The Press and media coverage of the Bang! launch has been enormous - too much mention here - a search on Google news offers 125 articles on the topic !! Astounding.... to avoid too much repetition, we will list a few... 23 October 2006

Virgin Radio - mp3 - Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show

BBC Breakfast News - Link

BBC News 24

Capital Radio

Reuters' news report (see below) - the first report, filed directly after Press Conference

‘London Tonight’, ITV - ran their piece at 6pm 24 October 2006

Heart FM Breakfast Show - presenter Harriet Scott came to the conference and was talking about it and the book on this morning's show at approx 8.30am.

The Guardian - half page piece on the press conference and book, plus picture from the conference on the front page of the paper (bottom of the front page).

Metro - (free paper given out at all tube and train stations in the UK) - picture from the conference, mentioning the book.

Daily Star - piece on the book and quote from Brian's interview with the 'Christian O'Connell Breakfast Show' on Virgin Radio on the morning of the conference. Photos on www.filmmagic.com



CHECK BACK FOR MORE --- Editorial comment: Unfortunately Daily Star reporter still resorting to that silly Poodle Perm reference, in relation to Brian. When will they learn? Daily Star

Tues 24 October 2005 page 19

JOE MOTT'S

AWARD WINNING

HOT

Edited by KIM DAWSON

BRI BITES THE DUST BRIAN MAY is returning to school and studying for a PhD in, erm... planetary dust. A subject Little Britain's fat fighter Marjorie Dawes would salivate over; it's quite different from rock and roll. The poodle-haired axeman studied the subject before music became his career and, this week, releases his book, Bang, which covers it. Bri, 59, told Virgin's Christian O'Connell, 34, "In the last few months I've been getting back into it. I'm hoping to re-register for the PhD. It has been a voyage of rediscovery for me. "I had to give it up when Queen started to take of.." What a star. --- NEWS24.com (South Africa)

BRIAN MAY GOT STARS IN HIS EYES?

24/10/2006 12:02 - (SA) London - As the guitar power in the legendary British rock band Queen, Brian May conquered most of the planet - and now he has his sights set on mastering the universe. The star musician, who wrote hits like We Will Rock You, The Show Must Go On and Flash, has switched his plectrum for a pen and co-authored a book with two leading British astronomers, telling the story of the big bang and how the universe has evolved since. "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe", was written with Patrick Moore, who has presented BBC television's The Sky at Night since 1957, and cosmology boffin Chris Lintott, Moore's regular sidekick on the show. May, 59, earned a degree in physics at Imperial College London but after years of studying interplanetary dust, he abandoned work towards his doctorate when Queen - fronted by stellar performer Freddie Mercury - took off. May said: "When I was seven years old, I got my first guitar. That's about the time when I first saw The Sky at Night and the two passions have stayed with me throughout my life." Decades of hard rocking later, he is now completing his thesis and hopes the colourful, 192-page book will be as successful as any of his hits. "This is not a book for scientists, it's a book for everybody," said the world-renowned guitarist. "We firmly believe this is something which hasn't been achieved before, and that is a proper accounting of the story of the whole history of the universe from the big bang up to the present day and into the unforeseeable future - but in a form which can be understood." Moore badgered May to write the book with him and the 83-year-old drafted the basic skeleton in two weeks. May and Lintott then spent two and a half years with the eccentric, xylophone-playing astronomy legend fleshing it out. May's co-authors insist he has the credibility to write about stars as well as be one. "Brian was an extremely hard task master, we didn't get away with anything," said Lintott. "His papers are still leading the field in zodiacal light. He won't say so but it's true - I checked the figures - and I know people are waiting for his thesis. He's absolutely a top-class researcher." Moore added: "Brian is a highly qualified, very eminent astronomer who has done fundamental work on his particular subject." The book explains the history of the universe from the big bang 13.7 billion years ago, through the formation of the first stars, galaxies and planets and on into the evolution of human beings able to contemplate their origins and destiny in space. --- THE GUARDIAN

