Goodnight all - from the Skeptical Bobby

It's been one hell of a ride.

Two years ago, I was boozily regaling my mate Sid Rodrigues with tales from my curious police career and, before you could say 'I want to believe!' Sid - creator of the Skeptics in the Pub network - had roped me in to do a 45minute talk at SITP Camden. Well, the Camden gig went okay ... and, next thing I know, I'm being asked to speak at QEDCon 2013, the biggest of all UK Skeptics meetings.*

As I was pretty much an unknown, they put me on first. But, as it happened, that worked in my favour as I played to a full house. All of the subsequent speakers had to share the audience with various panels being run in other rooms. Maybe that's the reason that my talk - The Skeptical Bobby - proved to be one of the most popular of the event; basically because more people saw my talk than other talks. That said, it did seem to go down well. I even got a standing ovation from Richard Dawkins himself although when he tweeted the same message - 'Superb talk at QEDCon by Stevyn Colgan. Intelligent and humane' - it proved to be a double-edged sword. My Twitter follower count suddenly leapt up by around 450 ... but around half of that number turned out to be Dawkins haters and I was trolled for several months. Eek.

What happened next was mad.

SITP groups from all over the UK started asking me to come and perform the talk in their town. And, as I was keen to get some exposure for myself and my book, I said yes to them all. Which is why, between April 2013 and March 2014, I gave this talk a further 76 times.

Well, I say 'this talk'; no two performances were ever quite the same. I have more than 30 years' worth of stories and experience to draw on and the talk often went off in unexpected directions. And it got longer. By the end of the run, it regularly topped 90 mins and I hit a spectacular two hours in Newcastle. People still seemed to enjoy it though. And I never got close to making a 45 minute talk last as long as Robin Ince can. The man is a genius.

I should perhaps explain that my talk was all about grass roots skepticism; about the need to question the world about us and not to accept things blindly or without evidence. I took the audience on an autobiographical journey through my childhood, explaining how I buggered up my school career and then joined the police for a bet; how my career in the police service went similarly tits-up because I fought against police procedures that I thought were wrong; how ultimately I was vindicated and became part of an experimental unit at Scotland Yard designing innovative ways to tackle crime and disorder; and how, thanks to a chance meeting with Douglas Adams, my whole life changed direction. As the posters said, 'If you want to know how lollipops can reduce anti-social behaviour, or how wheelie bins can prevent burglaries, or how a dog show can save lives ... this talk is for you.'

The Skeptical Bobby took me to SITP groups as far afield as Glasgow, Lincoln, Birmingham, Cheltenham ... in fact, the only two regions I wasn't booked by were Wales and my own native South West, which was a shame. I also performed at the Edinburgh Festival (where I broke my foot), Hay, Latitude, the Harrogate International Festival, Cornbury, Salon London, the Village Green Festival, Geekfest, CreatED and various British Humanist events. And I appeared on the Little Atoms and Skeptic Canary Podcasts, the Australian Skeptic Zone podcast, Josie Long's Shortcuts on Radio 4, and an episode of the excellent panel show Do the Right Thing.

On top of all that, I was also doing gigs to promote my book, appearing on stage in the Ig Nobel Prizes UK tour, acting as a judge for the Transmission Prize 2013, researching for QI and researching and writing for the Museum of Curiosity, and writing a new book. What a mad 12 months!

But all good things come to an end and the run is now over. In many ways I wish I could do more shows; I've already had people approach me to do more but I've had to be firm and say no. I'm sorry if you missed it but I simply don't have enough spare time now.

Doing that many shows in such a short time and in such a wide variety of venues has been a brilliant learning experience. And, who knows? I may go back on the road with a new show sometime in the future.

You can't keep a skeptical bobby down.

I'll end by thanking everyone around the UK I've met - the thousands of you! - for your hospitality and support. It's been a huge pleasure to do the talk and I'm genuinely honoured that you asked me 'round your gaffs.

*Should it be skeptics or sceptics? I was always taught that the British way was sceptic (hence my spelling on the Powerpoint slide in the first photo). However, many linguists insist that the K version is more accurate than the C as it's from a Greek word and they would have used the K. But you decide.

