Cole Moreton

‘She thought I was another mindless, pretty idiot’ Professor Brian Cox

Scientists shouldn’t look like this. They should have wild hair like Einstein or wild eyes like Patrick Moore, not amble into the room looking as if they’ve just come off stage at Glastonbury. But this is Professor Brian Cox, known as the ‘rock-star scientist’ and described by People magazine as the World’s Sexiest Quantum Physicist,ContinueContinue reading “‘She thought I was another mindless, pretty idiot’ Professor Brian Cox”

'The Conservative position is, in my view, a no to nuclear power' So will Zac Goldsmith press his own nuclear button now?

we’re going to have a new generation of nuclear power stations. The sites have just been announced. The news made me think immediately of what Zac Goldsmith said to me, when I interviewed him ahead of his standing as a Conservative candidate for Richmond. Here’s an extract: ‘I wouldn’t live near a nuclear power plant,’ContinueContinue reading “'The Conservative position is, in my view, a no to nuclear power' So will Zac Goldsmith press his own nuclear button now?”

June Brown, all alone in Dot Cotton’s kitchen

Strike a light, this is strange. Dot Cotton is in her kitchen, sucking on a fag and talking into a tape machine, recording a message for her husband, Jim, who is paralysed and unable to speak after a stroke. The hardest thing, she says in a trembling voice, “is the thought of you being there…ContinueContinue reading “June Brown, all alone in Dot Cotton’s kitchen”

‘I’d prefer my mother still to be alive’ Peter Mandelson

He’s very cool, Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy. In the sense of never getting over-heated. Except this time. ‘You may think it’s funny and cheap to make snidey remarks about how I could afford to live where I do. If my mother had not got Alzheimer’s and hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be able toContinueContinue reading “‘I’d prefer my mother still to be alive’ Peter Mandelson”

‘Are you saying God is a myth?’ The Archbishop of Westminster

I find it hard to be lectured on sex by a celibate, but then I’m not a Catholic. Isn’t it just possible that everything he does is based on self-deception? That there was no God nagging him on the terraces and his calling was just the fretting of a teenage boy overwhelmed by hormones andContinueContinue reading “‘Are you saying God is a myth?’ The Archbishop of Westminster”