Lucy Cooke

Lucy studied zoology under Richard Dawkins before moving into TV to work on cult comedy shows then documentaries, producing and directing critically acclaimed series about everything from architecture to sex for the BBC and Channel 4. She recently returned to her zoology roots writing an irreverent blog about frogs, The Amphibian Avenger, which has been developed by National Geographic into a TV series about her quest to save some of the animal kingdom’s less charismatic, ugly and unloved creatures.

As the Idler’s biology mistress it is fitting that Lucy should be a fan of the sloth and is also making a film and writing a book about the world’s only sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica. At the Academy Lucy will share the secrets of the sloth’s eccentric biology, and reveal that far from being lazy and stupid, sloth is actually a winning strategy in the evolutionary arms race.