Helen Arney is a British presenter, stand-up comedian and musician. She has toured with the '' Uncaged Monkeys'' alongside comedian Robin Ince and Professor Brian Cox. Described as a "geek songstress" by the Edinburgh Reporter, Arney plays the

ukulele The ukulele ( ; from haw, ukulele , approximately ), also called Uke, is a member of the lute family of instruments of Portuguese origin and popularized in Hawaii. It generally employs four nylon strings. The tone and volume of the instrumen ...

as one third of the Festival of the Spoken Nerd, accompanied by stand-up mathematician Matt Parker and television scientist Steve Mould. She and Parker are also commentators on nearly every episode of ''You Have Been Warned'' ('' Outrageous Acts of Science''). After performing songs which she felt were "just quirky and different" at a science show organised by Robin Ince, she realised that she could "add science and music together in a meaningful way".

Appearances

At the 2012 Boring Conference, Arney gave a presentation entitled “Features and Specifications of the Yamaha PSR-175 Portable Keyboard (Discontinued).” Arney presented a section of an episode of the BBC's natural history series Coast in 2015. Arney was guest presenter on Episode 97 of ''

No Such Thing as a Fish ''No Such Thing as a Fish'' is a weekly British podcast series produced and presented by the researchers behind the BBC Two panel game '' QI''. In the podcast each of the researchers, collectively known as "The ''QI'' Elves", present their favo ...

'' where she explained the fact that ''Tomorrow will be the longest day of your life.'' In January 2017 Arney appeared on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

's '' Museum of Curiosity''. Her hypothetical donation to this imaginary museum was a set of samples of the four most recently discovered

chemical element A chemical element is a species of atoms that have a given number of protons in their nuclei, including the pure substance consisting only of that species. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler sub ...

nihonium Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Nh and atomic number 113. It is extremely radioactive; its most stable known isotope, nihonium-286, has a half-life of about 10 seconds. In the periodic table, nihonium is a transactinide ...

moscovium Moscovium is a synthetic element with the symbol Mc and atomic number 115. It was first synthesized in 2003 by a joint team of Russian and American scientists at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia. In December 2015, ...

tennessine Tennessine is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It is the second-heaviest known element and the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table. The discovery of tennessine was officially anno ...

, and

oganesson Oganesson is a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Og and atomic number 118. It was first synthesized in 2002 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, near Moscow, Russia, by a joint team of Russian and American scient ...

. She sometimes collaborates with her sister Kat Arney, a science communicator.

Writing

In 2013, Arney wrote a piece in the Financial Times entitled "You've got to laugh", in which she promotes the power of comedy in communicating scientific principles. In 2018, Arney published a book 'The element in the room: science-y stuff staring you in the face' with her fellow Festival of the Spoken Nerd partner Steve Mould

References

External links

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Festival of the Spoken Nerd
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arney, Helen British ukulele players British comedians Living people Science communicators Year of birth missing (living people) British women comedians