Tom Tickle
TMF Master
- Joined
- May 12, 2006
- Messages
- 667
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Doctor Francis Featherfinger
Physically, ‘Frank’, 84, is similar in appearance to Peter Cushing, but with a light stubble and extraordinary, tapering eyebrows. His skin is slightly yellowed by chemotherapy for Prostate cancer several years ago. His voice has an edge of Willy Rushton to it. He wears a light grey tunic that is quite smart, yet practical in science labs, which is where the Doctor says he belongs.
Having PhD’s in Ethology and Genetics, the quietly spoken, if occasionally mumbling, doctor has sat at the tables of some of the greatest British scientists in the past fifty years, and keeps acquaintance with a list of who’s who in the biological sciences and more, not that he drops names; Barbara has done that enough times on his behalf after a good night out. A fellow of the Royal Society, he has never lost sight of the importance of continued research. Although Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Genetics, he still teaches science at many levels, including private tuition for his keenest student, Barbara Fox, who is on her way to study Zoology at Cambridge, as her great hero Attenborough once did.
Personally I hope the encounter can give some back story to the whole enterprise he’s set up, although there are a few secrets he will not share with anyone, perhaps because he used to work at Porton Down Military research labs and uses some of that work here.
The doctor takes a seat on the couch, throwing his arms across the back and folding one leg over the other. He almost seems to smile with his thin lips and small blue-grey eyes.
‘’So… you’re the beastly mammal that’s been bothering my young lovelies?’;
The old fucker looks and sounds up for a bit of trouble. Who am I to decline?
So, first of all, what’s your favourite meal you like to cook?
Oh, I don’t cook. The girls usually throw something together for me. I’ll eat most things. Food is fuel. Of course, you have to pretend to be interested in food nowadays with all these cookery shows around. I have to nod my head at dinners and say ‘yes, isn’t it lovely’ quite loudly… so that the hostess hears. I say it too loudly sometimes, and they think I’m being rude, which I am.
If you’re out with friends, and want a quick bite to eat, where would you go?
It doesn’t happen like that with me. I think that question was aimed at ‘ladies what lunch’. I’ve been at train stations waiting for Barbara to pick me up or a connecting service and grabbed a sandwich, or a burger.
I don’t see many guys of your seniority in burger bars.
Well, I don’t mind them. I don’t mind them at all. There is much to be said for the sensation of eating minced rump.
What is your favourite type of take-away food, and what do you order?
If there’s a bit of pizza left over or some other muck I’ll eat that. It’s not fantastic, especially those curries that Barbara brings home… that’ll keep you up at night. I do appreciate it when someone cooks a home cooked meal. Lucy does a lot of that. She looks very fetching in her apron and oven mittens.
If she can stay in them for long enough.
Quite. Her curves beg for attention. Delicious!
Haha, steady!... What’s your favourite kind of restaurant for a special occasion?
We went to a wonderful theme restaurant for a friend’s son’s birthday. It was based on fifties Americana, you know the thing… they made a big fuss of the lad who is confined to a wheelchair, as did the girls, which I was most pleased about. A very enjoyable day. I think it got all too much, as Lucy was a little tearful after the event, you know, given the unfortunate predicament of the chap. She is such a caring young woman.
Ahem, what drink do you order from the bar?
Well, I’m not American so I don’t drink in bars. When I’m in the pub it might be a brandy or a nice peaty Scotch. I’m not much of an ale drinker. I’ve had a few pints of local ciders, but I think cider is an acquired taste. I don’t want to be confused for a yokel.
Out of - oh God - Pubs, sports bars, vodka bars, wine bars, rock clubs or dance clubs, which would you ordinarily preferI
’m not sure what a Vodka bar would serve… or a sport-z bar? Deary me… American inventions perhaps. Any room for a Gentleman’s club, or does that mean ‘Lap dance emporium’ nowadays? Let’s just stick with pubs for now, before we all get too excited, yes?
How often do you go socialising, or are you more content at home?
I socialise quite often, which might surprise you. I also tend to bring Barbara along, because she usually finds someone interesting to talk to, rather than some prat in a hat (I think he means young men who take great pains to adopt the style of professional hobo and sometime singer, Pete Doherty). Some of my better friends usually get past her intimidating beauty and are put at ease when she explains her curiosity about their area of study. I once saw her laughing at a good friend and highly influential and prominent astronomer gesturing ‘orbs’ near her similarly prominent chest, but I found out that it was an anecdote about a planetary science conference… at least that is what I was told.
That was Sir Patrick Moore, wasn’t it?
No, but he did have a knighthood…
Or a certain Astronomer Royal perhaps?
Ah… well, he’d be the last to acknowledge his rapport with young women!
Still, a nice anecdote in itself… what do you like doing on a Sunday?I’ve usually got a few papers to read, which I do so in my study or the main reception room, even if Lucy is trying to distract me by leaping around and lunging to the latest ‘dance hit’, with her chest being as it is, and what a thundering racket she plays!! Ahem… we usually watch television after supper. There is usually something edifying on a Sunday, although they’ve taken to watching that motoring programme with that opinionated yet dim golem on it. I criticise it but they seem to find my distaste a source of mirth, the naughty little minxes. I think they’d cherish eavesdropping on a discussion between myself and that talking pillar of chops… I can hear Barbara tittering now!
He’s right. A wonderful if muted suggestion of tittering from Barbara creeps beneath the door, along with ‘pillar of chops’…which provokes laughter from a pair of lighter voices.
Describe a fun day out with friends or a date.
Oh I’m not one for hunting down females anymore. Three bosomy young women are enough for any old curmudgeon. I suppose a good day out with friends is anywhere which involves them and where there’s good conversation and good humour. I’ve had friends who were, because of our line of work, all very serious and aloof. They had a hatred for the average person, who they’d consider bovine wretches, but professed a great love of humanity. It wasn’t really humanity that they loved, it was the artefacts of humanity. Anyway, I think a walk in the country with peers, friends or the girls is as good as a day out can get. Provided it doesn’t rain. If it does then I hope to God the girls are wearing light coloured tops!
Haha, you couldn’t resist it!
Only the most repressed dullard would resist entertaining such freedoms. I grew up in a time when moral discourse was governed by a small and stupid clique of bloodless busybodies and hypocrites offended by female flesh yet happy to dole out violence to women and children. I welcomed the permissive society as a moral and logical being. The sexual revolution is the completion of a human project that gave us the enlightenment, the scientific revolution, the French revolution, the United States of America and modernism…
Do you think Modern society celebrates female flesh in the right way?Well, I think that some aspects of that are excessive, but I’m a long way from agreeing with feminists, as is most of scientific thinking. Ethologists and geneticists get accused of all sorts from the more insane branches of feminist thinking, but that’s a whole book’s-worth of discussion. I enjoy ogling female beauty and the girls relish an inquisitive glance. It’s not the business of a feminist to intrude on that relationship.
Where is your ideal holiday destination?
Perhaps on a boat, where I can do some research. I was once guest of a team of marine biologists in the Irish sea investigating the effect of agricultural run-off on Jellyfish populations. I’m glad to say Barbara stayed at home, as the temptation to drape one of the still pulsating, slippery devils over her delectable body would’ve been too much to resist.
But don’t Jellyfish sting?
Not these. They utilise algae and feed off the nutrients from agriculture. They’ve gradually lost the ability to sting.
It would’ve still been an icky sensation
Nonsense. Barbara has an adventurous appetite for all sorts of sensations, particularly if tentacles are involved. Think of the myriad tendrils and feeding lobes quivering between those tremendous glistening boobs, slimed by the creature’s mucus! **slurrrpp**
(it appears the doctor is working himself into a state - you just can't help hearing the theme to the Love Boat) at this thought. Out of a visit to a gallery, a museum, the theatre or cinema, which one appeals to you most?
I enjoy theatre… not the postmodern claptrap that the nephew enjoys torturing the girls with. You want theatre, go see Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht. I have had some input on exhibits in the Natural History and Science Museums, and if you want a laugh, there’s a small creationist museum down at Portsmouth that needs visiting. Fantastic stuff! I humour these people, rather than get worked up like Dawkins, the lunatic. Youngsters are impressed by his stunts, but he’s a ranting idiot. I don’t think he’s wrong, but he’s a combative little sod sometimes.
Okay... What was the last book you read?
It was probably Just Six Numbers, a book by the aforementioned Astronomer Royal. A great read, despite me not being much of a physicist. I pride myself on having quite a library, although (laughing his words) I’ve not added any Harry Potter books. In order to stay relevant, you need to read journals and research papers.
What newspapers, if any, do you read?
Newspapers are just twaddle. Opinions of idiots to be regurgitated by idiots. The level of the copy is judged just right so people will think nothing of using it to catch bird droppings the next day. They really are the best method of keeping uninformed.
Some strong feelings about the press.
Well, they don’t help scientists communicate ideas to a scared public. It’s irresponsible to spread nonsense about the MMR vaccine or Large Hadron Collider when there is no link between them and the supposed disasters they will cause. Printed journalism has sacrificed all integrity for the sale of copy.
What’s your favourite website (don’t be too honest here)?
I rarely use the internet for anything other than reading online journals. I usually pick up the phone rather than use electronic mail. I’ve never ‘tweeted’ or twittered, as that is what birds are want to do. The concept of twittering is anathema to how one should conduct a discourse, if the discourse is to have any worth. Perhaps it would be worth edifying other ‘twits’ with a daily quote from a great mind, like Wittgenstein or Russell, although Wittgenstein isn’t the most quotable of philosophers!
Haha, no he isn’t is he! (The interviewer laughs nervously as though he’s ever heard that name)…What’s the last song you heard?
A song? I usually listen to classical pieces, which aren’t what I’d call songs, but it was most likely some hip-hop.
Hip Hop?!
I think Lucy called him DMX, which I thought was a kind of bicycle.
What is your favourite recording artist/band?
I can’t give you anything too modern, although I was once called ‘one hip old dude’ by a student when I said I quite enjoyed the Talking Heads and David Bowie.
Was it Barbara?
Oh no, this was some twenty years ago. I mostly prefer classical, although I listened to some chap called Mo-bee on the radio. I quite enjoy some of the electronic music that Barbara plays in her car, although I’m not sure about the one that says ‘smack my bitch up’.
The Prodigy?
I don’t think it was Mozart…
I mean the band… okay, never mind… what’s the last film you saw, (cinema/ rented/ TV/ bought/ download)?
It was the remake of the Ealing comedy St Trinians. I can remember it because I saw the original one with Alistair Simm back in the fifties. They seem to have tarted the girls up.
Are you a gamer?A ‘gamer’?
Uhm, never mind… What is the last computer game you played?
I don’t think I’ve really played any computer game, although I have seen mathematician friends running simulations of aeroplanes and 3D modelling of various scenarios, but that was for serious scientific research. I know a few people who run that SETI@home thing on their computer. I’m intensely interested in the applications of computing power, but not in playing games.
How much time in a day do you use the internet?
Mostly never. There might be something I want to catch up on, but I just don’t find myself using it like some silver surfer, who I used to think was a comic book character.
It is but it’s just a catchy term that the media use for retired people who use the net quite a lot.
People who need to get a hobby! I once had to shout at Barbara because she wound herself up debating imbeciles. I said, “turn that blasted thing off, go to the dance hall and find a bloke for the evening!”
And did she?
Well… I didn’t see her for a few days. She was angry at me for shouting at her, but also having a good time with some oak-sized rower who was also in his final year of a biochemistry degree, so at least they had something to talk about between the rutting. I remember Barbara saying that he was chuffed to bits (‘very pleased’ for American readers) when she took her top off after some Polo game they went to.
Polo?
They have nightclubs in big marquees after the matches where they dole out champagne and seafood and there are Dee-Jays and orange women with names like Tamsin and Tamara…you know the thing. Actually, being one of the hoi-polloi, you don’t.
Ah, the old class system at work. What is the best thing on TV at the moment?
