London calling

I was just about to settle into the couch to watch disgruntled passengers bitch and whine on the new reality program 'Air Ways' when my mobile started ringing. God dammit. I assumed that the caller (who registered as a private number) was Nathan ringing up from work (he should know better), but the voice on the other end of the line was definitely a young female with a clear British accent. It turned out to be a journo from The Times newspaper wanting to speak to me about a research paper due to come out today on female mate preferences in fish. The first thing I told her was that I was in my pyjamas which, in hindsight, was a rather odd thing to say to someone you don't really know (I hope she doesn't try to weave that into her article).

Following the somewhat awkward introductions, I started giving the journalist a mini lecture on Charles Darwin, evolution and sexual selection. She seemed interested (or, at the very least, was good at feining interest) but inevitably she did what all good journalists would do and asks a most predictable question: "So...what can your research tell us about humans?". Aha! It always has to come back to humans. Channeling another reality TV programme, I reply, "Timeless beauty is a myth". Streams of verbage then spewed forth from my mouth, which will no doubt provide plenty of opportunity for embarrasing misquotations and make me come across as a complete weirdo scientist who sits around in his PJs watching bad reality TV when he is not researching sex.