Here are some facts about Sir Patrick Moore:

• He loathed bureaucrats and politicians, but he did join the Monster Raving Loony Party as Minister for Extra-Terrestrial Affairs
• He once played piano with Einstein.
• He wrote more than 100 musical compositions, including one in praise of Halley’s Comet. He once listened to an entire Viennese waltz on the radio before realising he’d written it himself.
• He was so clumsy that one time while dancing with his fiancé, he backed her into a cactus.
• He swallowed a fly on live television.
• He lavished his affections on his cat, Bonnie, who appeared in his garden as a kitten saying, according to him, “I am a black and white kitten without a home and you are a home without a black and white kitten.” And of course there was no arguing with that.
• After Bonnie died, he got a second cat and named it Ptolemy.
• He played the xylophone
• He once joined the Flat Earth Society as an ironic joke
• When he was eight, he received a 1908 typewriter, which he used to write every single one of his books all the way through his life.
• He owned this shirt: