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PIERS MORGAN: 'Seize the moment. Be brave!' boomed Stephen Hawking's electronic voice

By Piers Morgan Event for The Mail on Sunday





To my surprise and delight, Professor Stephen Hawking’s family invited me to his memorial service at Westminster Abbey.

I conducted what turned out to be his last TV interview, for Good Morning Britain, a few months before he died, and his daughter, Lucy, told me this week they all loved it, including the Professor – which made me very happy. Professor Stephen Hawking’s world-famous electronic voice began booming out: ‘I am very aware of the preciousness of time. Seize the moment. Act now. Be brave, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done… IT CAN BE DONE!’

I sat with my GMB colleague Charlotte Hawkins, whose father sadly died from the same dreadful motor neurone disease that struck down Hawking.

‘That woman looks like Marilyn Monroe,’ she whispered, looking across the aisle at a woman who did indeed look EXACTLY like Marilyn.

Jeremy Corbyn distracted our bemused gaze by rushing in late and last, which seemed a bit rich given it’s only a 300ft walk from Parliament. Though, frankly, I was surprised he was  there at all given that Hawking had whacked him in our interview, saying: ‘I don’t believe there will be much of a chance of Labour winning an election under Corbyn. He doesn’t come across as a strong leader.’

After a splendid service, we walked into the nearby College Garden for a drinks reception, and bumped into Marilyn, or, rather, Suzie Kennedy, a professional lookalike who appeared briefly with Eddie Redmayne in The Theory Of Everything.

‘Stephen loved Marilyn,’ she said. He did – when I asked him who he’d most like to be trapped with on a desert island, he smirked. ‘If I were able-bodied, Marilyn Monroe.’




A voice behind me mocked: ‘I didn’t have you down as a quantum-physics expert, Piers…’ I turned to find Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason.

The Professor was a fan of the group (David Gilmour was also at the service), and his voice was sampled on their song Keep Talking.

‘I once attended one of his lectures on black holes,’ said Mason.

‘Did you understand any of it?’

‘Nothing at all,’ he chuckled.

Carol Vorderman was still recovering from a very heavy weekend: ‘I spent the first half of it at Trooping the Colour with the Queen, and the second half at Alan Carr’s wedding with a LOT of queens!’

‘Have you read A Brief History Of Time?’ I asked, referring to Hawking’s bestselling book.

‘I’ve got eight copies of it,’ she replied.

‘That wasn’t my question.’

‘I know,’ she giggled. ‘The truthful answer is no, I’ve never actually read it.’

To be fair, I’ve never met anyone who has. I tried but gave up in shame-faced scientific ignorance after a few pages.

However, Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, insisted he had. ‘I can remember exactly where I was when I read it. I was 14 and in my bedroom at my dad’s house [his parents divorced], and reading it had a very profound effect on me.’



‘And you understood it?’

‘A lot of it, yes.’

(I later relayed this bombshell revelation to Nick Mason. ‘Good grief!’ he exclaimed. ‘Does this mean we have a Cabinet Minister who might actually be qualified for the job?’)

Hancock and I agreed even Hawking would have struggled to solve the mystery of how to solve the black hole of Brexit.

But he was more exercised by another conundrum.

‘If England reach the World Cup final, I would usually automatically go, but obviously our position is that no Ministers will be attending the tournament due to the Skripal attack.’ He looked crestfallen.

‘Relax,’ I laughed. ‘England’s team will solve that problem for you long before the final…’

Astronaut Tim Peake was there.

‘Have YOU read A Brief History Of Time?’ I asked.

‘Of course!’

‘Did you understand it?’

‘I understood 75 per cent of it.’

‘I’m comforted that even you found some of it incomprehensible.’

Peake is due back in space in two years’ time.

‘What do you crave most when you’re up there?’ I asked.

‘This,’ he smiled, looking around. ‘Fresh air, sunlight, a gentle breeze… The conditions are always exactly the same when I’m in space.’

Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the Professor in the BBC film Hawking, read one of the lessons, about wisdom.

He’s just become president of LAMDA, the drama school where he trained and where my son, Stanley, is currently studying.

When I told him this, and asked what advice he might have for a budding actor, he smiled ruefully.

‘The most important thing is to learn how to deal with failure,’ he said. ‘It’s an incredibly tough business and everyone fails all the time. It’s how you respond to failure that’s so important. If you can’t fail, you can never learn and improve.’

‘I can definitely help him with how to deal with failure,’ I replied.

Cumberbatch laughed, then added: ‘The thing I’ve realised is that it’s impossible to achieve perfection as an actor, but it’s magical trying.’

When I asked Hawking how he’d like to spend his final day on Earth, he answered: ‘Listening to Wagner with my family and sipping champagne in the summer sun.’

As we stood today sipping champagne in the glorious summer sun, having earlier listened to Wagner, Lucy announced her father had one last message for us.

His world-famous electronic voice, accompanied by stirring new music from Vangelis, began booming out: ‘I am very aware of the preciousness of time. Seize the moment. Act now. Be brave, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done… IT CAN BE DONE!’

At the end of the five-minute speech, we burst into applause.

Many guests were in tears.

It was a wonderfully evocative end to a day paying tribute to a wonderfully inspiring man.



PIERS MORGAN: 'Seize the moment. Be brave!' boomed Hawking's electronic voice