A Dead Duck of a Show

Last night was the first show of this year's annual Ig Nobel Prizes tour of Europe. It played to a packed lecture hall at Imperial College, London - a capacity audience of around 800 - and was gloriously funny from start to finish.

After an intro by Professor Sue Gibson, Ig Nobels creator, Marc Abrahams opened the show with a brief explanation of the prizes and a run-down of the most recent award winners. They included a team from Japan, China and the UK who got the award for 'assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice'. When the Ig Nobel Prizes ceremony was held at Harvard University last Autumn, several members of the team flew over from Japan to collect the award. Two were dressed as mice.

Another 2013 winner was a paper by a Dutch, British, Canadian collaboration which detailed two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again. however, was the Ig Nobel Prize for Public Health, awarded to a team from Thailand, for the medical techniques described in their report 'Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam'; techniques which they recommend except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck.

The next part of the show involved the aforementioned Sue Gibson, me and several of my colleagues from QI doing 'dramatic readings' of papers submitted to the Ig Nobels. What this entailed was us selecting  a paper from a pile, scanning it for a few minutes and then going up on stage to read it out to the audience. After two minutes, a bell sounded for us to stop and we then had to take questions from the audience ... which were clever, funny and which we were completely unable to answer.

Here are the readers: Top  - Andrew Hunter Murray (with audience member who asked such a blinding question she was invited on stage), Anna Ptaszynsky, James Harkin. Middle - Dan Schreiber, Jack Burke, Molly Oldfield. Bottom - Sue Gibson, Anne Miller and me.

Then came a talk by former Ig Nobel Prize winner Dr Mason Porter on the mathematical modelling of bipolar disorder which, I have to say, may as well have been in Swahili. But it was hugely entertaining and the questions from maths experts in the audience were just as deliciously incomprehensible.

 As is traditional, the penultimate part of the Ig Nobels show is a reading from the works of William Topaz McGonagall, considered the worst poet of all time. And once again we were treated to a reading by Professor Andrew George, ex of Imperial College, and now Vice Principal of Brunel University.

The grand finale of this year's show was a mini opera, brand new and specially written for the Ig Nobels by composer Daniel Gillingwater. It was performed by soprano Sarah Redmond, with the cast of Andrew Walker, Dylan Suddaby, Katie Parsons and Marika Vissor, and music by the Edge Quartet with Shaun Thompson on clarinet. And Dutch biologist Dr Kees Moeliker on duck call. The piece was called ... The Homosexual Necrophiliac Duck Opera.

No, really.

It was introduced by Kees himself who told the story of how a dead duck and the award of an Ig Nobel changed his life. What he did, in effect, was give us a repeat of his brilliant TED talk, which you can watch here:



The opera was wonderfully funny and, thanks to the wonders of YouTube, you can watch it here on this blog. We did make better, closer recordings and we're going to try to edit them all together to make a definitive version. When that happens, I'll post it here. But here's a pretty good version to be going along with. Oh, and before you watch the opera, do download a copy of Kees' original paper. It's the libretto for the whole 15 minute piece and if you read it in conjunction, the whole thing will make a lot more sense! You can get it here.



When the idea of the opera was first mooted, Kees asked the composer about the creation and scope of his work. Daniel replied: 'I have set it for solo high voice, in this premiere performed by Sarah Redmond (playing your role, as witness and first [and only author]). The gender difference need not be an issue as you are an elegant and willowy specimen, much like Sarah. The scoring also includes clarinet quintet, and a vocal chorus of four – soprano, alto, tenor and bass punctuating the section beginning ‘Rather startled, I watched …’ which is the final vivace section of a pseudo Mozartian aria. The two male singers will also be portraying the mallard ducks in question, through the medium of contemporary dance. A tasteful re-enactment of the duck display, mixing flowing, poetic body movements and extreme sexual violence.' It was at that moment that Kees decided that he wanted to be a part of this great work and therefore offered himself as duck call performer, despite a complete lack of formal training.