GUITARIST JOINS ASTRONOMERS TO TELL HISTORY OF UNIVERSE

Maev Kennedy

Tuesday October 24, 2006 Brian May wore a resplendent rock god crimson velvet jacket, Sir Patrick Moore wore his monocle, and Chris Lintott wore a slightly sheepish smile, when the most unlikely trio in the history of publishing took a curtain call yesterday. "Feels just like a record launch, amazing," Brian May said, and although there was a glaring absence of champagne, and the groupies wore anoraks, there were genuine stars. Sir Patrick called May "the world's leading guitarist and a very good astrophysicist". In return May called him "the greatest man in the country". They both called Mr Lintott "the young gun of astronomy". He blushed. Bang! The Complete History of the Universe, which they were launching yesterday, is aimed at the slightly nerdy small boys all three once were, and every age after that. Katherine Blundell, an astrophysicist from St John's College, Oxford, had strict instructions from her physicist husband to get hold of a copy and have it autographed by all three - but if she could only get one, to go for May. Strictly speaking Mr Lintott was the senior figure, since he is the only professional astronomer, and was awarded his doctorate last week. Sir Patrick has only held down one full-time job, as director of the Armagh observatory in Northern Ireland, since he left the RAF after the second world war. May abandoned his doctorate on interplanetary dust more than 30 years ago, to spend more time with his college band. Although the band, Queen, has done quite well - world record sales are estimated at between 150m and 300m - he promised guiltily yesterday to finish the doctorate as soon as possible. The Sky At Night was first broadcast in April 1957, when Patrick Moore was 33, Brian May was seven, and Chris Lintott wasn't even a glint in a telescope's lens. What the three men have in common - apart from the fact that Sir Patrick wrote a comic opera called Galileo which Mr Lintott produced - is that the programme changed their lives. "When I was seven years old I got my first guitar for my birthday, and for the first time I saw Sir Patrick on the Sky at Night, and the two passions stayed with me all my life," May recalled. In 1957 Sir Patrick, then a young writer and amateur astronomer, had already proved in a live BBC broadcast, that he possessed that greatest gift in broadcasting - the unflappable ability to keep talking when technology fails and clouds blank out every star in the firmament. He was invited to present the Sky at Night programme once a month, for three months. It is now the longest-running science television programme in the world. He has missed just one programme because of a near-fatal bout of food poisoning, but he delivered another through clenched teeth after breaking a denture on an olive stone on the way to the studio. It is now filmed from his home in West Sussex, because arthritis means he can no longer travel except in a wheelchair, and can no longer look through the giant telescope in his back garden, nor play his beloved music. In 1957 the programme went out long past young May's normal bedtime, but he was allowed to stay up late to watch with his whole family, because it was educational. He credits the theme tune, At The Castle Gate, composed by Sibelius and chosen by Sir Patrick, with sparking his interest in music, and he became so besotted with astronomy that he and his father built his first telescope from a kit. May has been a friend and regular guest on the programme since he and Moore first met in a television studio a few years ago. But during their journey to Scotland in 2003, to film an annular lunar eclipse, Sir Patrick suggested that they write a book together. They did bag that eclipse, unlike the 1999 solar eclipse which they missed in rainy Cornwall. Unlike Stephen Hawking's much bought, little read, Brief History of Time, Bang! is meant to be read and understood. "If I can understand this," May said, "I think there's a good chance we can make anyone understand it." What rock gods and astronomers have in common, their weary editor said yesterday, is that both are nocturnal animals. They said yesterday they have already begun discussing the next book. What could possibly follow the complete history of the universe from the Big Bang until the poor cold earth falls into the blazing sun? "We've got as far as the title," Sir Patrick said. "But we're not going to tell you," May added. · Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Brian May, Patrick Moore, Chris Lintott is published by Carlton Books, priced £20 ---

REUTERS.COM

BANG! QUEEN'S BRIAN MAY MASTER OF UNIVERSE

Mon Oct 23, 2006 2:45 PM BST

By Paul Majendie LONDON (Reuters) - Rock star Brian May from the supergroup Queen swapped his guitar for a telescope on Monday to launch a new book on his other great passion -- astronomy. "I was always torn and I still am," said May, who abandoned the stars for stardom. He gave up his PHD studies in interplanetary dust to help form Queen but now, almost four decades on, he has come full circle to co-write "Bang! The Complete History of the Universe" with astronomers Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. "To me it is a spiritual force in my life," May told Reuters at the book's London launch. "I have been through some wonderful times in my life and also through some very deep depressions. The stars are one of the things that have always given me hope," said the tall and affable guitarist who revels in the contrasts of his life. Rock icons may appear, to some people, to be egomaniacs in a world where hype reigns supreme and every whim is pandered to. But curly-haired May could not be further from the stereotype. "I guess it keeps my feet on the ground," May said of his adoration of astronomy. "It helps me, it keeps my head straight." Just going out on a clear night and looking at the stars and seeing the steady light of these beautiful objects and realising how small my problems were has always been a source of inspiration," he said. The glossy tome is determinedly populist with May using himself as a yardstick to test out and understand its most complicated theories. It tells how the Universe was born 13.7 billion years ago. Infinitely small at first, it expanded more rapidly than anyone can contemplate. The authors explain how all this came about, from the moment when time and space came into existence to the evolution of human beings able to ponder their origins and ultimate destiny. Not bad for the composer of the ultimate stadium chant -- "We Will, We Will Rock You." So what on earth would Freddie Mercury, Queen's outrageously flamboyant lead singer, have made of all this? Reflecting on how the singer who died of AIDS in 1991 might have reacted to the astronomer-author, May concluded: "I am sure he would be sitting there smiling and saying 'Oh Well, if you want to get into that darling, that's very good for you.'"