Have you ever wanted to go to an awesome science event at the Royal Institution Lecture Theatre (where they do those Christmas Lectures on the telly every year) BUT for it to be fun and silly and definitely not for kids?

Now’s your chance. Hurrah!

I’m curating two evening with the help of some very excellent and entertaining friends – and some expert help from the RI’s demo expert Andy who will be bringing out some bits and pieces from the archive for us to play with. I mean, for us to do science with. like…

 - Can you use Newtonian mechanics can help you juggle electric carving knives?

 - How do we find a earth-like planets orbiting around distant stars?

 - Did you know Michael Faraday invented the ballon?

Neither did I! Expect these revelations and more at:

BIG SCIENCE – Tues 18th June - with legendary comedian, improviser, Comedy Store Player and ex-physicist Richard Vranch and half of Domestic Science, Rob Wells

small science… Tues 25th June - with cabaret star and king of new variety Mat Ricardo, plus science troubadour Jonny Berliner

Tickets available here. Come along! It will be more fun than you can shake a stick at *

* No sticks were harmed in the making of this post.

Some lovely, exciting news – I am finally far enough out of the mainstream to be an Alternative Comedian!

On 11th July I’ll be recording a set at Edinburgh’s Stand comedy club for Stewart Lee’s Alternative Comedy Experience. Tickets are here. It’ll go out on Comedy Central, I’m not sure when, but some time this year… so look out on your digital boxes for some supernerdy musical comedy from me.

Until then, you make make do with one of my songs on mega YouTube channel Numberphile, recorded with the help of Spoken Nerd’s stand-up mathematician, Matt Parker.

It went out as part of YouTube Comedy Week and also on Wagner’s birthday, which is especially suitable because it’s the most epic singalong you will ever attempt – IT’S THE GOOGOLPLEX!

Some news for today… if you’re listening to 5 live between 3pm and 4pm today you’ll hear me and biologist/author/fellow science cheerleader Adam Rutherford on Richard Bacon’s afternoon show. We’re discussing this week’s science news and taking questions from the public – tune in here or listen again for the next 7 days on the same link.

Also, if you’re in the US or Canada, you can finally see my Discovery Channel show where we look at the science behind crazy YouTube stunts… in the UK it’s called You Have Been Warned, but in the US they call it Outrageous Acts of Science - ha, crazy Americans! It’s on Saturday nights at 10pm on the Science Channel.

During April I spent a couple of fun*-filled weekends creating a showreel – click here to take a look!

It has a whole heap of TV, radio, voiceover, youtube and live stuff that I’ve done over the last few years. There’s everything from a BBC 2 series about computers to a Channel 4 piece about how I celebrate christmas, a science-comedy feature for  Norwegian TV, some funny stuff I did on Radio 3, and my voice in a Tim Key comedy documentary about famous first lines for Radio 4. Oh, and Spoken Nerd live on stage at the Hammermsith Apollo

Turns out I’ve been pretty busy the last few years. Do take a look, and if you know of anyone in need of a geek songstress, live event host or science presenter please do pass it on!

(* = my definitely of “fun” here is the less commonly used “constantly arguing with iMovie, regularly sobbing, holding head in hands and not fully understanding aspect ratio issues)

I’ve just sent out a newsletter (it’s been a while!) with details of this Friday’s fun on BBC Radio 3. Yes, my former employer have got me back as their pet comedian for the day to help out with Comic Relief – it’s been a heap of fun.

Here’s a fun thing for a Tuesday luncthime… a couple of weeks ago I got together with ludicrously talented Jay Foreman (funny/heartbreaking songs here) and ever-inventive Tom Scott (Google Glass parody ad here) to do a one-take mashup of every song we could think of in Common Metre. Or Common Meter, if you’re using the less Common US spelling.

What’s Common Metre? Watch the video!

Or put another way, if you’ve ever wondered what Amazing Grace sounds like sung to the Pokémon theme, or the tune of Oh Susannah with the lyrics of House of the Rising Sun, we’ve answered all your questions in a single video.

Here’s a quick heads up about our next big Festival of the Spoken Nerd shows in April.

I’m typing live from the Sallis Benney Theatre in Brighton today, where we’re doing the first of three big Science Festivals (next ones being Cambridge and Edinburgh) with a bit of news… Seeing as our two January shows were all sold out, we’ve added a third night to our next Bloomsbury Theatre residency. “Technobabble” will run on 16th, 17th and now also 18th April – buy your tickets here before they sell out – they always do!

We’ve also been working hard to make Festival of the Spoken Nerd more accessible so the 18th April show will feature live captioning of the entire show, using Stagetext. Using a special shorthand keyboard, speech-to-text reporters transcribe words phonetically, at high speed, and this is then converted into English text so that deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people can read it. It seemed like the right time to do it, in a show all about computers and communication, and we are pretty excited about how it will turn out.

If there’s anyone you know who has never seen a Festival of the Spoken Nerd show and would appreciate the live captioning, now’s your chance to send them this link!

A quick post before we all break up for Christmas… the nice people of the Royal Institution (they make the legendary Christmas Lectures every year and lots more) have been asking various scientists and sciencethusiasts about their favourite element and posting them as an advent calendar throughout December.

Here’s my contribution, about the much-maligned and badly named (but extremely interesting) element No. 5: Boron

Hello again,

For anyone not on my mailing list (why not, I ask? Click the link top right and get in on the action!) this thing landed in people’s inboxes this afternoon:

Have a look, it contains news about a thing I did for a TV show, my new songbook, some lovely shows at the Bloomsbury Theatre, and a discount if you buy my Christmas album. Please have a very awkward Christmas when you’re done.

As an added bonus, here’s a nice picture from Geek Lates, where Rob and I did a 15 minute version of our Domestic Science show 4 times in a night. It was superfun but we lost a lot of ping pong balls :/

This illustration is by the amazing Jade Walsh. Please commission her to draw beautiful things for you and pay her lots of money, thank you.

Hey, I’ve just realised I haven’t made enough of a song and dance about this here 2013 calendar I’m in… for SCIENCE! You can buy it here.

It’s the Science Grrl calendar, a project to show the real face of real women doing real science (plus some carefully placed comedians and TV presenters)

I’m one of the four Miss Decembers, alongside comedian Helen Keen, and astrophysicists Jen Gupta and Sheila Kanani.

The whole calendar is absolutely stunning and – oh look! It’s Christmas soon! Isn’t that convenient! What a perfect gift this makes for the Science Grrl or Guy in your life.

And if you buy it now and bring it to any of my gigs before the end of the year (listed here) I’ll even sign it for you. I’ll have my gold pen at the ready!