Sir Patrick Moore

A small boy crept out of his house in pyjamas, binoculars in one hand, a guide to astronomy in the other, and gazed up to the starlit heavens in awe.

That six-year-old knew something in that moment, which those of us who beetle about with our heads down all day fail to acknowledge: that the sky at night is the best, biggest, most mysterious and magical story there is, has ever been, or will ever be.

And this is the story that the ‘amateur’ astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, CBE, FRS, FRAS, has been telling longer and harder than anyone. He has more than 70 books to his name, and is in the Guinness World Records book for being the Most Durable TV Presenter/Longest Running TV Show – Same Presenter (he first fronted The Sky At Night in 1957). He, more than any other living man, has inspired fascination in the stars. Thanks to him, millions of his apostles have followed his advice to ‘grab a pair of binos, go outside, and learn your way around the sky’.

He is the original and best: young pups such as Brian Cox, who recently hosted Stargazing Live, simply don’t compare, says Moore. ‘I’ve met him, he’s been on my show and I’ve been on his. No competition there at all. He’s not an astronomer, he’s a particle physicist.’

But now he’s 88, mottled by age and wheelchair-bound in his study in his seaside retreat, a thatched house in a patchwork of architectural styles on a backstreet of Selsey, on the West Sussex coast.

Moore lives with Ptolemy, a black explosion of feline fur, his extensive library of books (most of which he’s written himself), a lifetime of fascinating clutter and impedimenta to do with his other passions – cricket, music – too many framed certificates to count (he has 33 honorary fellowships and degrees), and his carers.

Chatting to editor in chief Rachel Johnson

When I arrive, one of them, Dawn, places him in a hoist so he can be moved from his wheelchair into a chair for the photographs, for which he has donned a lively Hawaiian shirt of planetary print. It is clear that life is no longer quite the vivid pleasure it was.

‘I used to wake up and say, what will I have time to do today?’ he says in his commissioned officer’s English (he no longer has his rapid-fire diction in which he talked so fast that his eyes and mad hair seemed to be going in one direction and his mouth in another). And an old spinal injury – he was crocked in a plane crash – has caught up with him. ‘Ten years ago, I was busy from morning till night; teaching, writing, everything. Now of course, I wake up and think, what can I do today? I could have done without the last 10 years.’

Which is not to say that Sir Patrick Moore isn’t still a national institution of the highest order. In fact, he’s practically a public service, too. Amazingly, he takes home only £700 to £800 a month, and has never had a bonus of any sort (nor asked for one). In this age of fat cats and bumper pay cheques, Moore really is a treasure.

But there is one subject I really want to ask about. In every interview, he talks about his devotion to the memory of his fiancée Lorna, whom he met in the air force, and who died in a bombing raid in London in 1943, and how she was the only one for him – he lived with his mother until she died in 1984. ‘She was in the wrong place when the bomb fell. We were everything to each other. There was no one else for me. When we met it took a long time to get engaged,’ he recalls, his memory of her evidently still fresh.

‘Most of the day…’ He laughs like a machine gun going off. He also tells me how, aged 16, he ‘swindled’ his way into the RAF and ‘fiddled’ his medical.

He then tells me about one of his many bugbears – the others are Europe, the Germans, immigration, Cameron on Europe and, oh, the Germans – which is how the BBC has been ruined by women.

‘The atmosphere’s completely changed,’ he complains, before explaining that he’d seen off all attempts to change the format of The Sky At Night, which has had its 700th airing and has an audience of around one million

‘Have they tried pairing you with an attractive young female presenter?’ I ask.

A collection of photographs

‘They’ve tried all sorts of things,’ Moore replies. This leads to an argument – I will spare you the details – about ageism at the BBC, during which Sir Patrick Moore flatly denies that women disappear from the screen aged 50 while men are never pensioned off and leave the Corporation feet first.

When I ask him to name a female over 50 who is on screen, however, there is a long pause and all you can hear on the tape is the ticking of his many clocks, and the sudden striking of a cuckoo clock.

