Is there anybody out there?

To the Wellcome Collection to hear Seth Shostak of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute give a talk on the search for evidence of alien beings out there in the cold, relatively large Universe. I keep thinking his surname is Shakatak - was he also the creative genius behind the greatest of the awful Brit-funk bands of the '80's? They did produce an album called 'Out of this World'.......No, he wasn't, he's an astronomer.

There is an agreeably cold wind blowing down the Euston Road, forcing the Cockneys to swaddle themselves in jellied eels to keep warm. I partake of a rancid Heineken costing £3.bleedin'45 in the Northumberland Arms on Tottenham Court Road, served by a brutish barmaid who resembles Mussolini. Avoid.

Before the talk, an element of chaos intrudes. The lights are dimmed, raised, dimmed, then raised again for no apparent reason. One member of the audience continually stomps up and down the stairs as if wearing hobnailed boots. After being told to hold it about six inches from our mouths, a trial of the roving microphones is abruptly halted after one old chap decides to speak with it seemingly halfway down his throat. His voice booms around the auditorium causing much tutting and tittering amongst the assembled throng.

Shostak, despite a dour appearance, proves to be a fascinating and witty character. He is scathingly forthright on the amount of people, predominantly silly Yanks, who contact him every day to inform him they have personal knowledge of aliens. He denies the US Government would step in if we finally do receive an alien signal and keep the whole thing secret. He is relentlessly optimistic that we will eventually make contact with aliens although, slightly disappointingly, he thinks it will be with machine rather than biological intelligence. No little green men with long pointy fingers then.

The microphone bellower returns to the fray during questions and expresses concern that inter-galactic warfare would inevitably result if contact was made. Shostak dismisses this, saying the 'transport costs' involved in any such conflict would be too high. The microphone is quickly wrenched from his hand just as he is about to roar another daft question. A young lady prefaces her question by inexplicably bragging: "I belong to no organisation but I am a lovely person", instantly disproving the last part of her sentence. Unfortunately, I do not get chance to ask Shostak whether he agrees with Jeff Wayne that"the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one". Perhaps he only knows about Brit-funk anyway.