Tim Peake's father reveals role of Wolverhampton in star spaceman's family story

Least of all his father Nigel – a former Express & Star reporter.

"We keep using the word surreal," said the 73-year-old.

"It has been six years in the planning and you would think we would get use to it. But we don't."

Nigel was in his early 20s when he came to work in Wolverhampton for the Express & Star moving from Surrey in 1964 – three years after the first man in Space and five years before the first man would walk on the moon.

He worked at the Queen Street office as a reporter before stints in the Dudley and West Bromwich outposts pounding the streets of the Black Country before returning to Wolverhampton as a sub-editor.

Indeed, the British spaceman may not have been born at all without the chance meeting of Nigel and his future wife Angela at a New Year's Day party in 1966.

Angela was a trainee midwife at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and the pair hit it off.

The following year they got married and lived together in Tettenhall.

"They were such happy times," recalled Nigel who now lives in West Sussex.

"I just remember everyone being so friendly. You would go out on stories and you had no problem talking to anyone. At this time a lot of the reporting staff were young – all in their early 20s.

"So we had a great social life. We would all meet up with journalists from the Birmingham Post and Mail and the weeklies and have some great parties such as a Press Ball at Dudley Zoo."

And one of his most memorable experiences was going on one the cruises arranged for schoolchildren. He said: "I went on an educational cruise to British India with hundreds of Staffordshire school children. It was great fun. Something I will never forget."

Nigel and Angela, also 73, moved to Portsmouth in 1968 and later settled in West Sussex.

Now they are as starstruck as the rest of us, often glued to their TV screens or the computer watching their son floating around above the Earth. And every few days the phone rings. The International Space Station is calling.

"I still have to pinch myself at that," said Nigel.

"Every couple of days he calls us and tells us what is going on. The phone rings and it is the International Space Station – you cannot make it up. He is really enjoying it. There is so much of it on the internet or TV that you could sit watching the coverage for 12 hours. You have to pull yourself away from it otherwise the day has gone."

Tim even remembered to call back home on Mother's Day.

Life in space

And what is life like on the space station?

"He has a lot of medical and scientific tests that he is conducting but what he really loves is the interaction with children," Nigel said.

"So he absolutely loves hooking up with schools via radio or Twitter or whatever. His only regret is that he can't do more of it."

Tim, 43, is a former Army Air Corps pilot and won a competition to be one of six new European astronauts. More than 8,000 applied in a process that took six years of selection and training.

On December 15 last year he blasted off on the Russian Soyuz rocket that was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11.03am. The journey to the International Space Station took six hours.

He will spend six months on board, making him Britain's first European Space Agency astronaut on board the orbiting station.

Watching the launch in Baikonur, Nigel admits he couldn't help but feel a bit nervous. "Of course it was huge and we had all been waiting for it for so long.

"But you can't help but have a thought in the back of your heard fearing the worst. After all, they are sitting on 300 tons of rocket fuel.

"We were lucky that there were a lot of current and former astronauts around us who we were able to talk to."

On January 15, Tim completed a spacewalk. With the other astronauts Tim was outside the space station, 250 vertical miles away, for four hours 43 minutes.

The main objective was to replace a failed electrical box. But the mission was called off early after an American astronaut reported water in his helmet.

"We were glued to our screens watching it on NASA TV. It was like watching a film and then you realise it is real and your son is there in the infinity of Space," said Nigel.

From test pilot to spaceman

Tim was a test pilot with the Anglo-British helicopter manufacturer AgustaWestland when it was revealed he had been successful in joining the European Space Agency in May 2009. With thousands of applicants, Nigel admits at first he thought the chances were slim.

"With each round he passed it became clear that more and more of the tests were psychological," he said. "They wanted to know how you interacted with people. Do you get ratty quickly?

"Tim is very calm and level-headed. He never gives up. I remember one of his school reports saying that he was successful because of his perseverance."

He will stay on the International Space Station until June 5. But before leaving he will run the London Marathon in real time from the station on April 24.

"Obviously he has to do it with a harness otherwise he would be all over the place. But he is going to have a live projection of the route in front of him and run it at the same time.

"He is fundraising for the Prince's Trust," said Nigel.

Last week, Tim thrilled three siblings from Bilbrook near Wolverhampton. Sisters Kacey Howell, aged 11, and nine-year-old Kristi, along with brother Lance, aged six, sent the astronaut a picture of the Raspberry Pi computer they built as part of an initiative to get children computer programming.

He responded by tweeting: 'Great work!"

And one question on everyone's lips is: what is the food like in space?

"Actually, he is very lucky," said Nigel. "They had a competition to design space meals and some of them were produced by Heston Blumenthal. Tim says they are magnificent.

"There is a type of curry that he really enjoys and he has also taken his favourite blend of tea."

It's the simple pleasures.