4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012

From AO deadpool. In 1957, when the BBC picked a little known amateur to front their new astronomy programme, they could hardly have expected him to be quite so popular, or to last so long. People loved his enthusiasm, rapid-fire delivery, and monocle, and he soon embodied astronomy in the UK. The Sky at Night became the world’s longest running TV series to have retained its founding presenter.

But I bet they didn’t expect him to turn out quite so reactionary. He chaired an anti-immigration political party, United Country, defended motorists from overzealous speed cops, blamed gays for the spread of AIDS, women presenters for the decline of the BBC, and the French and Germans for just about everything else. The latter may have had something to do with his fiancée being killed by a German bomb in the war. He never married.

He tested the BBC’s patience, but it took death to get him off the air.

With his rapid speech and old-fashioned monocle,
For fifty-five years he was on TV.
Old Patrick Moore was quite unstoppable
On Sky at Night on the BBC.

He wanted girls in the kitchen, and gays in the closets,
But people forgave him such an old-fashioned view,
Because he spoke about stars, and planets, and comets,
And perhaps some quietly, agreed with him too.

Jim Thornton