INTERVIEW
TV legend Johnny Ball on the joys of numeracy, Roman miles and the paths of Burnham Beeches…
IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE, Johnny Ball is a senior cartographer for Ordnance Survey.
“As a kid growing up in Bolton, I absolutely loved maps,” he recalls. “The map I loved most was the enormous relief model of Bolton they had in the town hall. I used to stand over it and try and count all the chimneys. So as a teenager I thought I’d like to make maps for a living. I think I still would!”
Cartography’s loss was the gain of virtually every 40 to 60-year-old in Britain today, because most of us can remember being taught maths by Johnny Ball at some point. Johnny’s TV shows – such as Think of a Number, Think Again and Think Backwards – were BBC flagships. Combining his gift for maths with his background in stand-up comedy, they made maths not just interesting but fun, and proved that maths was not only relevant to everyday life, but good for the brain, too.
His quest never ended. Now 85, he still presents live stage shows, and he fronts the annual NSPCC Number Day (February 2), which is dedicated to bolstering numeracy in schools while raising cash to support victims of child abuse.
“I always try to come up with something interesting when I’m talking to kids on Number Day, and last year it was all about walking,” he explains.
“I showed them how Roman miles were calculated by walking; basically, by counting every left-foot step until you get to 1000, which is a Roman mile. With that bit of reckoning, the Romans mapped out and controlled an entire empire, including most of Britain.”
Johnny’s own love of walking was inspired by the form tutor of his high school back in Bolton, who was fond of dragging his pupils up t