The first night of the Ig Nobels was tremendous fun as always, helped along by a spirited audience who enjoyed it immensely. Roll on next year.

I leave you with a pseudo-'selfie' of Kees, Marc, Daniel, Sarah and about half the cast at the aftershow party. We may not get a million tweets on Twitter but I couldn't resist the photo opportunity.

Maybe the show is coming your way? The full schedule of the European tour is here.

All photos: Stevyn Colgan

The Badger Hole of Ignorance Special #1 - All about Series 1

In this episode of The Badger Hole of Ignorance, producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner discuss Series 1 of The Museum of Curiosity, recorded in 2006.

Aiding host John Lloyd in this first series was guest curator Bill Bailey.

The guests, and their donations, were as follows:

Show 1: Professor Richard Fortey (Curators of the Natural History Museum and the Giant Hornet of Chang Jiang), Sean Lock (The modern Scarf Knot) and Brian Blessed (The Yeti).

Show 2: Fran Beaumann (A Pineapple), Dr Gary Sheffield (Anderson Shelters) and Ben Elton (Privacy).

Show 3: Arthur Smith (Arthur Cravan), Professor Frank Close (Nothing) and Professor Ronald Hutton (Father Christmas).

Show 4: Victoria Finlay (Pliny the Elder), Kevin Day (The Battle of Waterloo) and Alastair Fothergill (the Hairy Angler Fish).

Show 5: Sir Jonathan Miller (Nottingham Alabasters), Dr Phillip Ball (Phlogiston) and Professor Marcus du Sautoy (The Monster).

Show 6: Dr John Gribbin (The Big Bang when it was the size of a Grapefruit), Alan Davies (Epping Forest) and Martha Reeves (Silence).

So here's the podcast hosted, as always, by the affable Ken Plume:



(All photos copyright Dan Schreiber)

Video didn't kill the Radio Star

Yesterday was an interesting day. It began at BBC Radio 4 and my appearance on the Saturday Live magazine show with the Reverend Richard Coles and Anita Anand and guest star Richard Osman of Pointless fame.

Great fun and lovely people. We discussed quizzes, Cornwall, policing and the curious subject of cows having regional accents, among other things. You can listen to the show or download it as a podcast here.

I then mooched around some bookshops and was delighted to see that the Connectoscope has started to appear on the shelves. I don't think I'll ever not be thrilled by seeing one of my books in the shops.

 

Then it was on to North East London and a video shoot for the new single by Emperor Yes. I've known the lads - multi-instrumentalists Ash Gardner and Hugo Sheppard and Three Trapped Tigers drummer, the mighty Adam Betts - for a few years. Their videos are always innovative and slightly bonkers, usually involving mad costumes, animation and nods to favourite film genres. Here, for example, are their videos for Wasps and Cosmos:

I won't issue any spoilers about the new video other than to say it centres around an apocalyptic party and some curious men in costumes. My role is the mysterious 'Straws Guy'. Intriguing, eh? I'll link to the video when it's released but, in the meantime, here are a few teaser photos from the shoot (apologies for poor quality - phone camera in low light) ...

Under the costumes you might recognise Museum of Curiosity producer Dan Schreiber (frog) and magician Pete Heat (polar bear). You might also, if you're a regular to this blog, spot my Carl Sagan cartoon behind the band:

More links to Emperor Yes here.

The Badger Hole of Ignorance - Episode 1 - Mummies, Jungles and Lost Properties

Last Monday (30th) the first episode in Series Five of The Museum of Curiosity was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It featured presenter John Lloyd CBE and new curator Humphrey Ker with guests Egyptology Professor Joann Fletcher, explorer and altruist Colonel John Blashford-Snell, and comedian and environmentalist Mark Watson.

Photo copyright: Stevyn Colgan

Here's The Badger Hole of Ignorance Episode 1 podcast in which producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner discuss the episode with host Ken Plume:



Secondly, here's Jo Fletcher's extraordinary documentary - in full - telling the story of how she and her colleagues revived 2000 year old techniques to mummify a modern man. Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret is the fascinating, touching and respectful story of a very brave man facing his own death and of the dedicated scientists who worked hard to make his death something special and celebratory while also increasing the sum of human knowledge.