I’d say the new thing by Stephen Hawking. An absolute thrill ride to see these grand ideas rendered so beautifully.
What was your favourite TV show growing up?
Well, when I grew up we had the radio, so it was probably Will Haye.
Do you upload any media content of your own, and what kind of content is it?I
’ve only authorised the videos and digital uploads, but not contributed directly. I leave that to the cyber-apes.
Have you ever used a webcam to make a ‘talking head’ video?
Talking head? oh you mean those bores who appear on every other programme talking about nothing.
Like Grumpy Old Men?
Well, I sort of enjoy that, even though I know just two of those interviewed. The rest seem as much celebrities as those they criticise.
So you’d never think about being on it?
I’d hate to think that I’d qualify. I’d rather not bore people with an affected curmudgeonly attitude. Perhaps if Jonathan Miller and John Cleese were involved, and a few from my field, such as David Attenborough (he splutters forth a satisfied laugh) and perhaps people like Christopher Hitchens to give everyone a bollocking.
Do you use any social networking sites?
You mean that face book thing?
Well, yes, or anything else where you can add friends.
Add friends? To what?
I wouldn’t worry about it
I don’t.
Good. Do you maintain a blog, and how often do you comment on message boards?
Blog? What on earth are you on about? I don’t have time to use ‘message boards’.
Er, no… we’ll skip that. What were you interested in at school? Were you more artistic, scientific, technical, physical or interested in languages and the humanities?
I didn’t do too badly at most things at school, but was never a great student. I became a much better student around my time at university. I wasn’t terribly interested in science per se… perhaps more of a naturalist, just happy to go around looking under rocks and in ponds. I remember gaining my professorship a few days prior to Crick and Watson discovering DNA, and I decided to sacrifice my tenure to pursue the study of this miraculous method of codifying life. It seemed as though anything was possible. I gained a PhD in genetics around 1978, and it has since underpinned a lot of the work I’ve done in ethology. One of my current areas of study is molecular dynamics in organic chemistry, or how life may have begun.
Sounds pretty interesting. Uh… what was the last book you borrowed from a library?
It was some time ago… a rather colourful book about fungi.
Do you own a car, and if you do, what make?
It’s a Land Rover Defender.
Given enough money, what would be your ideal car?
I wouldn’t really want anything else.
What do you look for in someone of the opposite sex?
Big breasts! (the interviewer hoots at this candid answer) Well, you asked! A predilection for being tickled, lovely eyes, a naughty, playful laugh… intelligence and compassion. And a nice juicy peach of an arse! Everything you see in Nina, Barbara and Lucy. They are heavenly, aren’t they?
They are more than heavenly… Have you ever performed, ahem… at a karaoke evening?
(there is a charged pause) No.
Have you ever won a pub quiz?
I have friends who delight in such events. I don’t take part. I’d prefer to hide my ignorance than broadcast it to the world.
Is that how you see those friends?
Well, Oswald is one such ‘intellectual bully’, unless he’s with myself and the girls. He tends to wipe the floor with the others in the quiz, and on his own team, and doesn’t let them forget how intelligent he is, until he comes for a drink with a few of us (old Oxbridge Alumni) and tries the same… he falls someway short of the intellectual level.
Although he is a professor of literature…
It doesn’t really mean anything. Lucy – and yourself – are impressed by such accolades because you’re not educated or experienced enough to appreciate how arbitrary a professorship is. The term ‘professor’ is afforded some degree of authority by laymen, but to other senior academics, it doesn’t have much weight in deciding whether someone has a strong argument or is brilliant.
Intelligence is relative.
Unless you go by IQ, but yes, to a certain degree intelligence is relative. Most people fix labels of superior intelligence to figures such as Richard Dawkins or Stephen Fry, yet some would suggest, somewhat cruelly, that both represent an ‘idiot’s idea of brilliance’. That’s not to say that Dawkins and Fry are idiots, but if you have spent a comparable amount of time studying and improving your knowledge, there will always be somebody far more intelligent than either of them, or yourself. It’s funny – Barbara has always thought of David Attenborough as heroically intelligent, yet he, by his own admission, had little idea of what Richard Feynman used to discuss, despite being a favourite scientist of Attenborough in years past, and yet Barbara, despite being trained in Zoology, can grasp some of the tenets of quantum theory that Feynman talks about. I’d say Barbara is more intelligent than either Attenborough or myself were at the same age.
She’s not just a pretty face!
None of the girls are just pretty faces. Lucy has a talent for music and Nina has quite a wit. She hones it with Dominic, in a way that only a teenager on the bleeding-edge of youth culture would appreciate, you know, all these hip terms and memes… dizzying!. I feel they are sometimes wary of Barbara’s capacity to store information about quite a range of subjects, and will try to bamboozle her with terrible arguments but in quick succession. It gets her down sometimes. Lucy does tend to play to expectation a little often… perhaps it’s not that, but she humours imbeciles all too often. I feel she plays down her intelligence so that insecure men won’t feel threatened. Nina and Barbara simply bulldoze over such ninnies.
Lucy says she used to be a little madam.
By all accounts she was. She has a capacity for mischief, and perhaps she employs it against younger men as much as she does with me. She can be testing!
Which Disney character best suits your personality?
I’m afraid I’ve never paid much attention to Disney. I’m sure the girls will enlighten you.
Shere Khan was suggested
I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ve never seen myself as a Machiavellian tiger, but that’s quite flattering.
Lucy compared your voice to his.
I’m not sure about that…hahaha… she’s a teasing little sexpot! I shall have to tease her in return.
Without a doubt, after seeing her reaction earlier… Who was the best Bond?
I thought that Dalton was close to Fleming’s Bond. I read a few of the novels. Not to my taste.
What decade of the 20th century would you like to visit?
Having lived in all but two decades of it, I would probably say the nineteen hundreds, just to witness the scientific discoveries such as the moment Einstein formulated his mass-energy equivalence equation.
Which is? (the doctor is astonished and nearly scowls)
E equals M C squared, of course!
Just testing, ahem… I don’t hear it called by its other name often.
Well, a number of people don’t know what it entails or means… but you’re a humanities graduate so I’ll let you off.
