It’s a pity that physicist William Astbury was as good a comedian as he was a scientist. For had his jokes been just a bit funnier, he might well have found himself sharing a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA. In this new podcast for BBC History magazine, I explore just how this might have happened. And, after opening with James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the now famous double-helix, made 70 years ago this year, and concluding with a namecheck for Leeds band ‘Chumbawamba’, this might well be a first for the academic discipline of History of Science…