Next up, here's the documentary The Mission: A Grand Adventure in which 'Blashers' delivers a baby grand piano to the Wei Wei tribe in the middle of the Guyanese rain forest. Glorious British eccentricity at its best (sadly, the sound quality is a bit rough but quite watchable):



And here's Mark Watson in Australia doing some fantastic stand up (NSFW!):



More next week.

The Badger Hole of Ignorance - Episode Zero

Welcome to The Badger Hole of Ignorance, the official podcast of The Museum of Curiosity! Hosted by noted American broadcaster, film producer and owner of Fred Entertainment, the ever-affable Ken Plume, Badger Hole (as I like to call it, probably) will take you behind the scenes at the Museum. You'll hear how the show gets made, who makes the show and learn a little more about the people who make up the show's steering committee i.e. the guests and what they donate. Here's Podcast Zero, a kind of prequel podcast in which producers Dan Schreiber and Richard Turner explain the history of the show and how, against all the odds, it was born in 2009.

Sir David Frost (1939 - 2013)

I was very sad to hear of the death of legendary broadcaster Sir David Frost yesterday. I had the great good fortune to work with him a couple of months ago when he appeared as one of our guests on the new series of The Museum of Curiosity. He was a delight to have on the show and, although he did look a little frail, he was sharp and witty and generous with his time and laughter. He had a way of making you feel that you were the most important person he'd spoken to that day; I guess that was the secret of his long success.

(LtoR - Sir David, Dr Paul Sinha, Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, John Lloyd, (front) Humphrey Ker. Photo copyright Stevyn Colgan)

A sad loss.

The show will go out on BBC Radio 4 sometime in October.

My thoughts are with his family and friends.

Final visit to the Museum

Last night we recorded the final episode of Series Six of The Museum of Curiosity with Sir Howard Stringer (former head of Sony and NBC and possibly the only Oxford graduate drafted to fight in Vietnam for the US Army), Richard Ingrams (co-creator of Private Eye and The Oldie magazines), and Jane Bussmann (Comedy writer for Brass Eye, The Fast Show, Smack the Pony, South Park and the woman who exposed African terrorist Joseph Kony's activities to the West). What an endlessly fascinating group of people they were.

Photo: Stevyn Colgan

I'm very proud to work on such an amazing show. It's just a shame that more people don't know about it. In this age of myriad hi-def 3D TV channels, the radio is seen as very much the poor relation. But radio is where all the interesting stuff is. I doubt that we'd ever be able to sell the idea of the Museum to TV execs and yet it fulfils everything that Lord Reith insisted upon when the BBC was created: It educates, informs and entertains, absolutely to the letter. How many other shows can say the same?

Roll on Series Seven.

Fourth Visit to the Museum

We recorded Episode 4 of Series 6 of The Museum of Curiosity last night at the Shaw Theatre in Euston. It's the first time we've used it for this show and it's a lovely venue. On the panel we had astrophysicist and satellite designer Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, ex-GP, stand-up comedian, champion quizzer and star of The Chase Dr Paul Sinha and the legend that is Sir David Frost.

Another warm, witty, intelligent and occasionally hilarious episode in the can.

Two to go and still some great guests to come.

Photo: Stevyn Colgan

Third visit to the Museum

We recorded show 3 of series 6 of The Museum of Curiosity last night at the BBC Radio Theatre. Host John Lloyd and curator Humphrey Ker were joined by comedian and author Mark Watson, explorer and all-round adventurer Colonel John Blashford-Snell, and BAFTA award-winning Egyptologist Professor Joann Fletcher who, as you may know, was involved last year in the first mummification of a human being (using ancient Egyptian methods) for 3000 years.

Another amazing panel. Another amazing show in the can.

Photo: Stevyn Colgan

Second Visit to the Museum

We recorded the second show of series 6 of The Museum of Curiosity last night with primatologist Professor Volker Sommer, comedian Andrew O'Neill and rock star Amanda Palmer.

