Professor Stephen Hawking was too ill to attend his 70th birthday celebrations yesterday, but entertained friends and fans with a pre-recorded speech.
Professor Hawking, who is recuperating after a hospital stay for a minor infection, has solved some of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos but used the speech at Cambridge University to share heart-warming memories of his childhood.
The former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge revealed he was 'about halfway up' the class as a pupil at St Albans School in Hertfordshire and did not learn to read until the age of eight.
In a speech entitled A Brief History of Mine, he said: 'My handwriting was the despair of my teachers. But my classmates gave me the nickname Einstein, so presumably they saw signs of something better.
'One of my friends bet another friend a bag of sweets that I would never come to anything. I don't know if this bet was ever settled and, if so, which way.'