Thanks, I think… What is your favourite wild animal?
‘wild’ animal, eh? Can I make case for the humble Earthworm? Perhaps the most important animal in existence. Darwin spent a large proportion of his life devoted to these creatures.
How many languages do you speak?
Excluding English, a smattering of German and the barest grasp of French. I’m probably better off talking in algebra than French, the rotten lot!
Name a celebrity who looks like you.
Oh did you have to ask such a horrendous question? I still think I look like I did in my fifties. Some tart had the front to call me ‘Jack the Ripper’ in the pub, despite nobody knowing what he looked like.
Do you like your neighbours?
I don’t think that we have any, really. There’s George and Barbara - a different one – down the track. They’re nice people, but we’re separated by a good eight-hundred yards of copse.
What’s your favourite board game?
Oh it’s probably something that I always beat the girls at, not that we’re want to do that, like a weird family or something. Monopoly is quite funny to play. They get so upset paying rent, so I always say, ‘in that case, you’ll have to pay me with your delicious body!’ and proceed to blow raspberries over their bellies and between their succulent breasts (he laughs with a strange howling tone suggesting he isn’t supposed to say that).
Apart from succulent breasts, ahem, What was your favourite toy... as a child?
Now that is going back… it was a wooden horse on four wheels that I used to lead around the garden on a rope. That could’ve been back in Hong Kong when the old man worked for the Admiralty. I called him Challenger!
Your dad?
No the Horse.
Who is your favourite soap character of all time (even if you no longer watch soaps, there’s usually one)?
I never watch soaps. Mindless drivel for plebs. (he splutters a laugh) I-I’ll tell you, they’re so unrealistic they may as well be set on the moon!
How many pints/shots/measures of silly juice does it take before you start bellowing lines from a fairly old and niche film that you suddenly think everyone should’ve seen?
Come again?
It’s a terrible question, isn’t it.
Well…. yes, it is.
Name one negative thing about yourself.
I’m not much of a people person.
Really?
I have a few good friends but I just don’t see why I should pander to people I hardly know or will never meet again. I don’t have patience with idiots. I will sometimes phone a person to say that I can’t make their party, children’s wedding or what-have-you and sit there in silence while they ask why I can’t make it. I can’t even be bothered to think of an excuse. It’s terrible, I know.
I thought you often went out socialising?
Not in the sense that you young things do, sweating over each other. I socialise with people I know have similar interests, but functions outside the scientific community are hopeless. That little party with the lad in the wheelchair was one of the few times I’ve felt comfortable in a genuine social outing without a large coterie of peers. It was… ‘familial’, even though my real family are stark raving mad.
(The interviewer guffaws at this)
They’re more than a few spanners short of a toolbox… it’s more a case of the spanners and toolbox falling out the back of the van. Absolutely gone! You’ve met Dominic… Well he’s actually quite calm compared to the rest of them. One of them used to be brilliant; a quantitative analyst for a leading London investment bank and then lecturer at the LSE (London School of Economics), before having a total psychiatric breakdown. Now all he talks about are alien beings paying him visits and inventing systems of algebra using alien ideograms- no- hieroglyphs, and looking in the corner of the room during meals to see if something is there. Dominic’s mother, my sister, took a musket to her husband’s head and ended up in Broadmoor (prison for the criminally insane). It goes back a long way. Of course Dominic is now an orphan and lives in that teetering old pile in Kent. It’s like something the Morlocks built… overgrown with weeds and weather-beaten, patchy roofing, no electricity, but he seems happy. It’s always home to squatters, waifs, strays, crack addicts and night-people. He calls them ‘poets’, but they’re just as derelict as the house.
Er, quite a situation… so, finally; what is the meaning of life?
I think that is a question that each person has to answer for themselves.
I deplore the idea of dullards with trust funds going to India and asking some swami wrapped in a bedsheet for a quick-fix of spiritual enlightenment. Save your parents’ money and read a bloody book!
And God?
He doesn’t need a book, although he should inspire his followers to write a decent one, because the present version is an odious collection of prohibitive, self-serving nonsense. As for a creator removed from religion, that is something I find myself talking about more often now, because people get a funny idea that scientists want to kill their God. I try to avoid the topic because I find it circular, dreary and pointless; God is unknowable, which is what I say to theists, and it is the height of arrogance to presume that a cosmic creator would ‘reveal’ knowledge to humanity as it is, but to atheists, I would have to echo that unctuous, egotistical pencil-neck Sagan in one of his more humble moments; ‘ An atheist would have to know a lot more than I do’. I can only presume Sagan didn’t want to rule God out as a possibility, if only to leave the position open for himself; Master of the Cosmos!’
You’re not a fan of a generation’s science hero, then?
He did seem a little bit full of himself, and the anecdotes about his ego are legion. He is held in high regard by a number of my fellow scientists, but I prefer the Feynmans of this world… truly great men who are a little less keen to publicise themselves, just the subject matter. Feynman had a similar quality to Attenborough and Martin (Rees), whereas with people like Sagan and Dawkins… I don’t very much like that attitude. That Jap’ fellow, Kaku, is much more fun!
Well… thanks very much Dr. It was a very illuminating interview
I’ve been looking forward to it. Sorry that we had to end on that odd note. I have stronger feelings on some matters than others.
The Doctor stands to open the door
''Be sure to bid the girls farewell…''
''I shall. Thanks.'
''Very good. I have a radio programme about to start.''
Making my way down the dramatic staircase, your interviewer is met in the hall by Barbara and Lucy, each holding bottles and shot glasses.
'' what have you got there?''
Barbara gives a cavalier smile as she holds each bottle to her chest.
''Sambuca and Bailey's...'' she purrs, and acknowledges her sister.
Lucy says nothing but shakes a small tub of cherries with a wide-eyed glee, while clutching three shot glasses.
''Ah!... I see''.
''slippery nipple?'' Lucy almost giggles out her words.
The interviewer thinks it would be rude to turn down a drink, so makes his way into a large drawing room, on the floor of which is a Twister mat.