As always, gloriously entertaining, fascinating and hilarious in equal measure. I'm very proud to work on this show and we still have some amazing guests to come.

It'll be broadcast sometime in October on BBC Radio 4.

Photo: Stevyn Colgan

Read Herring

Lovely words from Richard Herring on his blog today about yesterday's Museum of Curiosity recording:

Photo: Stevyn Colgan

'Tonight I recorded an episode of John Lloyd's Museum of Curiosity. What a delightful and fascinating programme this is (and one that I think might benefit from an extended podcast release - two hours of material is recorded for the 27 minute show and it's pretty much all gold!). At times I was so enjoying listening to the others talking that I almost forgot that I was meant to be taking part. It was a wide-ranging discussion taking in ants on stilts, pianists with crippling, mechanical little fingers, the changing meridian and okapi sex (can you guess what I contributed?). The show has a dedicated team of nerds behind it who have dug out amazing facts and I love the way it has a panel comprising of comedians, scientists and experts and attempts to link each contribution to similar areas of the different disciplines. While most TV panel shows (including to some extent even QI) gravitate to putting in the same well-known comedy faces, you get a lot more interesting stuff by mixing it up a bit. The zoologist, Dr Christofer Clemente, came up with the funniest lines of the show. But would they book him on Mock The Week?

It's intelligent and stimulating programming that is increasingly being edged out of TV and even radio, leaving a gaping open goal for independent internet productions to score in. I discussed this with one of the razor-minded team after the show. The TV companies insist on getting big names into all shows, which takes up all the budget and seems to ignore the fact that the pool of possible contributors gets smaller and more boring. But glad that a few shows designed to expand the mind rather than crush the spirit still exist.'

Richard appeared on the show last night with reptiles and animal locomotion expert Dr Christofer Clemente and art historian and ex-director of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Dr Kristen Lippincott.

The show will be broadcast sometime in October on BBC Radio 4.

And while we're on the subject of TV companies, my boss (and host of The Museum of Curiosity, the splendid Mr John Lloyd had this to say in a recent article for Chortle:

'I despair for TV comedy' says QI's John Lloyd on the state of the industry.

Comedy guru John Lloyd has launched a broadside against timid, interfering and indecisive TV executives – and hinted that QI could become an online incubator for new ideas. The creator of the Stephen Fry-fronted panel show has also produced Blackadder, Not The Nine O’Clock News and Have I Got News For You over an illustrious 40-year-career. But he said he despaired about the current state of commissioning, which was top-heavy with office-bound administrators too scared to put their faith in creative talent.

‘I'm very cross about the current system,’ he told Chortle’s Comedy Conference on Friday. ‘I'm bleak about it. I despair about it actually and it's a crying shame for our culture that television's not what it was. ‘I don't want to boast, but I've been doing this for 40 years and I've been involved in some pretty good things across a huge variety of genres, but I've still got to sit and listen to someone who’s have never done five minutes of stand-up, who’s never written a funny line who's never produced a sitcom. You've got to listen to their opinions...

‘It's not about me, it's about finding people to know how to do it, and let it go. There is no point, or need, for half a dozen people or hierarchies or committees of people to sit around bothering the producer or the director or the stand-up comedian – they know best; it’s their necks on the line. ‘I actively do get very cross about it, and I know from talking to comedy writers, actors, performers that everyone feels the same way. I don’t know what people are doing in those offices or those development departments...

‘There were no development departments in television companies in the Eighties. A producer had an office and a PA and you sat in your office and every so often you had an idea – about twice a year, usually – and you'd rush into your head of department and say: “I've had this brilliant idea, or I've got this script.”’ He then described how the TV version of Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy was commissioned on the strength of one script from Douglas Adams, explaining that there was no pitching, nor trying to find shows that fitted into pre-defined slots in those days. ‘But the way commissioning works now is they ask, “We're looking for two pink ones and a green one, have you got any of those?”’

‘It used to be the creative people driving the bus and the administrative people enabling them, not the other way around. It's the only thing I get cross about. It's such a waste because the talent out there is fabulous.’

