THE spotlight is set to shine on the Science Museum at Wroughton tonight as seven celebrities battle it out for the public’s vote to crown Britain’s Greatest Invention.

Preparations are well under way at the museum for the one-off BBC Two show which will be broadcast live to millions of viewers across the country – lifting the lid on some of the museum’s most historic collections.

Each of the seven celebrities will be championing a different invention and making their case to the nation, including Sir Trevor McDonald, Angela Rippon, Giles Coren, Len Goodman, David Harewood, Nick Knowles and Angela Scanlon.

The audience will then vote for the invention they are endorsing and see it win the title of Britain’s Greatest Invention.

Matt Moore, head of the Science Museum Group at Wroughton, hopes the town switches on to watch the show tonight.

He added: “The show is going to give people a rare opportunity to see what we have here without everyone being here because the problem we have with this site is that it is difficult to have lots of visitors at one time because of the space. “What is really important for us to highlight is that people can still visit the site on a Friday if they pre-book and they can come and look into Swindon’s own history and how their family might have been involved in some of the collections.

“It is exciting to have this level of activity and commitment from the BBC to put on this kind of event because it is complex and time consuming to organise so once it goes live and looks amazing, it will be brilliant.”

The Science Museum at Wroughton boasts around 40,000 objects and about 150 lucky audience members will be in the audience tonight.

As well as highlighting the importance of each of the seven inventions, the programme will also try and cast a light on other objects in the museum’s collections and see if the public hold any answers to their history.

Matt added: “It is also great that younger people are becoming interested in science and we want to encourage it further and over time, we hope to get more people on site in the flesh to see everything here because there is nothing more exciting than seeing all of these objects up close.

“This show puts Wroughton and Swindon on the map and we want to continue to be part of the town by growing that relationship with people here.”

Viewers can get involved with the live show by visiting bbc.co.uk/invention where they can vote online. The show is on BBC Two from 8.30pm.