Media
Newspapers, Radio and TV
I have given countless newspaper interviews on subjects related to Space Exploration. There were over 10,000 newspaper and journal reports arising out of the Beagle 2 project alone including as the cover story in glossy magazines. These were from all over the World. Since Beagle 2 hardly a week goes by without 2 or 3 requests for a comment on some topic or other.
Beagle 2 generated an uncountable number of radio and TV broadcasts and Webpage articles. All aspects of my research have been newsworthy and I have appeared as the "presenter friend" and as a pundit for an enormous number of News Bulletins, regularly contributing to Today, Breakfast, Five Live, News 24, Sky, as well as local BBC and independent stations carrying science stories, particularly those concerning Space Exploration.
I have been a guest on many popular TV programmes e.g. Top Gear, Sky at Night, Blue Peter, Tomorrow's World, What the papers say, Big Breakfast, Richard and Judy, Test the Nation (Captain of the victorious Space Scientists), The Charlotte Church Show and even on Top of the Pops (as a member of Fat Les). I have been interviewed by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, Patrick Moore, Terry Wogan, Adrian Chiles, Keith Allen, Danny Baker, Simon Mayo, Alex James, A.A.Gill, Michael Portillo, Johnny Vaughan, Denise van Outen, Marcus Brigstocke, Vic Reeves and Vanessa Feltz and lots of others.
I have been photographed by Gered Mankowitz (of Rolling Stones Album cover fame) and super model Helena Christensen; I have frequently been caricatured and the butt of hundreds of cartoon jokes.
I have been the subject of questions, sketches or impersonated on the Have I Got News for You, the The News Quiz, University Challenge, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, The Weakest Link, Quiz of the Year, Dead Ringers, Bremner, Bird and Fortune (Beagle 2 had weekly slot), and the Now Show.
Beagle 2 received a mention in the movie Transformers and our work on asteroid impacts in Jurassic Park. A missing British Mars spacecraft was the subject of the 2005 Dr Who Xmas special. Beagle 2 featured in a science fiction story by Stephen Baxter and as one of the subjects in The Backroom Boys by Francis Spufford. Our studies on martian meteorites could be considered as the basis of the bestseller Deception Point by Dan Brown.
My work has been the subject of a number of specific TV and Radio documentary programmes: