A nice thought for a Monday morning.
Kirsty Young, presenter of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, as interviewed in Metro:
- I’ve done almost 100 interviews and there have only been around five I haven’t enjoyed … I always love the scientists. After meeting and talking to a Nobel-Prize winning scientist, I feel blessed that there are people like that in the world.
How many science editors has she interviewed, I wonder?
I don’t know the answer to that, except I am still waiting for The Call, my list of eight gramophone records all ready, in my pocket-book.
Did she mention her reaction to scientists without the prize? Or is that the price of admission to the island?
Perhaps you have to have a Nobel Prize to count as a ‘celeb’ in today’s world. But here’s something interesting about celebrity – I think people are beginning to buck the celebrity gossip that the media feeds them.
My evidence? Strictly Come Dancing, the entertaining show in which celebs and professional dancers compete at ballroom dancing, with one couple eliminated each week. Couples are rated by professional judges, but the public has a 50% vote.
Most celebs on SCD are pop singers, actors (usually in soap operas), sports people and TV presenters, and are (usually) in the peak of youth and vigor. The producers usually put in a few oldies but these are always eliminated in the early rounds.
In the current series, veteran political journalist John Sergeant, remains doggedly in the show. Despite the judges’ efforts to throw him off, the public loves him, and he has always avoided elimination. Sergeant looks like a dyspeptic bullgog and dances like a sack of potatoes – but his dry wit, intelligence and charm have clearly won viewers over.
Yes, the public loves an underdog, but could it be that the public is becoming tired of the usual pop-star/actor/TV presenter/sportsman combo and is longing for something different?
I imagine an episode of Strictly that features scientists only. I think Prof Lord Sir Robert Winston would make an admirable waltzer, perhaps pitted against HWMNBN doing the Pasa Dobles (the thought of him doing the tango fills me with
horrorfascination). Actually, I do know one or two scientiosts who can strut their stuff, but decorum forbids my mentioning them by name.