Professor Brian Cox, D:Ream, Dare and Hair Metal

He has a day job as a professor of particle physics and Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. He also heads an international project to upgrade the giant ATLAS and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The picture shows Brian Cox at Buckingham Palace in 2010, with his OBE, awarded for his services to science.

He is on a wave of popularity at present and features heavily in media whenever a science question arises.

Fan clubs have popped up and women have taken a sudden interst in particle physics.

This has all led to Brian Cox being described as the Rock Star Physicist

His appearance is often described as "boyish good looks", and indeed he does look younger than he is, but he has been around for quite a long time and is now in his forties.

Getting famous at that age inevitably results in the media delving into your past, and Professor Brian Cox is no exception.

D:Ream with Brian Cox on the right posing with Sir Dickey

Brian Cox also had an even earlier music career, way back in 1985 with a fairly typical of times 1980s hair metal band called Dare.
This band was formed by former Thin Lizzy member Darren Wharton, and his neighbor, Brian Cox became their keyboard player,
having recently left school.
Dare toured heavily, did OK in Europe as a support to big acts like Jimmy Page and Gary Moore, they even toured in the USA,
but did not achieve any major success.
The original band split in 1991 and Brian Cox began his PhD studies and later joined D:Ream.
The band Dare still exists and has morphed into a heavy Celtic rock type of band.
Brian Cox is on the right in this picture, in case you are not sure.

Although it is never denied, it seems like Brian Cox's time with Dare is not mentioned too often, and is skipped over quickly or ignored in interviews. In some interviews D:Ream has been brought up in the usual jokey way, and mentioned as a his earlier music career with no mention of Dare.

Perhaps Brian Cox is just following the interviewer, or maybe there is not much to say, but he never seems to challenge this and point to his even earlier career in Dare. Viewers and listeners have been known to contact the stations involved, pointing out the time he spent in Dare, but never received an acknowledgement, let alone a correction.

Now, please, nobody is being accused of airbrushing this part of Brian Cox's past out of existence. It is never denied; indeed his personal management company includes it in his bio, and Brian Cox does mention it himself at times, and has stated that it is a more memorable musical past than D:Ream. It just seems Dare gets skipped over a lot of the time, and it is just as interesting a part of the Brian Cox story as the period with D:Ream.

Given that D:Ream is nearly always treated with humor, surely there is even more scope for humor with Dare. The big hair, the 1980s clichés, the clothes, terrible videos; there's room for a lot of fun in there.

But as pointed out above, Dare have some very serious fans; check out the page full of five star reviews on Amazon for the album "Out of the Silence" There is some genuine love of the music in the words written there.

So lets debate it.