Patrick Moore: Lived with cats, accompanied Einstein on the piano

Re: Will be missed.

Peace not Piece ;)

His views on women were a bit 1920s ! But so are those of the majority of churches and yet we let them carry on.

Having spoken to other people who knew him professionally - I don't think racist is fair. Just very anti-european, specifically anti-German. And anti- the hypocracy that we must have a race relations act, saying you can't say anything about race - championed by a succession of governments who are all rich white eton-educated anglicans.

@Dick Kennedy

You obviously failed to see the much repeated BBC obituary items where Heather Couper showed her letter which Sir Patrick wrote to her about her question as to whether sexism was a problem in astronomy. The reply was, "Let me reassure you on one point. Being a girl is no handicap at all".

You are also presumably unaware that many broadcasters cultivate an exaggerated version of their own personalities as an image tool. Some admit to it, others don't. Sir Patrick also had far longer than most to add to his on-screen persona.

Either cite your 'sources' or continue being as close-minded as the man you purport to have disliked.

is this the same Patrick Moore that wrote to a young Heather Couper (she read the letter out on a news programme yesterday) that "being a girl is no handicap to becoming an astronomer"?

The same Moore that resigned as a County Secretary for Boy Scouts in N. Ireland because they wouldn't let Catholics in?

The same Moore that suggested that the BBC was being ruined by programmes for women - soap-operas, quizzes, cookery programmes; and these should be on a separate channel.

What an unrepentant bigot.

Potty Pol

Well volunteered Dick, so you'll be down your nearest mosque tomorrow with a placard and megaphone protesting about men and women having to use separate entrances and segregated seating?

After all, your values are universally right aren't they, so you MUST impose them on everybody else.

Thought not.

So only certain people deserve the wrath of your idealism?

"The man was an unrepentant bigot."

So was my granddad.

Sir Patrick Moore was 89 years old. Like my granddad, he was born and raised at a time when wives really did stay at home. (They didn't have much choice: we still had outdoor toilets and mangles back then; many homes either still had gas lighting, or had to plug their very few appliances into electric light fittings as there was no standard for wall sockets at the time.)

It wasn't until the 1950s that society started to move towards greater equality in the workplace. Even today, there are still issues of pay equality.

Furthermore, Sir Patrick Moore served in the RAF during WW2. He lived through six years of relentless wartime anti-German propaganda, found the love of his life killed by enemy bombing raids, saw his brothers in arms killed in action and was also shot down himself. You do not get to demand he switches instantly from anti-German to pro-German overnight on VE day.

Individual mental injuries take an entire lifetime, and may never heal entirely. Socio-cultural traumas on that scale take generations to heal. (Why do you think insulting the French is such a British tradition?)

VE Day marked the end of the fighting, but not the damage it caused. Wars do not end when the bullets stop flying. For many, the nightmares continue for the rest of their lives. We have a convenient label for this now: PTSD. And every war we've been involved in since WW2 has produced its own PTSD-suffering walking wounded. Their damage is inside, invisible to the naked eye. But it is there nonetheless.

You'd think we'd have learned this as a society by now, but no. We still get ignorant posts like yours.

Meh

I think people mostly appreciated him for his work in astronomy where he was an acknowledged expert. The fact he didn't contribute much to political correctness is pretty irrelevant as I don't think many people consulted him over that.

Re: "That Patrick Moore met Orville Wright I find amazing, "

I'd imagine that since BBC4 the chances of Sky At Night like programming has gone up somewhat - I'm currently watching a series on a history of rubbish disposal in the UK and have an ongoing "most boring sounding documentary that turned out to be the most interesting." with a friend.

(In case you were wondering, I'm winning with a socio-political history of the shipping container.)

BBC 4 has some very good factual stuff, science in particular, it's well worth a look.

Re: I have a memory of Sir Patrick chastising someone for saying it was a xylophone.

Xylophone = wood+sound.

Glockenspiel = Bells+play

Re: On my way home this evening

I noticed the stars have been especially bright these last nights, even from London. A fitting tribute!

Re: A great communicator.

You're absolutely right. These days the BBC (and others) like to employ academics as presenters. Many of these, but by no means all, are duller than a very dull thing and couldn't make their subject sound interesting if their lives depended on it.

It seems production companies believe that expertise is more important than the ability to communicate on the subject under discussion. Worse still these people then become more general presenters and are employed to talk about subjects of which they know nothing.