Barbara and Lucy look at each other, grinning...
Oh well!
Physically, ‘Frank’, 84, is similar in appearance to Peter Cushing, but with a light stubble and extraordinary, tapering eyebrows. His skin is slightly yellowed by chemotherapy for Prostate cancer several years ago. His voice has an edge of Willy Rushton to it. He wears a light grey tunic that is quite smart, yet practical in science labs, which is where the Doctor says he belongs.
Having PhD’s in Ethology and Genetics, the quietly spoken, if occasionally mumbling, doctor has sat at the tables of some of the greatest British scientists in the past fifty years, and keeps acquaintance with a list of who’s who in the biological sciences and more, not that he drops names; Barbara has done that enough times on his behalf after a good night out. A fellow of the Royal Society, he has never lost sight of the importance of continued research. Although Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Genetics, he still teaches science at many levels, including private tuition for his keenest student, Barbara Fox, who is on her way to study Zoology at Cambridge, as her great hero Attenborough once did.
Personally I hope the encounter can give some back story to the whole enterprise he’s set up, although there are a few secrets he will not share with anyone, perhaps because he used to work at Porton Down Military research labs and uses some of that work here.
The doctor takes a seat on the couch, throwing his arms across the back and folding one leg over the other. He almost seems to smile with his thin lips and small blue-grey eyes.
‘’So… you’re the beastly mammal that’s been bothering my young lovelies?’;
The old fucker looks and sounds up for a bit of trouble. Who am I to decline?
So, first of all, what’s your favourite meal you like to cook?
Oh, I don’t cook. The girls usually throw something together for me. I’ll eat most things. Food is fuel. Of course, you have to pretend to be interested in food nowadays with all these cookery shows around. I have to nod my head at dinners and say ‘yes, isn’t it lovely’ quite loudly… so that the hostess hears. I say it too loudly sometimes, and they think I’m being rude, which I am.
If you’re out with friends, and want a quick bite to eat, where would you go?
It doesn’t happen like that with me. I think that question was aimed at ‘ladies what lunch’. I’ve been at train stations waiting for Barbara to pick me up or a connecting service and grabbed a sandwich, or a burger.
I don’t see many guys of your seniority in burger bars.
Well, I don’t mind them. I don’t mind them at all. There is much to be said for the sensation of eating minced rump.
What is your favourite type of take-away food, and what do you order?
If there’s a bit of pizza left over or some other muck I’ll eat that. It’s not fantastic, especially those curries that Barbara brings home… that’ll keep you up at night. I do appreciate it when someone cooks a home cooked meal. Lucy does a lot of that. She looks very fetching in her apron and oven mittens.
If she can stay in them for long enough.
Quite. Her curves beg for attention. Delicious!
Haha, steady!... What’s your favourite kind of restaurant for a special occasion?
We went to a wonderful theme restaurant for a friend’s son’s birthday. It was based on fifties Americana, you know the thing… they made a big fuss of the lad who is confined to a wheelchair, as did the girls, which I was most pleased about. A very enjoyable day. I think it got all too much, as Lucy was a little tearful after the event, you know, given the unfortunate predicament of the chap. She is such a caring young woman.
Ahem, what drink do you order from the bar?
Well, I’m not American so I don’t drink in bars. When I’m in the pub it might be a brandy or a nice peaty Scotch. I’m not much of an ale drinker. I’ve had a few pints of local ciders, but I think cider is an acquired taste. I don’t want to be confused for a yokel.
Out of - oh God - Pubs, sports bars, vodka bars, wine bars, rock clubs or dance clubs, which would you ordinarily preferI
’m not sure what a Vodka bar would serve… or a sport-z bar? Deary me… American inventions perhaps. Any room for a Gentleman’s club, or does that mean ‘Lap dance emporium’ nowadays? Let’s just stick with pubs for now, before we all get too excited, yes?
How often do you go socialising, or are you more content at home?
I socialise quite often, which might surprise you. I also tend to bring Barbara along, because she usually finds someone interesting to talk to, rather than some prat in a hat (I think he means young men who take great pains to adopt the style of professional hobo and sometime singer, Pete Doherty). Some of my better friends usually get past her intimidating beauty and are put at ease when she explains her curiosity about their area of study. I once saw her laughing at a good friend and highly influential and prominent astronomer gesturing ‘orbs’ near her similarly prominent chest, but I found out that it was an anecdote about a planetary science conference… at least that is what I was told.
That was Sir Patrick Moore, wasn’t it?
No, but he did have a knighthood…
Or a certain Astronomer Royal perhaps?
Ah… well, he’d be the last to acknowledge his rapport with young women!
Still, a nice anecdote in itself… what do you like doing on a Sunday?I’ve usually got a few papers to read, which I do so in my study or the main reception room, even if Lucy is trying to distract me by leaping around and lunging to the latest ‘dance hit’, with her chest being as it is, and what a thundering racket she plays!! Ahem… we usually watch television after supper. There is usually something edifying on a Sunday, although they’ve taken to watching that motoring programme with that opinionated yet dim golem on it. I criticise it but they seem to find my distaste a source of mirth, the naughty little minxes. I think they’d cherish eavesdropping on a discussion between myself and that talking pillar of chops… I can hear Barbara tittering now!
He’s right. A wonderful if muted suggestion of tittering from Barbara creeps beneath the door, along with ‘pillar of chops’…which provokes laughter from a pair of lighter voices.
Describe a fun day out with friends or a date.
Oh I’m not one for hunting down females anymore. Three bosomy young women are enough for any old curmudgeon. I suppose a good day out with friends is anywhere which involves them and where there’s good conversation and good humour. I’ve had friends who were, because of our line of work, all very serious and aloof. They had a hatred for the average person, who they’d consider bovine wretches, but professed a great love of humanity. It wasn’t really humanity that they loved, it was the artefacts of humanity. Anyway, I think a walk in the country with peers, friends or the girls is as good as a day out can get. Provided it doesn’t rain. If it does then I hope to God the girls are wearing light coloured tops!
Haha, you couldn’t resist it!
