physics. Robin Ince is a very good friend of mine.” (They do a comedy and science show together on Radio 4, one that they are about to take on a nationwide theatre tour.)

The 42-year-old professor does have a dry and self-deprecating sense of humour. Last year, when asked what he thought about being hailed as a sex symbol by the Daily Mail, he said: “People say things like: ‘He’s quite good looking for a scientist.’ But it’s a very low bar. There’s basically me and Patrick Moore.”