TO teach us about pressure, my Year 7 physics teacher Mr Travis stood on a table dressed in a half trouser suit with flat shoe and half mini skirt with stiletto. It was my favourite science lesson of all time – until Wednesday night at the Gala.

With musical-physicist Helen Arney, stand-up mathematician Matt Barker and super scientist Steve Mould (whose experiment with beads out of a beaker has become known as the Mould Effect), this is an eye-opening and enthralling two-hour romp through the mysteries of science.

Barker loves spreadsheets and numbers, so much so that we discover all life is basically made up of both, while Mould, from Gateshead, taught us how to create a fire tornado in a mesh bin on a lazy Susan.

Meanwhile Arney, sporting a periodic table dress, serenaded us with songs about synesthesia and cryogenics accompanied by her electric ukulele, and even managed to smash a glass by singing a high C.

And don’t even get me started on the excitement of toroidal vortexes, or the ability to create yellow light by hooking a pickle on to two nails wired to the mains, or even the ode to overhead projectors.

And the show continued after its official ending with the trio speaking to fans and signing their calculators (no, really, they did).

I won’t pretend that I understood all of it, but it was fascinating and fun, the first science show I have seen to surpass Mr Travis’s surprisingly shapely left leg.

  • Festival of the Spoken Nerd will perform at The Arc in Stockton on March 6.