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Night Of 400 Billion Stars

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The Bloomsbury Theatre
Gordon Street, WC1H 0AH

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Description: Robin Ince hosts an evening of talks, music and comedy, with guests including Simon Singh, Marcus Chown, Ruth Padel and Martin White.


Trains: Tube: Euston Overground network, Tube / Bus: 10, 18, 24, 29, 73, 91, 168, 253 Transport for London

Phone: 020 7388 8822

 
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Rocket science in Night of 400 Billion Stars

By Bruce Dessau, Evening Standard  30.06.09
 

Robin Ince may not be the most mainstream comedian in the country but he is certainly the most intellectually audacious.

After staging a religion-related gig featuring Richard Dawkins at Christmas, last night’s sequel homed in on astronomy, physics “and other scientific distractions”. A cocktail of gagsmiths and boffins went into the test tube and out came a thing of sprawling beauty.

As compere, Ince was on manic form, passionate and provocative and frantically namedropping cultural references from Schopenhauer to Natasha Kaplinsky. Star of In The Loop Chris Addison was in similarly garrulous mode, mixing philosophical observations with dinosaur impersonations. Josie Long was lovably enthusiastic if a little unprepared, yet scored high-brow brownie points by sporting a D-I-Y Kurt Vonnegut T-shirt.

One of the most engaging aspects of the evening was that while some had familiar material — Helen Keen’s quickfire run-down of her fave rocket scientists was entertaining and informative — others came up with new night-specific stuff.

Lucy Porter unearthed a school book boasting a self-penned poem about a boy in which she tried to mention elements from the periodic table (“You can copper feel of my titaniums in bed”).

The scientists might have lacked the stand-ups’ stagecraft but they rose to the occasion. Cosmologist Marcus Chown delivered his top five bonkers facts about the universe (number five — the sun would be the same if it was made out of bananas), while proceedings closed with renaissance thinker Simon Singh electrocuting a gherkin, which we nearly didn’t see after a fuse blew. In the end, though, the experiment worked, adding a final flash to a night of bright sparks.

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