Today's guest is Marcus de Sotoi. A successful mathematician based to Oxford, Marcus is more widely known for his public communication, BBC TV shows and assortment of books, and in more recent times even music and theatre.

I met Marcus at his home shortly after he'd popped some bread in the oven.

Am I going to have your undivided attention or is your brain really on the sourdough bread baking in the other?

No, no, no.

The bread is quite good at looking off for itself, so I won't be going...

All right.

Suddenly saying bread's dough, power, sour.

The most important question is, how do I pronounce your surname?

And where does it come from?

Because it's quite...

To me, it's quite an exotic name, but you seem very English to me.

Yeah, it has origins in France.

And funnily enough, I used to apologise for how I pronounce it, because we pronounce it De Sotoy.

And I thought that must have been anglicised, because when I go to France, you know, they say,

Monsieur de Soutre. And then a professor in Oxford, French, said, oh, but when did your family

actually come to England? And I said, well, 1745, because actually it was a Catholic family

helping the Scots fight the English. So they came over with Bonnie Prince Charlie to Scotland.

And then this Pierre-François de Soto got caught and was made a prisoner of war in Basingstoke,

too many roundabouts and he couldn't find his way out. But he explained, well, you know,

the French Revolution, they changed so many things. They tried to change the names of the days of the

week, the weights and measures, time.

And they actually change pronunciation.

...