Brian Cox is the cleverest man in the world. It's true. We would say look it up on Wikipedia but it has gone down for the day in protest against Dove, or something like that.

And before Brian Cox hit our telly-boxes to tell us all about the solar system and the mysteries of the universe, we're not sure stars even existed. We don't want to say Brian Cox invented stars without being able to properly fact check (Wikipedia) but we're pretty sure he did.

We certainly don't remember them being mentioned before his Stargazing Live show kicked off on BBC 2 this week. Do you?

And that's probably why Amazon is celebrating the "Brian Cox effect" which has led to a 491 per cent increase in telescope sales on the online retailer's store since the show went live on Monday.

"In the three hours following Stargazing Live being aired we saw an almost six-fold increase in sales of telescopes," said Neil Campbell, camera & photo store manager at Amazon.co.uk.

"Each time the popular physicist appears on TV we see a jump in telescope sales and that would appear to point to a significant ‘Brian Cox effect’ encouraging a renewed interest in stargazing."

Brian Cox's books are also selling double what they normally do. Clever and rich - he's got the lot. And he used to be in The Stone Roses. We think. Again, without Wikipedia we can't be sure...