Back in the UK, Frank undertook doctoral studies in neuroendocrinology at New College, Oxford. He also performed with the Oxford University Dramatic Society alongside his friend Mel Smith. The dilemma of scientist or performer was resolved in typical Frank style: he chose both. In 1977 he joined the University of Kent as a lecturer in biochemistry. There, his booming voice and flair for theatre spilled beyond the lecture hall, most memorably when he appeared on Noel Edmonds’s Late, Late Breakfast Show in the 1980s, winning the title “Loudest Man in Britain” by shouting a complex scientific discovery that ended in a triumphant “Eurekkkaaaa!”