Only the most repressed dullard would resist entertaining such freedoms. I grew up in a time when moral discourse was governed by a small and stupid clique of bloodless busybodies and hypocrites offended by female flesh yet happy to dole out violence to women and children. I welcomed the permissive society as a moral and logical being. The sexual revolution is the completion of a human project that gave us the enlightenment, the scientific revolution, the French revolution, the United States of America and modernism…
Do you think Modern society celebrates female flesh in the right way?Well, I think that some aspects of that are excessive, but I’m a long way from agreeing with feminists, as is most of scientific thinking. Ethologists and geneticists get accused of all sorts from the more insane branches of feminist thinking, but that’s a whole book’s-worth of discussion. I enjoy ogling female beauty and the girls relish an inquisitive glance. It’s not the business of a feminist to intrude on that relationship.
Where is your ideal holiday destination?
Perhaps on a boat, where I can do some research. I was once guest of a team of marine biologists in the Irish sea investigating the effect of agricultural run-off on Jellyfish populations. I’m glad to say Barbara stayed at home, as the temptation to drape one of the still pulsating, slippery devils over her delectable body would’ve been too much to resist.
But don’t Jellyfish sting?
Not these. They utilise algae and feed off the nutrients from agriculture. They’ve gradually lost the ability to sting.
It would’ve still been an icky sensation
Nonsense. Barbara has an adventurous appetite for all sorts of sensations, particularly if tentacles are involved. Think of the myriad tendrils and feeding lobes quivering between those tremendous glistening boobs, slimed by the creature’s mucus! **slurrrpp**
(it appears the doctor is working himself into a state - you just can't help hearing the theme to the Love Boat) at this thought. Out of a visit to a gallery, a museum, the theatre or cinema, which one appeals to you most?
I enjoy theatre… not the postmodern claptrap that the nephew enjoys torturing the girls with. You want theatre, go see Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht. I have had some input on exhibits in the Natural History and Science Museums, and if you want a laugh, there’s a small creationist museum down at Portsmouth that needs visiting. Fantastic stuff! I humour these people, rather than get worked up like Dawkins, the lunatic. Youngsters are impressed by his stunts, but he’s a ranting idiot. I don’t think he’s wrong, but he’s a combative little sod sometimes.
Okay... What was the last book you read?
It was probably Just Six Numbers, a book by the aforementioned Astronomer Royal. A great read, despite me not being much of a physicist. I pride myself on having quite a library, although (laughing his words) I’ve not added any Harry Potter books. In order to stay relevant, you need to read journals and research papers.
What newspapers, if any, do you read?
Newspapers are just twaddle. Opinions of idiots to be regurgitated by idiots. The level of the copy is judged just right so people will think nothing of using it to catch bird droppings the next day. They really are the best method of keeping uninformed.
Some strong feelings about the press.
Well, they don’t help scientists communicate ideas to a scared public. It’s irresponsible to spread nonsense about the MMR vaccine or Large Hadron Collider when there is no link between them and the supposed disasters they will cause. Printed journalism has sacrificed all integrity for the sale of copy.
What’s your favourite website (don’t be too honest here)?
I rarely use the internet for anything other than reading online journals. I usually pick up the phone rather than use electronic mail. I’ve never ‘tweeted’ or twittered, as that is what birds are want to do. The concept of twittering is anathema to how one should conduct a discourse, if the discourse is to have any worth. Perhaps it would be worth edifying other ‘twits’ with a daily quote from a great mind, like Wittgenstein or Russell, although Wittgenstein isn’t the most quotable of philosophers!
Haha, no he isn’t is he! (The interviewer laughs nervously as though he’s ever heard that name)…What’s the last song you heard?
A song? I usually listen to classical pieces, which aren’t what I’d call songs, but it was most likely some hip-hop.
Hip Hop?!
I think Lucy called him DMX, which I thought was a kind of bicycle.
What is your favourite recording artist/band?
I can’t give you anything too modern, although I was once called ‘one hip old dude’ by a student when I said I quite enjoyed the Talking Heads and David Bowie.
Was it Barbara?
Oh no, this was some twenty years ago. I mostly prefer classical, although I listened to some chap called Mo-bee on the radio. I quite enjoy some of the electronic music that Barbara plays in her car, although I’m not sure about the one that says ‘smack my bitch up’.
The Prodigy?
I don’t think it was Mozart…
I mean the band… okay, never mind… what’s the last film you saw, (cinema/ rented/ TV/ bought/ download)?
It was the remake of the Ealing comedy St Trinians. I can remember it because I saw the original one with Alistair Simm back in the fifties. They seem to have tarted the girls up.
Are you a gamer?A ‘gamer’?
Uhm, never mind… What is the last computer game you played?
I don’t think I’ve really played any computer game, although I have seen mathematician friends running simulations of aeroplanes and 3D modelling of various scenarios, but that was for serious scientific research. I know a few people who run that SETI@home thing on their computer. I’m intensely interested in the applications of computing power, but not in playing games.
How much time in a day do you use the internet?
Mostly never. There might be something I want to catch up on, but I just don’t find myself using it like some silver surfer, who I used to think was a comic book character.
It is but it’s just a catchy term that the media use for retired people who use the net quite a lot.
People who need to get a hobby! I once had to shout at Barbara because she wound herself up debating imbeciles. I said, “turn that blasted thing off, go to the dance hall and find a bloke for the evening!”
And did she?
Well… I didn’t see her for a few days. She was angry at me for shouting at her, but also having a good time with some oak-sized rower who was also in his final year of a biochemistry degree, so at least they had something to talk about between the rutting. I remember Barbara saying that he was chuffed to bits (‘very pleased’ for American readers) when she took her top off after some Polo game they went to.
Polo?
They have nightclubs in big marquees after the matches where they dole out champagne and seafood and there are Dee-Jays and orange women with names like Tamsin and Tamara…you know the thing. Actually, being one of the hoi-polloi, you don’t.
Ah, the old class system at work. What is the best thing on TV at the moment?
I’d say the new thing by Stephen Hawking. An absolute thrill ride to see these grand ideas rendered so beautifully.
What was your favourite TV show growing up?
Well, when I grew up we had the radio, so it was probably Will Haye.
Do you upload any media content of your own, and what kind of content is it?I
’ve only authorised the videos and digital uploads, but not contributed directly. I leave that to the cyber-apes.
Have you ever used a webcam to make a ‘talking head’ video?
Talking head? oh you mean those bores who appear on every other programme talking about nothing.
Like Grumpy Old Men?
Well, I sort of enjoy that, even though I know just two of those interviewed. The rest seem as much celebrities as those they criticise.
So you’d never think about being on it?
I’d hate to think that I’d qualify. I’d rather not bore people with an affected curmudgeonly attitude. Perhaps if Jonathan Miller and John Cleese were involved, and a few from my field, such as David Attenborough (he splutters forth a satisfied laugh) and perhaps people like Christopher Hitchens to give everyone a bollocking.
Do you use any social networking sites?
You mean that face book thing?
Well, yes, or anything else where you can add friends.
Add friends? To what?
I wouldn’t worry about it
I don’t.
Good. Do you maintain a blog, and how often do you comment on message boards?
Blog? What on earth are you on about? I don’t have time to use ‘message boards’.
Er, no… we’ll skip that. What were you interested in at school? Were you more artistic, scientific, technical, physical or interested in languages and the humanities?
I didn’t do too badly at most things at school, but was never a great student. I became a much better student around my time at university. I wasn’t terribly interested in science per se… perhaps more of a naturalist, just happy to go around looking under rocks and in ponds. I remember gaining my professorship a few days prior to Crick and Watson discovering DNA, and I decided to sacrifice my tenure to pursue the study of this miraculous method of codifying life. It seemed as though anything was possible. I gained a PhD in genetics around 1978, and it has since underpinned a lot of the work I’ve done in ethology. One of my current areas of study is molecular dynamics in organic chemistry, or how life may have begun.
Sounds pretty interesting. Uh… what was the last book you borrowed from a library?
It was some time ago… a rather colourful book about fungi.
Do you own a car, and if you do, what make?
It’s a Land Rover Defender.
Given enough money, what would be your ideal car?
I wouldn’t really want anything else.
What do you look for in someone of the opposite sex?
Big breasts! (the interviewer hoots at this candid answer) Well, you asked! A predilection for being tickled, lovely eyes, a naughty, playful laugh… intelligence and compassion. And a nice juicy peach of an arse! Everything you see in Nina, Barbara and Lucy. They are heavenly, aren’t they?
They are more than heavenly… Have you ever performed, ahem… at a karaoke evening?
(there is a charged pause) No.
Have you ever won a pub quiz?
I have friends who delight in such events. I don’t take part. I’d prefer to hide my ignorance than broadcast it to the world.
Is that how you see those friends?
Well, Oswald is one such ‘intellectual bully’, unless he’s with myself and the girls. He tends to wipe the floor with the others in the quiz, and on his own team, and doesn’t let them forget how intelligent he is, until he comes for a drink with a few of us (old Oxbridge Alumni) and tries the same… he falls someway short of the intellectual level.
Although he is a professor of literature…
It doesn’t really mean anything. Lucy – and yourself – are impressed by such accolades because you’re not educated or experienced enough to appreciate how arbitrary a professorship is. The term ‘professor’ is afforded some degree of authority by laymen, but to other senior academics, it doesn’t have much weight in deciding whether someone has a strong argument or is brilliant.
Intelligence is relative.
Unless you go by IQ, but yes, to a certain degree intelligence is relative. Most people fix labels of superior intelligence to figures such as Richard Dawkins or Stephen Fry, yet some would suggest, somewhat cruelly, that both represent an ‘idiot’s idea of brilliance’. That’s not to say that Dawkins and Fry are idiots, but if you have spent a comparable amount of time studying and improving your knowledge, there will always be somebody far more intelligent than either of them, or yourself. It’s funny – Barbara has always thought of David Attenborough as heroically intelligent, yet he, by his own admission, had little idea of what Richard Feynman used to discuss, despite being a favourite scientist of Attenborough in years past, and yet Barbara, despite being trained in Zoology, can grasp some of the tenets of quantum theory that Feynman talks about. I’d say Barbara is more intelligent than either Attenborough or myself were at the same age.
She’s not just a pretty face!
None of the girls are just pretty faces. Lucy has a talent for music and Nina has quite a wit. She hones it with Dominic, in a way that only a teenager on the bleeding-edge of youth culture would appreciate, you know, all these hip terms and memes… dizzying!. I feel they are sometimes wary of Barbara’s capacity to store information about quite a range of subjects, and will try to bamboozle her with terrible arguments but in quick succession. It gets her down sometimes. Lucy does tend to play to expectation a little often… perhaps it’s not that, but she humours imbeciles all too often. I feel she plays down her intelligence so that insecure men won’t feel threatened. Nina and Barbara simply bulldoze over such ninnies.
Lucy says she used to be a little madam.
By all accounts she was. She has a capacity for mischief, and perhaps she employs it against younger men as much as she does with me. She can be testing!
Which Disney character best suits your personality?
I’m afraid I’ve never paid much attention to Disney. I’m sure the girls will enlighten you.
Shere Khan was suggested
I’m pleasantly surprised. I’ve never seen myself as a Machiavellian tiger, but that’s quite flattering.
Lucy compared your voice to his.
I’m not sure about that…hahaha… she’s a teasing little sexpot! I shall have to tease her in return.
Without a doubt, after seeing her reaction earlier… Who was the best Bond?
I thought that Dalton was close to Fleming’s Bond. I read a few of the novels. Not to my taste.
What decade of the 20th century would you like to visit?
Having lived in all but two decades of it, I would probably say the nineteen hundreds, just to witness the scientific discoveries such as the moment Einstein formulated his mass-energy equivalence equation.
Which is? (the doctor is astonished and nearly scowls)
E equals M C squared, of course!
Just testing, ahem… I don’t hear it called by its other name often.
Well, a number of people don’t know what it entails or means… but you’re a humanities graduate so I’ll let you off.
