Emma McAlpine reviews Robin Ince's 'Godless' shows celebrating all things scientific and rational.
It is the second night of Robin Ince's acclaimed 'Godless' shows and I feel excitement tinged with apprehension: it was reported in the press today that one of the gig's speakers Johnny Ball, severely overshot his allotted time last night (it all finished at 11:30pm) denying climate change and rambling on about farting spiders.
Now in their second year, these shows - a variety version of the Royal Institute lectures, are as popular as ever. Tickets sold out months ago and again, it will transfer to the gargantuan Hammersmith Apollo this weekend. There are the sorts of people you'd expect in the crowd: scientists, intellectuals and middle-class liberals. I have to squeeze past two men with laptops on their knees on the way to my seat and there are plenty of pantomime boos when right-wing journalist Melanie Philips name gets a mention. But there are also philosophers (one man almost gives himself a hernia when Nietzsche crops up), rap lovers and comic book fans (Alan Moore, writer of Swamp Thing, Watchmen and V For Vendetta is in the house). Then there is a girl on my right frantically munching popcorn as if her life depended on it. Go figure.
Organiser and science fanatic Robin Ince kicks off the show, declaring he is a polymath idiot, in that the more he reads the more he realises how little he knows. He is obsessed with The Theory of Evolution and his heroes include Charles Darwin, the American astronomer Carl Sagan and physicist Richard Feynman. Ince explains this show isn't about god-bashing; in fact he thinks one evangelical belief is correct - that all other religions are wrong. Ince reads one of his favoruite quotes from Feynmen: "Science: it only adds, I do not see how it detracts". Taken from his book, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, it sets the tone for the remainder of the night.
The line-up is massive and includes comedians, musicians, scientists and writers, all with one thing in common: a passion for knowledge and truth. This doesn't, however, call for purely intellectual stuff, as comedy partners Richard Herring and Andrew Collins prove. Herring reads out some of his creative writing aged 6, including the oxymoronic tale 'The Man Who Was Never Born' and Collins gives us all a lesson on internalising dance or: How To Dance On The Tube With No One Noticing.
Josie Long adds an exhilarating silliness to the evening with some homemade jokes. She asks the audience: "What do ghosts eat?" answering on behalf of various factions, from the nihilists in the crowd (nothing) to Daily Mail fans (your taxes). Stewart Lee is also a highlight, updating an old 90's routine with a surreal argument between his future self and a doorstep evangelist. Wizard lookalike Alan Moore proves every bit as funny as the professionals with a theological lecture on why he worships the second century snake god Glycon. If we spot any holes in his logic we are instructed to look at his magnificent silk robe instead. He also paints a hilarious picture of Robin Ince, Stewart Lee and Josie Long all sitting round in an atheists' club ("probably in a pub called Death Is The End & Firkin") discussing why he should speak tonight.
There is plenty of musical diversion too: Gavin Osborn must be the first person to sing a song about the Origin of the Species debate between Bishop Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley, while the self-proclaimed 'Geoffrey Chaucer of hip hop' Baba Brinkman shows us why he was the toast of Edinburgh this summer. Giving the controversial Dead Prez song 'I'm a African' a clever re-work and performing incredible half-improvised raps about evolution, his set is as entertaining as it is didactic.
It's not all songs and jokes however. Physicist Brian Cox, currently working on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, gives a fascinating talk on elementary particles and how to build a universe with them, complete with slides of space and powerful quotes from Carl Sagan and TS Eliot. Guardian columnist Ben Goldacre whips through an interesting description of 'nocebo' reactions to sugar pills in case studies, and science writer Simon Singh lampoons the myth of encoded messages in the Bible with wit and eloquence.
Ince jokes early on that these shows are a way of him covering the costs of meeting people he admires but, while there is certainly a friendly get-together element here, seeing education mashed with variety in this way is something I think we're all happy to pay for. Both stimulating and fun, it's a bit like those end-of-term history lessons when you were allowed to watch Blackadder. I come away from the gig with two resolutions: 1) look up the Snowflake Effect and 2) find out more about Carl Sagan. Because boy, does that guy have some good quotes.
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