I change the subject. After a lifetime studying the heavens (his speciality is the Moon), has he come to any conclusions about life, the universe and everything? Has he, for example, ruled out the possibility of alien life? ‘No, far from it. I’m sure it must be there,’ he says instantly, slurping his orange squash. ‘In our galaxy there are a hundred, thousand, million stars, many of them with planets, and we can see a thousand million galaxies and that’s only a tiny fraction, so there must be life. If a flying saucer landed in my garden and a green man came out, I’d offer him a tea or coffee and try to get him straight into the television studio.

‘I’m sure there must be life elsewhere,’ he continues. 

‘We’re on an ordinary planet, going round an ordinary star. There’s no need to suppose we are unique. We’re not.’

But has he seen evidence of aliens? ‘No,’ he says shortly, and his monocle flashes at me sternly. ‘And nor has anyone else.’ He’s a scientist, he says, he is not ‘ruling out anything’, but he will only go on evidence. But then he goes on to say that there is also something after death, which is odd, given what he’s just said – as there is certainly no scientific evidence (that I know of) for the afterlife.

A library of his works and memorabillia, including the BAFTA for services to television

‘I don’t believe life ends here. When I die, my body will die,’ he looks down at his body without regret, ‘but what’s me, won’t – it will go on somewhere else.’ When I ask him why he thinks that, he says, ‘It seems logical to me. I can’t prove it. Ask me again in 10 years. My body will not be alive, but I will be.’

Interestingly, David Attenborough made similar remarks on the 70th anniversary of Desert Island Discs, last month. ‘I don’t think an understanding and an acceptance of the four-billion-year-long history of life is any way inconsistent with a belief in a supreme being,’ the 85-year-old broadcaster and writer said. ‘And I am not so confident as to say that I am an atheist.’

So both men – one after a lifetime studying nature, another the stars – have independently come to the conclusion that this is not, necessarily, it. After dealing with the Big Questions, it seems almost bathetic to try to stir Sir Patrick into a quotable rage about the Germans, Angela Merkel, and the retraction of Cameron’s veto, so I ask instead what was the worst political event of his lifetime. He answers the election of 1945, which threw out Churchill.

And the best scientific event? The electronic age. And finally, what of the future? What does his hold, whether alive or dead? ‘I’ve got two books to finish, one on the Moon,’ he says. ‘I totter on.’

As I leave the study, Sir Patrick Moore sits in his chair, waiting for soup. And what I find touching – despite his views on my German ancestors – is this: there, somewhere within him, you can still see the small boy in pyjamas, with stars in his eyes.

A somewhat unorthodox leg spinner, Sir Patrick played for Selsey Cricket Club until he was 77 years old

You want Moore?

• Sir Patrick’s main astrological passion is our Moon, so much so he has become a world authority on it. He discovered the Mare Orientale or Eastern Sea; his maps were used by the Soviet Union in 1959 to help them analyse the data sent from their satellite Lunik 3 of the dark side of the moon (the first pictures of which were shown live on The Sky At Night); and were also used by NASA when planning the Apollo Lunar landings.
• He received a Knighthood in 2001; had an asteroid named in his honour; is an honorary Fellow Of The Royal Society; received a BAFTA for his services to television, presented to him by Buzz Aldrin; and has also been a recipient of the Pipe Smoker Of The Year award.
• A self-taught composer and musician, Sir Patrick performed a solo xylophone version of the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK in a 1981 Royal Variety Performance and has accompanied Albert Einstein’s violin rendition of Camille Saint-Saën’s The Swan on the piano.
• Besides presenting all but one of the Sky At Night programmes, he has appeared on the Morecambe and Wise Show, The Goodies, Blankety Blank, It’s A Celebrity Knockout, Just A Minute, and had a minor role in the radio version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. He has even played himself in an episode of Doctor Who.
• Sir Patrick is an accomplished leg spin bowler, displaying this unorthodox action for both the Lord’s Taverners and Selsey Cricket Club.