Thanks, I think… What is your favourite wild animal?
‘wild’ animal, eh? Can I make case for the humble Earthworm? Perhaps the most important animal in existence. Darwin spent a large proportion of his life devoted to these creatures.
How many languages do you speak?
Excluding English, a smattering of German and the barest grasp of French. I’m probably better off talking in algebra than French, the rotten lot!
Name a celebrity who looks like you.
Oh did you have to ask such a horrendous question? I still think I look like I did in my fifties. Some tart had the front to call me ‘Jack the Ripper’ in the pub, despite nobody knowing what he looked like.
Do you like your neighbours?
I don’t think that we have any, really. There’s George and Barbara - a different one – down the track. They’re nice people, but we’re separated by a good eight-hundred yards of copse.
What’s your favourite board game?
Oh it’s probably something that I always beat the girls at, not that we’re want to do that, like a weird family or something. Monopoly is quite funny to play. They get so upset paying rent, so I always say, ‘in that case, you’ll have to pay me with your delicious body!’ and proceed to blow raspberries over their bellies and between their succulent breasts (he laughs with a strange howling tone suggesting he isn’t supposed to say that).
Apart from succulent breasts, ahem, What was your favourite toy... as a child?
Now that is going back… it was a wooden horse on four wheels that I used to lead around the garden on a rope. That could’ve been back in Hong Kong when the old man worked for the Admiralty. I called him Challenger!
Your dad?
No the Horse.
Who is your favourite soap character of all time (even if you no longer watch soaps, there’s usually one)?
I never watch soaps. Mindless drivel for plebs. (he splutters a laugh) I-I’ll tell you, they’re so unrealistic they may as well be set on the moon!
How many pints/shots/measures of silly juice does it take before you start bellowing lines from a fairly old and niche film that you suddenly think everyone should’ve seen?
Come again?
It’s a terrible question, isn’t it.
Well…. yes, it is.
Name one negative thing about yourself.
I’m not much of a people person.
Really?
I have a few good friends but I just don’t see why I should pander to people I hardly know or will never meet again. I don’t have patience with idiots. I will sometimes phone a person to say that I can’t make their party, children’s wedding or what-have-you and sit there in silence while they ask why I can’t make it. I can’t even be bothered to think of an excuse. It’s terrible, I know.
I thought you often went out socialising?
Not in the sense that you young things do, sweating over each other. I socialise with people I know have similar interests, but functions outside the scientific community are hopeless. That little party with the lad in the wheelchair was one of the few times I’ve felt comfortable in a genuine social outing without a large coterie of peers. It was… ‘familial’, even though my real family are stark raving mad.
(The interviewer guffaws at this)
They’re more than a few spanners short of a toolbox… it’s more a case of the spanners and toolbox falling out the back of the van. Absolutely gone! You’ve met Dominic… Well he’s actually quite calm compared to the rest of them. One of them used to be brilliant; a quantitative analyst for a leading London investment bank and then lecturer at the LSE (London School of Economics), before having a total psychiatric breakdown. Now all he talks about are alien beings paying him visits and inventing systems of algebra using alien ideograms- no- hieroglyphs, and looking in the corner of the room during meals to see if something is there. Dominic’s mother, my sister, took a musket to her husband’s head and ended up in Broadmoor (prison for the criminally insane). It goes back a long way. Of course Dominic is now an orphan and lives in that teetering old pile in Kent. It’s like something the Morlocks built… overgrown with weeds and weather-beaten, patchy roofing, no electricity, but he seems happy. It’s always home to squatters, waifs, strays, crack addicts and night-people. He calls them ‘poets’, but they’re just as derelict as the house.
Er, quite a situation… so, finally; what is the meaning of life?
I think that is a question that each person has to answer for themselves.
I deplore the idea of dullards with trust funds going to India and asking some swami wrapped in a bedsheet for a quick-fix of spiritual enlightenment. Save your parents’ money and read a bloody book!
And God?
He doesn’t need a book, although he should inspire his followers to write a decent one, because the present version is an odious collection of prohibitive, self-serving nonsense. As for a creator removed from religion, that is something I find myself talking about more often now, because people get a funny idea that scientists want to kill their God. I try to avoid the topic because I find it circular, dreary and pointless; God is unknowable, which is what I say to theists, and it is the height of arrogance to presume that a cosmic creator would ‘reveal’ knowledge to humanity as it is, but to atheists, I would have to echo that unctuous, egotistical pencil-neck Sagan in one of his more humble moments; ‘ An atheist would have to know a lot more than I do’. I can only presume Sagan didn’t want to rule God out as a possibility, if only to leave the position open for himself; Master of the Cosmos!’
You’re not a fan of a generation’s science hero, then?
He did seem a little bit full of himself, and the anecdotes about his ego are legion. He is held in high regard by a number of my fellow scientists, but I prefer the Feynmans of this world… truly great men who are a little less keen to publicise themselves, just the subject matter. Feynman had a similar quality to Attenborough and Martin (Rees), whereas with people like Sagan and Dawkins… I don’t very much like that attitude. That Jap’ fellow, Kaku, is much more fun!
Well… thanks very much Dr. It was a very illuminating interview
I’ve been looking forward to it. Sorry that we had to end on that odd note. I have stronger feelings on some matters than others.
The Doctor stands to open the door
''Be sure to bid the girls farewell…''
''I shall. Thanks.'
''Very good. I have a radio programme about to start.''
Making my way down the dramatic staircase, your interviewer is met in the hall by Barbara and Lucy, each holding bottles and shot glasses.
'' what have you got there?''
Barbara gives a cavalier smile as she holds each bottle to her chest.
''Sambuca and Bailey's...'' she purrs, and acknowledges her sister.
Lucy says nothing but shakes a small tub of cherries with a wide-eyed glee, while clutching three shot glasses.
''Ah!... I see''.
''slippery nipple?'' Lucy almost giggles out her words.
The interviewer thinks it would be rude to turn down a drink, so makes his way into a large drawing room, on the floor of which is a Twister mat.
Barbara and Lucy look at each other, grinning...
Oh well!
