CityLife

Robin Ince + Josie Long

School For Gifted Children
The Lowry
December 9, 2009

COMEDY and science are not the most common or easy of bedfellows. For many people, the perception of science is of dull lessons at school led by bored teachers.

But to dismiss science as geek fodder is a huge mistake as comedian Robin Ince proved with this celebratory type of show that mingles the scientists with the comics. Bad Science writer Ben Goldacre and physicist Simon Singh joined Ince and Josie Long in an eclectic mix of science made both easy and relevant with gags.

Ince comperes proceedings, his enthusiasm for the works of the likes of American astronomer Carl Sagan and physicist Richard Feynman is infectious. In the first half Goldacre showcased a couple of his exposes of the like featured in his regular Guardian column – namely the MMR vaccine scare and fish oil pills.

After the break Josie Long read from Darwin’s letters – editing them in her own irreverent style. And headliner Simon Singh gives us an idiot’s guide to science and condenses the big bang theory into five minutes.

Succeeding in what it set out to do, Ince and friends instil a new found interest in a subject many of us had forgotten from school. All that’s left to do is to prepare a reading list for people to pick up on the way out.

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