Science saviour

TOM Pringle is the man being toasted as the saviour of British science after an incredible ten year journey which has put his fun character Dr Bunhead on the TV map. "I'd like to be the Johnny Ball of molecules," he jests as he prepares to tour the UK with his outrageous stage experiments which recently exploded ticket sales in the West End. Dr Bunhead's Recipes For Disaster will play Durham's Gala Theatre on Tuesday and Newcastle's Tyne Theatre on June 22.

DIY breakfast bombs and the world's fastest chips are on the menu for Pringle's many fans, but the route into BBC1's Blue Peter and becoming presenter of Sky One's Brainiac was probably his most dangerous piece of experimentation.

Ten years ago, Pringle was a research scientist at Edinburgh University "bored out of my brains working in a laboratory with my hands in rubber gloves for hour after hour and day after day".

"I used to sneak out using the excuse I was doing library research and get my mate to take me to a local school on the back of his motorbike to give a free show to the kids," he admits.

Eventually he was persuaded to put on an Edinburgh Science Festival display and quickly needed a name and came up with Dr Bunhead's Magical Chemistry Cook Books.

He says: "I was starting the show and needed a publicity picture and got one from a photograph booth and it was so washed out with flash that if you covered the bottom half, the top half looked like this pasty lump of dough with two black spots of my eyes as currants. My brother said 'yeah, it looks like a bun' and I said 'Bunhead, that's quite funny'. I thought I'd use it just for now and come up with a decent one later and the kids loved it and thought it was funny so I've never changed my picture. I never intended to keep the name either, but it's just stuck."

As for the unusual title he says: "I've been Dr Bunhead for nearly ten years and I've kinda got used to it. All my friends just call me Bun-heed in Scotland or just Bun and some of the Scottish kids called me Bum-heed. Even friends' kids call me Dr Bunhead rather than Tom, so it's quite sweet. I don't think that Tom Pringle exists anymore."

Letters arrive now for Dr Bunhead and email requests are always to his TV character. It hasn't extended to members of his family yet but he admits it may not make a prospective wife too keen.

"I did have a girlfriend once who took great delight in booking into hotels as Mr and Mrs Boonee as a play on the Hyacinth Bucket TV character," he jokes.

He was spotted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by a BBC producer and soon Dr Bunhead arrived on BBC Saturday morning show Fully Booked with Gail Porter and Tim Vincent.

Now he's the resident fun scientist on Blue Peter and has just finished filming a third series of Sky One's Brainiac as presenter.

Part of his appeal is the unusual accent which comes from having parents from Plymouth and Scotland and learning to love explaining things while selling telephones in London and Bath after qualifying with a Chemistry teaching degree from Bath University.

So what are Pringle's thoughts about science being rated as too difficult at school?

"I think Science is a hard subject and when you look at the research on it everyone finds that the conceptual and abstract nature takes you away from what you can see quite easily. That's why it's so important you have really great demonstrations. The backbone traditionally of science inspiration was tremendous public displays. You go back to the time of Sir Humphrey Davy and the Royal Institution Lectures, he was a celebrity who you could put on a par with Big Brother.

The world's first ever one-way street was Albermarle Street where the Royal Institution is because it used to get so blocked with people coming to see him that they only allowed traffic one way."

He bemoans the increasing concerns about Health and Safety which forces a lengthy process of risk assessment which puts off science demonstrations.

Pringle remembers the jaw-dropping moments of chemistry experiments which attracted him to the subject while at school in Plymouth.

"It's not just the wow factory but having someone who understands it well enough and can explain it to you. So you also have the 'aha' moment when the penny drops. In actual fact that is far more motivating and far more profound an influence on a person than any amount of wow factor. I use all the wow and entertainment to open children up and sneak the science in the back door. It's subliminal learning if you like."

On the fun explosions he says: "I now have a contract with a major supplier of hot water bottles and I've gone through hundreds of bottles to find out which ones burst the best. There's a considerable amount of science in just bursting a hot water bottle and not blowing my own head off."

The fastest chips in town are created by a laser-guided potato cannon with the spud going through a tennis racket.

Pringle explains: "If you were hit by a hundred-mile-an-hour spud it would do some damage. We actually use titanium wire in the racket because in trials we actually broke nine tennis rackets, but it's part of the art. You have an idea and test it out."

And to cynics who say what's the point? he responds: "There are two points. One is the sheer wow factor and all the way through the show we're sneaking in the science by looking at combustion, looking at the fire triangle and what we need for things to burn and then look at the explosive ratio using domestic equipment. So that knowledge is then encapsulated in one big demonstration. So it's there and then applied."

Even sneakier is Pringle's call for children to volunteer their parents to catch the chips after a spud hits the racket at 200mph.

"We make a big joke about parents coming out and catching the chips between their teeth but actually they hold a big tarpaulin and well either side so they don't get hit," he says.

* Dr Bunhead's Recipes For Disaster is at Durham's Gala Theatre on Tuesday, Box Office 0191-332 4041 and Newcastle's Tyne Theatre on June 22, 0870 145 1200. A new series of Brainiac starts on Sky One at 8pm on Wednesday.

Published: 26/05/2005