Lord says: “When you do general presentations to your peers, it’s very technical. They’re very interested in data points you’ve collected. There are still a lot of scientists that don’t get into public engagement, and just drop a piece of paper off at the Press office.

“Bright Club is more about telling the story. I’m going to be talking about hip replacement and how it came about. It’s my first attempt at comedy. I don’t think I’ll be going too much into exactly what I do in front of my computer, but there’s no point in doing research if no one hears about it.”

Kathryn Bedford has an advantage in getting people’s attention in that she can mention dragons. The Durham University PhD researcher is investigating literature from the 12th and 13th centuries to see how it created fictionalised tales from the lives of recent historical figures, including Fouke Fitz Waryn, Eustace the Monk and Richard the Lionheart.

“I’m starting off by talking about dragons, because who isn’t interested in them?”, she says.

“In the academic world, you tend to be much more hidden behind the language, but this is much more personal and you’re putting yourself up there a lot more.

“My research involves looking at what it was about certain people’s lives that made people write stories about them. The people I’m focusing on lived before or during the reign of King John, and there was a distinct difference between the time they lived and the time after King John's reign when their stories were written.

“Bright Club is a great way of changing the image of academics. There can be a tendency to assume someone following the academic path hides in the library and never talks to anyone. It’s important that this isn’t a world separated from everyone else.

“It’s quite easy to justify research into things such as renewable energy, but just because something doesn’t have an immediate benefit in that way doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. It’s valuable in that it represents the endless and boundless curiosity for what’s going on around us.”

Keen believes programmes such as the BBC’s QI panel show has encouraged people to think warm thoughts about more intellectual comedy.

Indeed, Centre for Life special projects manager Andy Lloyd thinks performing isn’t that different from what an academic does in presentations and other public events. The key is that it’s much more personal.

He says: “What’s interesting is that once people have agreed to do it, it feels like much more of a high-stakes commitment. The nerves start to build up, but immediately afterwards people say they feel like they’re walking a couple of feet off the ground. That lasts a few days, but it also has an impact on what they do next.

“Audiences are interested in learning and information. If you look at some of the people that do comedy professionally, there are a few that have a science and math element to their material. Your subject matter can influence your style of comedy too. I would imagine that medical humour is probably coarser than something more esoteric like astrophysics.

“Events like Bright Club are a sign of a gradual cultural shift. There’s something incredibly personal about the way people perform, in which someone’s personality is a much stronger force than their academic background.

“Increasingly, younger researchers see talking about their work and sharing it with a wider audience as something that’s just part of their job.”

For information on Bright Club, go to www.life.org.uk/whats-on/events/bright-club-newcastle.