Hello all, I’m being paid a vast amount to use my immense knowledge of the universe to improve the educational value of this website. I will be posting regular facts in between filming science stuff for the telly and doing gigs with my reformed band Tears For Fears. This Information is bound to astound and amaze you. And from time to time, as an added bonus for my fans, I will also post photos of myself for you to download.

So my first big “Cox” fact is: Everyone knows that Royalty has invented many lovely, simple recipes over the years. For instance the Queen made Coronation Chicken sandwiches to celebrate her Jubilee in 1953, her mother, Queen Victoria, invented the Victoria sponge to acknowledge the abolition of slavery and her sister Margaret came up with sherry trifle because she loved alcohol.

But did you know that our Queen’s Uncle, Lord Mountbatten, was the inventor of a rather delicious staple of afternoon tea? I’m talking about the bright yellow and pink cake called Battenburg. So how did Mr Mounbatten come to bake such an innovatively hued sweet dessert I hear you ask? Well, its a long story set in the 1890s that i will outline here:

A young Terry Mounbatten was captain of the steam ship HMS Lard, sailing the South China seas delivering his precious cargo of butter, sugar, eggs, flour, vanilla essense, marzipan and two types of food colouring to the East India Company. When all of a sudden, like a scene out of that film Titanic, the small orphaned, rag wearing, dirty cockney cabin boy on look-out in the crows nest, shouted out loudly in his cockney accent “Ice Berg ahead captain.” There wasn’t a moment to waste, and even though Mountbatten was at the time enjoying a well-earned relaxing bubblebath with his first mate, he rose, towel-dried, donned his best sailor outfit and put all his boy-scout training to good use. For even though the ship was perillessly close to the berg, about two and a half nautical miles to be precise, Terry managed to steer a safe course past the looming ice thingy. Hurrah shouted his men, we need to celebrate with a feast. But what on earth can I make that suitably extols our near death experience thought Mounty? Then he remembered the cargo in the hold. Surely the East India Company wouldn’t deny him using about 175g of the ingredients to bake a celebratery dish? As he had no mobile phone he couldn’t ask permission, so being a brave man he took matters into his own hands and went ahead with the bake regardless. As history attests the dessert was so so delicious that news of Lord Mountbatten’s “We Didn’t Hit An Iceberg” Cake spread the globe and before you could say “He bakes exceedingly good cakes” a Coventry-based baker, Mr Boris Kipling, had bought the recipe.

But Kipling found had a big problem with his new cake. For the name was impossible to fit onto his small boxes. But not to be outfoxed the wiley baker abbreviated the name, at first to Mounbatten’s Hit Cake, and then after extensive market research (he asked Mrs Kipling her opinion) to the Battenberg name we know and enjoy today. So there you are, my first Did You Know This fact! Well, i’m off to indulge in some cake myself before I have to appear on stage with my band. See you soon, Prof Brian Cox.