Physicists shouldn’t look like Professor Brian Cox. He doesn’t have clouds of wild grey hair, a crumpled lab coat or even ill-fitting beige slacks. Rather, he’s a vision of gleaming skin, artfully floppy hair and extremely good teeth. And he looks about 17.
His CV’s a bit on the racy side, too. You see, he used to be a pop star — touring round Europe in a rock band called Dare. Then he joined D:Ream (yes, the D:Ream who sang Labour’s 1997 election anthem Things Can Only Get Better) and appeared on Top Of The Pops in a dodgy tartan suit with enormous hair.
So perhaps it’s little wonder that, despite having a tendency to say things like ‘I love talking about the conservation of angular momentum’ and ‘diffraction is interesting for lots of technical reasons’, he has become something of a sex symbol. {Read on}