Television science man Brian Cox has been in Dartmouth talking cream teas and planets for his latest show.

The top physicist and science heart-throb has just been answering the nation's questions about the night sky in his BBC 2 show called A Night with the Stars.

Next month he will be back with a second series of Stargazing Live – part of which involves the surprise filming at the Singing Kettle in Dartmouth.

The presenter turned up at the tea shop in Higher Street a week before Christmas and asked owners Brian Yole and Daren Morris if he could film in the busy town centre business.

The next day he showed up with a film crew, ordered a cream tea and turned whatever was to hand into celestial bodies, to help explain the mysteries of the universe.

'He used the scone as the sun and the jam and cream as the planets,' said Brian.

'He had a sugar cube balanced on the end of a chair but I'm not sure what that was supposed to be.'

Brian said that the teashop had been full of Saturday morning regulars and most of the lady customers immediately recognised the TV man.

'It was a bit of excitement for Dartmouth,' said Brian. 'We do get a lot of celebrities in the town without anyone really knowing but it is unusual for people to come in and use the town like this.'

He said the crew were filming in his tea shop for one and a half hours before they wrapped up the shoot – which he was told will be screened as part of the Stargazing Live show on January 18, which he co-presents with comedian and amateur astronomer Dara Ó Briain.

Brian Cox, 43, is a British particle physicist, a Royal Society University research fellow and a professor at the University of Manchester. He was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen's 2010 Birthday Honours for services to science.

He is best known as a presenter for a number of BBC science programmes but less well known is that he had some fame in the 1990s as the keyboard player with the pop band D:Ream.

The band had several hits in the UK charts, including the number one Things Can Only Get Better which was used as the Labour Party's election anthem in 1997.

In 2009, he cemented his hearth-throb status when he appeared in People magazine's Sexiest Men Alive.