However he did say he was encouraged by how Netflix is commissioning shows – ‘getting good people and saying “you do it”’ with little interference – and said the first British broadcaster who finds a hit that way will have struck a winning formula. Lloyd also said that broadcasters should have more confidence in comedians and producers to get their shows right – if they are given a chance to fix any problems without meddling.

‘All the things I've done were quite honestly ragged, if not flops, in the first series,’ Lloyd confessed. ‘The pilot of Not The Nine O’Clock News was described by Mel Smith as “the single worst half-hour of television I've ever watched”. ‘But that's creativity, you get it wrong because it's ambitious and strange, but you move it about a bit and eventually you get it right. But it's not helped by people going: “Oooh dear it's not working, we should cancel it. We should move it late night! Oh no, it's not working there! Oh no, it's dead! That's the end of it!” There used to be this confidence [within broadcasters] but that’s lacking now. Everyone thinks a show is going to work and when it doesn't they panic.’

He said comedy is ‘more lively and more exciting’ than ever, but this is not always reflected in what makes it to the screen. However, he advised the aspiring comedians at the conference to take a leaf out of Mrs Brown’s Boys, and work hard to make something that becomes ‘so huge that people are begging you to do it... that's the only way to get past the commissioning system relatively unscathed’. However, Lloyd said that the internet hadn’t democratised the process and created as many comedy stars as some people would have hoped, because making the best comedy takes work, ‘and the only way to get that is for these publicly funded corporations [the BBC and Channel 4] to support those people.’ ‘The internet isn’t producing a gigantic flood of brilliant new stuff. What we all do is get pissed and noodle around on YouTube all night trying to find something that's entertaining – and you end up watching old Two Ronnies sketches.’

Lloyd, who his making his Edinburgh Fringe debut this August, was once part of an online comedy venture called Comedy Box, which he said ‘failed from lack of money’ – but added that he hadn’t ruled out returning to the idea. ‘It was set up to encourage young stand-ups to come and make stuff online,’ he said, ‘and I still think that will happen. I think that's probably what QI is going to do next, we're going to mutate online and start doing stuff where we can develop at our own speed.’

101 People to Meet before You (or They) Die - Live Pilot

Around this time last year, Dan Schreiber and I wrote and broadcast a pilot for a show called 101 People to Meet before You (or They) Die on London's Resonance FM. The idea behind the show is to make a kind of 'anti-chat show' because most chat shows, while entertaining, are almost always about well-known celebrities who usually have a book/film/event to plug. Meanwhile, we are surrounded by truly amazing people who have done extraordinary things ... and we'd never know it. So, wouldn't it be great to put some of them under the spotlight?

For the radio show, Dan interviewed Charles Brewer- Carias (above), a Venezuelan 'discoverer' who has identified hundreds of new species - including possibly the oldest living organisms on the planet. He also found the world's largest quartzite cave and has maybe located the semi-legendary lost 'City of Gold' - El Dorado. Incidentally, he was also the 'model' for the baddie, Charles Muntz, in Pixar's film Up. The show was fun to do but there were problems with it. Firstly, timing - it was way too long. The problem is that these people are so damned interesting! Secondly, the show needed visuals because you just didn't get a sense of how amazing his adventures were without seeing the landscapes and the creatures he spoke about (you can hear the show here with a slide show of appropriate images to accompany it - It's so much better with pictures). Thirdly, it really needed an audience.

So, last night, we ran a live pilot with an audience of around 130 people at the Conway Hall in Holborn, London. Our guests this time were Marc Abrahams, the man behind the Ig Nobel Prizes, and Dr Jan Bondeson, consultant rheumatologist by day, Fortean researcher and author by night. The show was curated by Dan and began with a talk by Marc on the history of the Ig Nobels (and a demonstration of the physics involved in walking and carrying a cup of coffee), followed by a talk by Jan on the history of 'amazing talking dogs'. Both were very funny and hugely informative.

 

 

The second half of the show - after a beer and comfort break - started with unfeasibly tall magician Pete Heat entertaining the crowds with tricks involving a loaf of bread, a flip chart and some ghastly pink Y Fronts. You can watch a nice little interview with him here on Youtube.

