As a boy Mark Thompson was always intrigued by the stars and the enormous skies, so living in Norfolk could indulge his hobby to his heart’s content.

But despite this early fascination with science and astronomy, he left school at the first opportunity and went to get a job aged just 16, ending up as an IT project manager.

Which makes the 42 year-old's current metamorphosis into TV’s favourite astronomer even more prescient, his enthusiasm for his subject now being channelled into his tour The Show At The End Of The Universe.

A case of bringing Muhammad to the mountain then?

"Yes. I just want to make astronomy more mainstream. People have an image of astronomers as being a specific kind of person and I want to change that image, to demonstrate how everyone can enjoy it and make the stars and our skies accessible to us all.

I still have that childlike thirst for knowledge and an enquiring mind about how the world works, so I find it easy to see what opens up this world, what works for the audience."

An active chairman of his local astronomy society, whenever the local news needed someone to comment they would ask him.

When Channel 4s Culture Show hosted a feature on night skies, Mark was invited to discuss the issue and hasn't looked back since, now enjoying a regular slot on The One Show and presenting BBCs Star Gazing Live TV series: "It was daunting to start with. It was a challenge but one that I enjoyed."

Mark eventually gave up his day job to concentrate on his first love - astronomy.

And yet he's operating from an entirely non academic background? "It doesn’t mean I don’t love my subjects, I do, but until 200 years ago all scientists were amateurs. You can still be successful that way.

"I don't have an academic background. My parents left school early and only one of my brothers did A Levels. I wanted to get out there and experience the world, see it for myself and I’m still doing that to a certain degree. You don’t always need a degree to be successful in your chosen field – there is a whole universe out there to explore."

And he’s standing up in Oxford, the home of academia, and saying that? “Yes, but I might run away afterwards," he laughs. "Look, I know what works and what doesn’t work, what people are interested in. I make my shows fun. You have to keep things moving, make them energetic with lots of demonstrations and mix things up.

“You can’t just turn up and show slides for an hour and a half. I wanted to bring astronomy alive, so I started conducting experiments to demonstrate things like The Big Bang and playing around with the astronomy format a bit.

"So many people are frightened of science – they think its all about maths and calculations and too complicated to fathom, but anyone can look at the sky and access it.

"I’ve been to some amazing places and met some amazing people, from the salt mines in Yorkshire to underground labs and Stargate celestial navigation systems at sea."

Doesn’t it mean he's away from home a lot? "Yes, but then I can manage school runs when other dads don’t, even though I'm more of a night bird, so I am a little bleary eyed in the mornings,” he laughs, "but the kids are great for demonstrating and testing all my new experiments on. They know the score."