Astronaut: Do You Have What It Takes?

An X Factor with brains, this. A group of people who might be described as seriously clever clogs get to do all sorts of gruesome tasks in order to prove they have what it takes to enter into a European Space Agency astronaut training program.

Clever clogs

The ESA doesn't necessarily have any astronaut vacancies, since they haven't recruited any new staff since 2008, but this is all about kudos - or at least getting space veteran Chris Hadfield to write you a half-decent reference.

The tasks aren't gruesome in a celebrity eating revolting bugs in the jungle kind of way. Although that may yet come - the possibility of accidentally crashlanding in the Brazilian rainforest makes that sort of survival skill necessary for an astronaut. Plus you've got to learn to stomach all that pouched up dog food on the International Space Station, especially if Heston Blumenthal's contributions get blown up.

Instead of eating cockroaches, the contestants have been facing a series of gruelling physical and mental endurance tests. Counting backwards while being starved of oxygen, repeating series of numbers backwards while stepping on an off a block (there is a lot of counting backwards - must be a rocket thing), being stuck in a pitch-black sphere for 20 minutes, having to escape from a box underwater, being strapped in a box attached to a human centrifuge (there is also a lot of being put into a box, which is definitely a rocket thing)... They also have to extract their own blood in a syringe, ready to perform experiments, and learn some basic Russian. The latter was the only task I could do. Everything else has been a case of "not on your nelly." I'd be a total wreck. I'd be the one deciding I was deprived of oxygen while still on 100% flow, thus jeopardising a multi-million pound spacewalk. I can't even iron a shirt flat (and why should I?), let alone keep a hovering helicopter level. I don't like putting my face underwater, so wouldn't be much cop at solving maths puzzles on the bottom of a swimming pool. Etc.

Counting backwards to launch...

The judges are all terribly calm, but meticulous. And completely ruthless. They send you home at a moment's notice. They wouldn't have even let me through the door. So I have to admit that it's just a teensy bit satisfying to see all these said clever clogs come a cropper, and be made to realise that they are mere human beings after all. They might be nuclear physicists/ ballerinas/ Everest conquerors/ neurosurgeons/ urosurgeons/ academics/ engineeers, but some of them can't sprint or swim. Some of them are claustrophobic. Some of them can't answer technical questions about how you pee in space. Some of them don't notice that they're about to pass out from lack of oxygen because they are too busy doing sums.

My husband being "a bit shit" at an ISS experiment

Was I the only one who expected Tim Peake to be a bit shit, because he was British? For being a bit shit is what we are good at. We just moan about it, or laugh about it and carry on. We never quite get anything to work properly or be a resounding success. We just lack that drive. Taking the piss out of ourselves is so much easier. But Tim Peake is the exception. He was just awfully good at everything. He didn't drop a screwdriver on a spacewalk, sending it somersaulting off into the heavens. He didn't get ill or have allergic reactions. He didn't cut off anyone's oxygen supply or lose some important plant cuttings. He didn't crash the space station into a satellite or misfire the Soyuz capsule. He even ran a marathon simultaneously with the one in the London. And he was just terribly nice and enthusiastic about everything the whole time. He is a rare Brit indeed. Just as well he got signed up in that last recruitment drive by the European Space Agency in 2008, when Brexit was only dreamt of by jokers in UKIP, rather than being the everyday nightmare unfolding before our eyes in the lazy hands of David Davis, severing us from all that is good. For no matter how clever cloggy or physically strong these contestants are, they are British, and the European Space Agency, like the rest of the Continent, will soon be sailing on merrily without us. These folk ain't going up in a rocket any time soon, unless it's one piloted by Richard Branson.

Or it's one in a museum

I went through my own recruitment process in the summer as I applied for a couple of jobs at the university. I earn a bit of pocket money doing academic proofreading, but really need to earn some proper cash and get myself some guaranteed hours. But I quickly realised, after seven years of being based at home, how out of the game I have grown. It's not just how technology has marched on with things like apps and virtual learning environments and that I haven't opened an Excel spreadsheet since 2010. It's not just that the job I was good at - subtitling - has all but collapsed as an industry in the UK and now wants to pay a rate half that of what I used to earn 12 years ago. It's not just that I am now in my mid-forties and there are so many bright young things out there who don't have a small child and the need to fit work around school hours and school holidays and who can maybe talk about something other than rainbow unicorns and Harry Potter. My self-confidence is at an all-time low, my health is crap, and I just don't believe myself capable of anything. That said, I am obviously not too bad at filling in application forms since I managed to get interviews, but that's where the process ended. I totally failed to sell myself. Although - and knowing how the university works - I felt fairly sure that they had internal candidates lined up for both positions since the interviews either consisted of deliberately wacky questions asked just for the hell of it ("Describe yourself in three words!"), or such sparse, superficial questions that they wouldn't have found out anything of relevance to the post about someone they didn't already know. Or that's what I am telling myself, anyway.

Maybe I am doing myself a disservice - perhaps I assume I am "a bit shit" just because I am British. Maybe it's all about self-belief and talking the talk. Yes, I would make a BRILLIANT astronaut! You couldn't imagine a better person to send up into space. I've read a book about it! I've built space Lego!

You can send that nice Kevin Fong chap over to give me a medical.