Then we kicked off into the 'anti-chat show' part of the evening with Dan, Marc and Jan discussing such unlikely subjects as a bra that can turn into a pair of breathing masks (ably demonstrated by a member of the audience), safety coffins to avoid premature burial, patents for machines that use centrifugal force to 'help' deliver babies, bosom serpents, giving Viagra to hamsters to cure jet lag, and 'The London Monster', a madman who frequented the capital a century before Jack the Ripper and whose modus operandi involved stabbing women in the buttocks.

The show was great fun, the audience laughed in all the right places and it was a pretty good live pilot. It had some issues, most notably some horrible timing problems that made the show significantly longer than we'd intended. But that's the point of a pilot - to find out what works and what doesn't work before unleashing it upon the wider public. I look forward to helping iron out the kinks before the next one.

One extra bonus for me was meeting Maria Boyle, a long-time friend on Twitter (@twistedlilkitty) from Ireland who I hadn't met before in 'meatspace'. She's a microbiologist by day and a stand-up comedian by night but she's also an amazingly funny cartoonist (you can see her range of cards here or follow her as @twisteddoodles on Twitter). I couldn't resist challenging her to create something  on the spot and she came up trumps, firstly with a great gag about Rolf, Germany's most famous talking dog, and then about Dr Elena Bodnar's 'emergency bra' gas mask design.

Aren't they great?

You can also read Live Skeptic's Storify account of the evening here.

The Ig Nobel Prizes at the IET

Last, but not least, there are the Ig Nobel awards. These come with little cash, but much cachet, and reward those research projects that 'first make people laugh, and then make them think'" - Nature

Last night I took part in the Ig Nobel Prizes events at London's Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). As always, it was a sterling event hosted by the Ig Nobel's founder, Marc Abrahams. Here he is organising the timekeepers for the event (each speaker had only five minutes and was prompted to be punctual by a bell ringing once a minute).

The event kicked off with Dr Siobhan Abeyesinghe talking about her research into poultry cognition or 'Do hens have friends?'

We then heard from my QI and Museum of Curiosity colleague, Dan Schreiber. Dan talked about research for TV and radio shows and some of the strange pathways it has taken us down, including the search for Shackleton's newspaper advert and the curious world of academic warfare.

Dr Charlotte Burn from the Royal Veterinary College then told us all about her research into canine tail chasing; particularly the problem of us humans finding it endearing when, for many dogs, it may actually be an indicator of a medical of psychological problem. The bottom line is - if your dog does it a lot, talk to a vet.

Final speaker of the night was the never less than entertaining Professor Chris McManus who took us into the wonderful world of scrotal asymmetry. Thankfully without a practical demonstration.

The evening ended, as all Ig Nobels do, with a spirited group reading (led by me) of some wretched poetry. Tonight, as we were surrounded by engineers, it was perfectly fitting for us all to recite William Topaz McGonagall's epic Tay Bridge Disaster, probably the only poem ever to rhyme 'buttresses' with 'confesses'.

A fantastic evening - can't wait for the next one. And the good news for you? You can watch the entire hour (and a bit) long show here. Free!

And if you want to hear some REALLY bad poetry, you can watch this 12 minute long podcast that I did last year:

Bone 37: The Tale of a Dinosaur's Tail (Revisited)

I first posted some of this story back in 2010 on my old blog. I figured it was time for an update. So I've re-written and expanded it to bring it bang up-to-date ...

If you visit London's famous Natural History Museum almost the first person or thing you come face to face with is Dippy the Diplodocus.

'Dippy', I should explain, is the nickname of one the museum's oldest and most impressive residents. It's the massive black skeleton of a Diplodocus that dominates the main hall. Dippy isn't actually a true fossil; she's a casting made from plaster, coal dust and paint and she's been at the NHM since May 12th 1905. She's also a bit of a jigsaw having been made from parts of five unrelated Diplodocus skeletons. The original, if you can call it that, is in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Other copies are displayed all over Europe and South America making Dippy probably the most visited dinosaur skeleton(s) in history.

