Summer’s here, students are heading off – what are you working on?

The last paper I published was a really theoretical paper with three colleagues and it was stimulated by a popular book I wrote with Jeff Forshaw about quantum mechanics. [There is] this strange feature of quantum theory that it appears to not care about Einstein’s theory of relativity – it does care about it but it appears that you can do things at some place in the universe and in principle the whole universe seems to respond. We got interested in using all the modern machinery of quantum field theory [to ask] how does that play out, how does it actually work? What stops you from doing strange things and influencing the whole universe from your little position here on Earth? We are still working on it. We’ve published one of the papers; there are another couple in the pipeline.

Do people forget that you are a researcher as well as a presenter?

Yes, people do. It doesn’t matter though, does it? It’s really for my own sanity. The thing I enjoy most outside of television is lecturing – I lecture first years in special relativity and quantum mechanics which is something that would seem not too difficult, because we are talking about first-year, first-term undergraduate physics. But actually in doing so, if you take it seriously, you can end up deepening your understanding massively. Paradoxically, what this second career [in television] has done, it’s given me more time to think about really foundational physics.

There’s now a shiny new graphene institute at Manchester University. You’ve been enthusiastic about the “wonder material” - is there not a risk it’ll end up being an enormous anticlimax?

It is certainly true that potentially this material is revolutionary. So what do you do when faced with that? It was discovered in Manchester, it has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar, if not more, industry. If you sit there until someone else shows that you can replace silicon in integrated circuits with graphene, you’ve missed the boat.

Are you optimistic that the new universities and science minister, Jo Johnson, will keep the money coming for science?

Yes. I think the intellectual argument – and the economic argument – for the investment in science and more broadly in education at all levels has been won in government. It’s obvious that we are a knowledge-based economy and in the future we are going to be more knowledge based. It is the only way we can compete. My view is that politicians can accept things intellectually, but find it politically difficult to deliver on what they know to be the right thing to do. If [George Osborne] wants to focus on making Britain “the best place in the world to do science” which is a slogan that he has used, and it’s a good slogan, if he wants to do that then he needs permission. And to get permission from the electorate, the electorate need to understand what science is, understand the value of it and back investment of it at the expense of something else. That’s where I think institutions like the BBC have a very important role.

The Higgs Boson, Curiosity rover and Rosetta mission have all whipped up public enthusiasm for science. Is that down to savvy PR or has physics become cool?

I think science is popular again, and this comes in waves. You look back to [Humphry] Davy and people like that and they were colossally important, cultural figures. So I think it is not an unusual time in that respect, but I think it is more popular than it has been for some time. The Higgs particle is a genuinely transformational discovery; it is not just another particle, it is a completely new kind of particle. It tells us something very deep about what happened less than a billionth of a second after the big bang. [Also] the prediction being verified tells us that we understand physics very, very well. So it’s not hype – it is one of the great discoveries of the last 100 years.

Cern has just rebooted. Will the next wave of experiments be as exciting?

We are always guessing. But there is a chance there is going to be a revolution in cosmology and particle physics and the overlap between the two. There is a chance that the LHC will discover a whole new family of particles – basically dark matter. That would be a revolution on the scale of the Higgs, arguably even more important than the Higgs particle.

What about breakthroughs like the discovery of gravitational waves that amounted to nothing? Was that just a fiasco or the way science works?

The way science works. It was a legitimate measurement. It turned out they hadn’t taken everything into account. Some people take the view that these things shouldn’t be aired in public, but I think science is not about absolutes, science is about honesty. It’s about making measurements, doing the best you can and then usually showing that there is something not quite right about it. The idea that scientists are some kind of priests that have unique access to knowledge about nature is nonsense – in many ways I see it as the codified application of common sense. It’s like plumbing.

There’s also a lot of excitement about plans to put people on Mars. Would you sign up?

No.

You’re happier looking at it from a distance?

