Adam Hart-Davis
Contents |
Shows
Fun and Games (devisor/producer)
Inspiration! (team captain)
The Personality Test (guest host)
Biography
Enthusiastic populariser of science, Adam Hart-Davis' first TV break was working as a production assistant on Magnus Pyke's science series in the 1970s. He went on to produce shedloads of schools' programmes for Yorkshire TV before getting himself a bike and some lurid lycra and going in front of the camera for "Local Heroes". In recent years he's been kept busy telling us what various periods of history did for us (and dressing up in the appropriate historical gear too), as well as sidelines in writing, scientific photography and experimental beard research. He also did a programme, Science Shack, in which he and a team of fellow-experts investigated whether humans can do impossible things, such as fly, walk on water or become invisible. It was interesting and did always show some possibilities for achieving the impossibility in hand, but the ideas ultimately proved to be flawed in one way or another.
Trivia
Despite fronting HM Government's "Tax doesn't have to be taxing" adverts, he admits to not filling in his tax returns himself as he finds them too, errr, taxing. No wonder they dropped him, though ironically he was replaced by Moira Stuart, who of course pays no tax at all as she is domiciled on a different planet.
He is first cousin once removed of John Julius Norwich.
He appeared on the first-ever edition of Celebrity Mastermind and achieved a high score on his specialist subject, but unfortunately did less well on general knowledge and ultimately lost to Jonathan Meades. Hart-Davis returned to the programme a year later to present the trophy to the first series champion of the John Humphrys-era, Andy Page.