I'm often at the NHM and, recently, have been there a lot - especially when Dan Schreiber and I were writing the live Museum of Curiosity show that we staged in Dippy's hall last Autumn (see here). Whenever I do visit, I always say hello to Dippy. And as I get to her long, sinuous tail I usually stop and look up and count the bones starting from the tip. The bones here are small, the size and shape of cocktail sausages, but they soon start to get bigger. By the time I pass Bone 30, they are the thickness of a grown man's arm. And then I reach Bone 37. It's a very special bone for me. And that's because I made it. Here it is:

It's quite humbling to walk along the length of this creature - all 105 feet of it - and realise that it was not, by any measure, the largest of the dinosaurs. Some of its cousins, such as the extraordinary Amphicoelias, may have been close to twice as long - and maybe the largest animal to have ever lived. Just to give you some idea, the Diplodocus is the green dino in this diagram. Amphicoelias is the red. Compare the size of the 6 feet tall human at bottom left.

For almost all of her afterlife, Dippy was displayed with her long tail dragging along the ground. Look in any dinosaur book published prior to around 1985 and that's what you'll see. Here's the wonderful Zdenek Burian's famous version:

When I was a kid, the dinosaur books told us that these huge sauropods couldn't even support their own body weight and lived in lakes (another Burian painting).

But that's the nature of studying dinosaurs; all of the fossils we have represent just a tiny, tiny window on their world. We probably will never get to see 95% of the species that existed back then. Therefore each new discovery sheds some new light. In just the past couple of decades, we've seen them change from lumbering, cold-blooded beasts into dynamic predators and herders, and we've found enough evidence to be pretty sure that modern birds are dinosaurs that survived the mass extinction event 65,000,000 years ago. Last year we even found dinosaur feathers trapped in amber. We've also brought the sauropods out of the swamps and lakes and lifted their tails off the ground. Dippy needed to do the same.

And so, in 1993, the NHM decided to raise Dippy's tail; no mean feat considering how many plaster bones were involved. In fact, the weight of the tail made it impossible and so a very good friend of mine, model maker and film special effects expert John Coppinger (website here), was given the job of moulding and recasting every single one in lightweight fibreglass and carbon fibre. John was, for many years, a model maker at the museum before moving into film. He was the man who sculpted Jabba the Hutt for Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and many of the creatures in Luc Besson's The Fifth Element and the Harry Potter films. This, however, was a massive undertaking. I'm not sure exactly how many bones there were involved but they all had to be moulded, cast, fettled, painted and 'weathered' to match the rest of the existing skeleton. The largest bones, nearest the hips, were as tall as me. John was happy to accept some help from friends and colleagues, myself included. Here's a picture of another helper, Will, with just some of the smaller bones.

This picture below shows John (right) and the late and much missed Roy Hale (Left) mounting the new bones onto a rod that, to this day still supports the tail along with specially designed stand and a cable suspended from the high roof.

For my small part, I was involved in the making of about six or seven bones but Bone 37 was all mine. It was a very special project to be involved in and I look back on it with nothing but fond memories despite the resin fumes and endless repetition. And to help me to remember I have this most precious thing:

Yes, it's the original 105 year old Bone 37. The originals were so old and so fragile that many didn't survive the moulding process. The museum staff were prepared for that; it was a price they knew they'd have to pay. But at least the new fibreglass bones would be exact replicas and the moulds would allow future castings to be taken. Bone 37 did lose a chunk off one of its processes but survived its ordeal pretty well. And to my delight, the museum staff said that I could keep it. It's one of my proudest, if dullest, possessions. And, just recently, I took it back to the NHM to meet Dippy, 20 years since her tail was lifted. Here she is, reunited.

If I ever decide to do Mastermind, the closest thing I'll ever have to a specialist subject is dinosaurs. I love those beautiful great brutes, always have done and always will. As an 11 year old kid I came up to London from Cornwall on a school trip and my abiding memory of the event is being stunned, shocked and captivated by Dippy the Diplodocus. She inspired a life long interest in me. So it's nice to think that, in some small, tiny, glass-reinforced plastic way, I've helped Dippy to go on inspiring people into the 21st century.