REVIEW: Brian Cox Live, Southampton 02 Guildhall

By Gareth Newnham

PROFESSOR Brain Cox has come a long way from his time as a club physicist opening for Bernard Manning (well, according to his Infinite Monkey Cage co-host Robin Ince).

Considering we apparently now live in a post fact world, it was heartening to see the 02 Southampton Guildhall packed to the rafters with people wanting to come and listen to Brian Cox lecture on the basic principles of modern Cosmology, with occasional, hilarious interruptions by self-professed “renaissance idiot” Robin Ince.

Opening with puppet versions of Cox, Ince and Eric Idle singing the theme tune to their hit Radio 4 show The Infinite Monkey Cage, Cox then appeared on stage to cheers from the crowd, before spending the next two hours taking them on a journey through space and time; from Einstein’s theory of relativity, to the ice geysers of Enceladus and its possible ecosystem, as well as Earth’s unique, intelligent life harbouring, position in the known universe.

This was bookended by Robin Ince providing his own hilarious insight which stole the show at every turn. This included a pitch perfect impression of Cox, pointing at the large screen behind them and saying ‘ooooh isn’t space big’. He’s right, it is; one of the first facts Cox revealed while taking the audience through a computer-generated map of the known universe is that (based on current estimates) it is comprised of at least two trillion galaxies.

A prompt audience returning after the interval was rewarded with Robin Ince’s anecdotes on their time making Monkey Cage including Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield meeting Brian Blessed who was genuinely angry that humanity had not made it to Mars yet.

Cox then returned to conclude his fascinating talk on modern Cosmology, before ending a wonderful lecture with a poignant reading of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot on what would have been the day after his 82nd birthday.