It’s incredibly dangerous and challenging – and that is absolutely not to say we shouldn’t do it. But it takes a special breed of individual. I have had the pleasure of getting to know quite a few Apollo astronauts and they are just unique, almost superhuman individuals. I am amazed at the way their brains work. It is not the way my brain works.

Ben Miller, Brian Cox and Robin Ince - crew of the Infinite Monkey Cage - at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival in 2010 Photograph: Adrian Sherratt/Rex Features

Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk seem to think we should fear AI – are you worried about the robots coming?

It’s one of the areas I don’t think about too much. Particularly with military drones, I can see that you have real regulatory problems around whose fault it is if it goes wrong or it makes mistakes – which it will do. It is fairly easy to build an artificially intelligent device that isn’t a threat to you – because you don’t give it a gun. I wouldn’t be worried if my iPhone was artificially intelligent because I can always put it in a box and turn it off. If they gave my iPhone a laser maybe I’d be more worried about it.

I hear there is a new TV show in the offing …

It’s called Six Degrees, part of the BBC’s coding season. The idea is to have two panels with three people on each and at least two of them will be university professors. The idea is to allow the professors to demonstrate how they think. So the questions have to be sufficiently challenging, esoteric and interesting that they won’t just get them immediately.

What the most ridiculous TV idea you’ve been asked to present?

I do get some wild ideas from America or Australia – there might be astrology involved or something like that – a complete misunderstanding of my rather violent opposition to anything that isn’t science. If anything I am trying to do a little bit less [television] because I have got this new position now at the Royal Society, professor for public engagement, which takes some time.

Your popstar past often crops up in interviews – does your time in D:Ream seem like a bit of a millstone?

I have a really bad memory; it was 20 years ago so I’ve kind of forgotten. It’s getting less and less relevant because if I do an event a good fraction of the audience weren’t born when I was in D:Ream. You get blank faces now [laughs].

You are pretty active on Twitter. I notice your backdrop is a scene from Dad’s Army – I take it you are a fan?

I strongly believe that universities are places where all ideas should be debated and discussed, so I retweeted an article about that and got put on a list of people who are, I don’t know, frowned upon for this statement. That Dad’s Army backdrop is Pike being put on “ze list” [by the Germans to give to Hitler]. I put it there when I got put on “ze list”. It was for my own amusement really. It’s that famous scene where [the U-boat captain] goes: “What’s your name?” and [Mainwaring] goes: “Don’t tell him, Pike!”

You’ve had a few Twitter spats, like your battles with Deepak Chopra …

The most important attribute for a 'real scientist', as you put it @DeepakChopra , is to actually understand some science. — Brian Cox (@ProfBrianCox) June 21, 2014

It’s entertainment for me. I can’t help it. It’s funny how people perceive you, especially when you present documentaries. Obviously there is a particular style that you use, and people find it surprising sometimes that I’m not like that. I like taking the piss. And I don’t really consider the fact that I have got 1.5 million Twitter followers watching what I am doing. You could intellectualise it and say there is a problem with pseudoscience and all these things, but, honestly, I’m just taking the piss.

It also says you are a master of karate and friendship…

There is a line [in a song in the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia] about the “Nightman” and that he is “a master of karate and friendship”. So I just put it there because I thought it was funny. Master of karate and friendship – what the hell? I love it when people look at it and go: “Is that how you see yourself?”

You’ve got an OBE but not an FRS [Fellowship of the Royal Society] – does that annoy you?

It doesn’t annoy me. There are very few people who have FRSs. The Royal Society is the oldest and most prestigious scientific institution in the world and you’ve got to make a significant contribution before you are elected as a fellow. It is harder to be an FRS than it is to be an OBE [laughs].

Is the Infinite Monkey Cage really infinite?

I hope so. If there is one thing I want to be doing when I am 80 it’s still being on Radio 4 trying to be slightly belligerent.

Human Universe by Brian Cox and Andrew Cohen is out in paperback, published by HarperCollins. Click here to order a copy for £7.19