Patrick Moore - Other Interests and Popular Culture

Other Interests and Popular Culture

Because of his long-running television career and eccentric demeanour, Moore is widely recognised and has become a popular public figure. In 1976, this was used to good effect for an April Fool's spoof on BBC Radio 2, when Moore announced that at 9.47 am, a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event was going to occur that meant that if listeners could jump at the exact moment of an imminent celestial event they would experience a temporary floating sensation. The BBC received many telephone calls from listeners alleging that they actually experienced the sensation. He also was a key figure in the establishment of the International Birdman event in Bognor Regis, which was initially held in Selsey.

Aside from presenting The Sky at Night, Moore has appeared in a number of other television and radio shows, including Just a Minute and, from 1992 until 1998, playing the role of GamesMaster in the television show of the same name: a character who professed to know everything there is to know about video gaming. He would issue video game challenges and answer questions on cheats and tips presented in the Consoletation Zone.

Moore also was a keen amateur actor, appearing regularly in local plays. He also appeared in self-parodying roles, in several episodes of The Goodies and on the Morecambe and Wise show, and also broadcast with Kenneth Horne only a few days before Horne's death. He had a minor role in the fourth radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and a lead role in the Radio 1 sci-fi BBC/20th Century Fox radio play, Independence Day UK in which amongst other things, Moore fills in as a Navigator. He also appeared in It's a Celebrity Knockout, Blankety Blank and Face the Music. He has appeared on television at least once in a film prop space suit. He has also appeared as himself in the Doctor Who story The Eleventh Hour.

A keen amateur chess player, Moore often carries a pocket set around with him and has been honoured with the title of Vice President of Sussex Junior Chess Association. In 2003, he presented Sussex Junior David Howell with the best young chess player award on Carlton Television's Britain's Brilliant Prodigies show. Moore himself had represented Sussex in his youth.

Moore was also an enthusiastic amateur cricketer, playing for the Selsey Cricket Club well into his seventies. He also played for the Lord's Taverners, a cricketing charity team, as a bowler with an unorthodox action. Though an accomplished leg spin bowler, he was a number 11 batsman and a poor fielder. The jacket notes to his 1960s book "Suns, Myths and Men" state that his hobbies include "chess, which he plays with a peculiar leg-spin, and cricket." He also played golf, and won a Pro-Am competition in Southampton in 1975.

Until being forced to give up owing to arthritis, Moore was a keen musician and accomplished xylophone player, having first played the instrument at the age of thirteen. He has composed a substantial corpus of works, including two operettas. Moore has also had a ballet entitled 'Lyra's Dream' written to his music. He once performed at a Royal Command Performance, and has also performed a duet with Evelyn Glennie. In 1998, as a guest on Have I Got News For You, he accompanied the show's closing theme tune on the xylophone and as a pianist, he once accompanied Albert Einstein playing The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns on the violin (of which no recording was made). In 1981 he performed a solo xylophone rendition of the Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K." in a Royal Variety Performance.

On 7 March 2006 he was hospitalised and fitted with a pacemaker because of a cardiac abnormality. Before such health problems he was an extensive traveller, and has set foot on all seven continents, (including Antarctica); he has stated that his favourite two countries were Iceland and Norway.

He is a friend of Queen guitarist and astrophysicist Brian May, who is an occasional guest on The Sky at Night. The pair have co-authored a book with Chris Lintott, entitled Bang! The Complete History of the Universe. In February 2011, Moore completed (with Robin Rees and Iain Nicolson) his comprehensive Patrick Moore's Data Book of Astronomy for Cambridge University Press. In addition he wrote Bureaucrats: How to Annoy Them under the pseudonym R. T. Fishall, which was published by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1981. In 1986 he was identified as the co-author of a book published in 1954 called Flying Saucer from Mars, attributed to Cedric Allingham, which was intended as a practical joke on UFO believers; Moore has never admitted his involvement. He once joined the Flat Earth Society as an ironic joke.