Jim Al-Khalili

What were you like as a kid?

You told my producer that at school you were the pupil most likely to be caught looking out the window.

How did you get on academically then?

Right, right.

I mean, would it be fair to say then that in your teen years, you started to rebel against the traditional educational route?

In fact, I gather the school eventually asked you to leave.

Well, in the early 1980s, there you were, expelled from school, unemployed, in the midst of a serious recession at the time.

Your options might have seemed pretty limited.

But one day you're walking through Edinburgh and inspiration struck.

But you joined the army and actually this experience drew out talents you hadn't realised you had before.

So a very different educational experience from school.

And clearly it struck a chord with you.

But after six years, you decided to leave the forces.

Why was that?

Well, you left the army, settled on England's south coast, went back to school, studying for your ordinary national diploma in engineering at a further education college in Dorset.

But it didn't quite work out, did it?

And then you ended up moving back to Scotland, I believe, and being promoted to manager.

Was there ever a point when you thought, actually, I'm doing OK, maybe I don't need to go back to school?

You had at this point an interest in both engineering and health.

And one day you came across a course that ticked both those boxes, a degree in prosthetics and orthotics at the University of Strathclyde.