My Keele Interview With Patrick Moore, Conducted In My Little Study Bedroom (Lindsay F4), circa 27 May 1981

My memory of this event was triggered at lunch the other day (October 2017) when Patrick Moore came up in the conversation.

“Oh yes, I interviewed him when I was at Keele”, I said, “I didn’t find him all that impressive”.

Janie ticked me off afterwards for being (or at least seeming) churlish about the matter, especially as Alan and Sue (who had brought Patrick Moore into the conversation) were obviously keen on him.

On reflection, I couldn’t recall why I had been unimpressed by him. But I could recall that I had recorded the interview and had digitised the tape a few years ago, without really listening to it again at that time.

I promptly listened to it carefully – you can hear it too if you wish:

Listening to the interview brought back a flood of memories and also made me feel very badly about my teenage impression of Patrick Moore. Because I realise, on listening to the recording, that the unimpressive contributor is me, not him.

I was under-prepared for that interview and Patrick Moore to some extent interviewed himself.

In my defence, the reason I was under-prepared was because I hadn’t expected to conduct the interview until later that day. I certainly hadn’t expected to conduct it in my own little study/bedroom.

This is what happened.

I was the Concourse (Student Union newspaper) journalist assigned to interview Patrick Moore and was due to interview him early evening before he delivered a talk to students. This was arranged through Dr Ron Maddison, who was a good pal of Patrick Moore’s and was the Astronomy lead on Keele’s rather impressive observatory.

Being me, I went to Ron Maddison’s office early afternoon on the day of the interview/talk just to confirm all the arrangements. It turned out that Patrick Moore was already there with some time on his hands. They both suggested that I could conduct the interview there and then. I explained that I would need my tape recorder and notepad, at which point Patrick Moore volunteered to come with me and be interviewed in my room.

I told him that my student room was less than salubrious, especially when I was not expecting guests, but my protests seemed to make him all the more eager to take this opportunity to observe how students really live.

Patrick Moore, the man who usually wielded the telescope towards the stars, was choosing to observe student life under the metaphorical microscope.

So we marched from the Astronomy Department to Lindsay and my very humble little room, F4.

I remember telling him, along the way, that I had planned to prepare the questions that afternoon so was under-prepared. He told me not to worry and that between us he was sure we’d cover plenty for my article.

I remember making us both a coffee when we got to my room. I possibly even had some biscuits to offer.

If you listen to the interview, it sounds a bit like a John Shuttleworth interview, but without the music. You can hear the sound of the coffee mugs being moved around. It is very folksy sounding, which indeed it was.

Some of my questions and interjections are positively cringe worthy, but on the whole I sense that I had roughly worked out a skeleton for the interview in my head and we worked through it – perhaps not as methodically as I would have planned, but the interview does cover a lot of ground. He was clearly a seasoned interviewee who could have conducted his own interview without me.

The recording runs uninterrupted for over 15 minutes, until c17:20, at which point I began stopping the tape periodically to try to make sure we were covering everything I wanted/needed for my article.

At 21:25 I ask a particularly ill-phrased question about black holes, followed by, during the embarrassing seconds that followed, the clear sound of someone knocking and entering the room. I remember this clearly. It was my neighbour, Simon Ascough (Sim), who was quite taken aback to see Patrick Moore in the room.

Sim had presumably popped in on a matter of extremely urgent student importance. Perhaps to recommend that we listen to In A Gadda Da Vida (yet again), possibly to suggest a mid afternoon spliff or quite possibly both. But I think (mercifully) that Sim’s request went unspoken; in any case I turned the recorder off at the moment of the knock.

At 23:55 comes the laugh out loud moment on the tape, when you can clearly hear the sound of a female (or females) being chased around the corridor of F Block. Again I turned off the recorder. I remember Patrick Moore asking me if my friend, having found me otherwise engaged, had decided to chase girls instead?

What I should have said was, “no, that’ll almost certainly be Richard Van Baaren and Benedict Coldstream chasing girls around the corridor”. But I didn’t say that. In fact, I think both Patrick Moore and I had a fit of the giggles for quite a few moments before I switched the recorder back on.

My only other profound memory of this interview was playing the recording to Paul Deacon during the summer holidays soon after the event. Paul is a DJ, voice recording artiste and a superb mimic; Patrick Moore is certainly one of Paul’s voices.

I remember Paul playing over and over again the bit at the beginning of the interview when Patrick Moore says, “and then along came Mr Hitler”, mimicking it better and better each time, until I begged Paul to stop. Perhaps it was the Paul comedy aspect that dampened my enthusiasm for Patrick Moore.

Subsequent contribution – May 2019: Dave Lee, who was the interim editor of Concourse in the months prior to the interview, has been in touch by e-mail to remind me, “If I remember you said at the time of Patrick Moore that he farted and stunk the room out. That might have been a distraction!”  Oh yes, I now recall Paul Deacon including fart noises in his impersonation. Maybe it was the flatulence that diminished my opinion of the fine  communicator that was Patrick Moore.

One of the strangest things about this very memorable event was that I didn’t register it at all in my diary, so I cannot be 100% sure of the date on which his lecture (and therefore my interview) took place.

It looks to me as though my diary got quite a long way behind at that stage of that term. To be fair on my 18-year-old self, it was a busy time. Uncle Manny (dad’s older brother) died suddenly a couple of week’s earlier, so I needed to go home unexpectedly to help with family duties and attend the funeral & shiva.

It was also essay and exam time – not ridiculously onerous in Foundation Year (FY) but I had been behind anyway (show me the FY student who wasn’t) and the Uncle Manny business had set me behind further.

I do recall, indeed my diary shows that, I was doing my own fair share of girl chasing at that time – not the screaming and corridor running type of chasing I hasten to add – with a kindly third year named Sandra. But that is another story – now to be found by clicking here or below:

From Morecombe To Wise(r) Via A Linguistically Out Of Key Note, Keele, 29/30 May 1981

Forensics on the scrap of paper emblazoned with the legend “Patrick Moore Interview” inside the cassette box reveals the following on the adverse side:

I’m guessing that the interview would have been a couple of days before the Jazz Night, as the following week there were lots of exams, so I am guessing that the interview was one of those quieter days between the essay deadlines and the exams; 27th or 28th May.

Here is a picture of the tape, box and legend itself:

If anyone reading this has any more information (or recollection) of that Patrick Moore visit, not least the date, please do chime in.

For some reason, I don’t seem to have kept the article that emerged from the interview, although it might yet emerge from some further archaeology through my old note pads and scrap files. If anyone has a copy of the Concourse article that resulted from the recorded interview, I’d love to see it again.

So, having dredged back the memories, I take back unreservedly my sense that Patrick Moore was unimpressive. Patrick Moore was the commensurate professional and incredibly natural/unassuming in the peculiar circumstances of this interview. My teenage self possibly mistook unassuming for unimpressive; that was poor judgement on my part.

The recorded interview is also an interesting thirty minutes in itself. Here’s the recording again.