Sir Patrick Moore, OBE, CBE, FRS (born March 4, 1923) is an astronomer, presenter of the long-running BBC series, The Sky at Night, and a well-known and well-loved figure on British television. He was knighted in 2001.
Moore was born in Pinner in Middlesex, and grew up in Sussex. where he was educated at home because of poor health. It was there that he developed his interest in astronomy. During the Second World War, he served in the RAF as a navigator in Bomber Command. In 1957 he began presenting the television series that made him famous.
Moore's reputation for eccentricity stems mainly from his mode of speech, his trademark monocle, and his fondness for the xylophone. He is an accomplished musician and is not adverse to performing novelty turns such as at the Royal Variety Performance and appearing in a song-and-dance act in one of Morecambe and Wise's Christmas spectaculars. Patrick Moore once accompanied Albert Einstein on the piano, whilst Einstein played Le Cygne by Camille Saint-Saëns on the violin. However no recording of the performance exists.
In the early 1990s he appeared as the disembodied Gamesmaster in the Channel 4 video game gameshow Gamesmaster.
Patrick Moore has written the occasional science fiction novel. In 1977 he published the first in his Scott Saunders Space Adventure series, aimed primarily at a younger audience (in a similar way to Asimov's Norby series). This series eventually ran to six novels. In 2001, Patrick Moore discussed his Scott Saunders novels in a notable appearance on the Channel 4 comedy programme, The Pooters, which also featured Hangingday's Charlie Skelton and Alan Connor.
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