This time around the good professor attempts to outline the whole history of the Universe and to emphasise how it is very much our story too.

To do this, he travels around the world, using examples such as rainbows and soap bubbles and a whole range of other analogies in order to get the story across. For example, to demonstrate the death throes of a supergiant star before it goes supernova, he spray-paints chemical symbols on the walls of a soon-to-be-demolished building, to show how the chemicals are flung into space to seed the next generation of stars and planets when the bang happens. And to explain the formation of atoms he uses floating bubbles to demonstrate the elements sticking together to form chemical compounds. Teaching by analogy is a good thing - it's probably the best way to get across complex ideas - but oh how I wanted to see the "onion skin" diagram of successive phases of element-burning in a dying giant star, instead of graffiti on a wall. Still, this series was not made for me: it was made for those who don't know very much about stars and their life-cycles. So perhaps I am being unduly critical.

However, sometimes I wonder why the expense of flying him to foreign destinations when he could have found examples closer to home. You can find rainbows over waterfalls, for example, in the UK: did he really have to go specially to Zimbabwe to show us one?

As ever, though, Professor Cox's enthusiasm and excitement turns what could have been a failure into a really enjoyable series. "What a story...what a majestic story" he opines, about the history of the Universe and the eventual emergence of life on this planet, and you cannot help but become infected with his sense of awe and wonder.

Professor Cox is shortly returning to CERN to work on the LHC for a while, but he has said that there will almost certainly be another TV series. I hope so. Science needs communicators like him. His MBE was richly deserved.

Definitely one for the collection.