Helen Arney is a British presenter, stand-up comedian and musician. She has toured with the '' Uncaged Monkeys'' alongside comedian

Robin Ince Robin Ince (born 20 February 1969) is an English comedian, actor and writer. He is known for presenting the BBC radio show '' The Infinite Monkey Cage'' with physicist Brian Cox, creating Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, co-creatin ...

and Professor Brian Cox. Described as a "geek songstress" by the Edinburgh Reporter, Arney plays the

ukulele The ukulele ( ; ); also called a uke (informally), is a member of the lute (ancient guitar) family of instruments. The ukulele is of Portuguese origin and was popularized in Hawaii. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and con ...

as one third of the Festival of the Spoken Nerd, accompanied by stand-up mathematician

Matt Parker Matthew Thomas Parker (born 22 December 1980) is an Australian recreational mathematics, recreational mathematician, author, comedian, YouTube personality and Science communication, science communicator based in the United Kingdom. His book ''H ...

and television scientist

Steve Mould Steve Mould (born 5 October 1978) is a British educational YouTuber, author, and science presenter who is most notable for making science-related educational videos on his YouTube channel. Early life Mould was born on 5 October 1978 in Gatesh ...

. 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 ''Coas''t in 2015. Arney was guest presenter on Episode 97 of '' No Such Thing as a Fish'' 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. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

's ''

Museum of Curiosity ''The Museum of Curiosity'' is a comedy talk show on BBC Radio 4 that was first broadcast on 20 February 2008. It is hosted by John Lloyd (Professor of Ignorance at the University of Buckingham, and later at Solent University). He acts as the ...

''. 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 chemical substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons. The number of protons is called the atomic number of that element. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8: each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its ...

nihonium Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element; it has 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 transactini ...

moscovium Moscovium is a synthetic element, synthetic chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, 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 Resea ...

tennessine Tennessine is a synthetic element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It has the second-highest atomic number and joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements and is the penultimate element of the Period 7 element, 7th ...

, and

oganesson Oganesson is a synthetic element, synthetic chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, 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 ...

. 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 the book ''The element in the room: science-y stuff staring you in the face'' with her fellow Festival of the Spoken Nerd partner

References

External links

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Festival of the Spoken Nerd
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arney, Helen Alumni of Imperial College London British ukulele players 21st-century British comedians Living people British science communicators Year of birth missing (living people) British women comedians