DID you know you need a minimum of 25 people to start a Mexican Wave?

Go ahead, try it; any less than 25 people, and it will take at least a couple of attempts to orchestrate.

And would you believe someone has conducted legitimate scientific research to determine the speed at which a Mexican Wave typically travels around a stadium?

It’s about 27 miles per hour, or 43 kilometres per hour, if you’re curious.

Author Gavin Pretor-Pinney and readers of his latest novel, The Wavewatcher’s Companion, would not only believe the research exists, they could probably tell you the name of the person responsible for it.

They could certainly tell you more about the phenomenon itself, too.

The Mexican Wave is so named because it captured the world’s attention at the 1986 FIFA World Cup, according to Mr Pretor-Pinney.

He said the Mexican Wave featured in televised footage from the Cup itself, and in Coca-Cola advertising campaigns at the time.

It is endlessly fascinating, deliciously offbeat facts such as these which fill the pages of The Wavewatcher’s Companion.

You’d hardly believe the book began as Mr Pretor-Pinney walked with three-year-old daughter Flora along the shore of a beach in Cornwall.

It was he, Mr Pretor-Pinney said, who was fascinated by the crashing waves; apparently, they did not hold Flora’s attention for long.

Having caught his, however, Mr Pretor-Pinney went about turning the tides on the world’s view of waves.

No longer would people associate the humble wave with the beach, if he had anything to say about it.

Though each of the book’s 336 pages describe undulations of sorts, only 34 relate specifically to those of the ocean.

The novel encapsulates everything from the human heart to the microwave.

The issue, Mr Pretor-Pinney said, was knowing where to stop.

When it comes down to it, our world is full of waves.

It took a self-proclaimed “science nerd” with a fascination for YouTube clips for the sold-out audience at the Wavewatching for Beginners session of the Melbourne Writers Festival to see the world on such a wonderfully different wavelength.

And this is not the first time he’s done something of the sort.

Mr Pretor-Pinney founded a magazine in celebration of all things idle- aptly named The Idler- and the Cloud Appreciation Society.

Clouds, he said, are often attributed negative connotations.

His judgement of them, however, is not clouded.

And thus, he celebrates them.

Having penned two Sunday Times bestsellers about clouds- The Cloudspotter’s Guide and The Cloud Collector’s Handbook respectively- the transition from sky to sea seemed natural for Mr Pretor-Pinney.

“The atmosphere is an ocean of air,” he said.

His last trip to Australia was to meet some people who surf it.

Mr Pretor-Pinney travelled to Burketown in northern Queensland to see the Morning Glory cloud, which appears annually at some time between the end of September and the start of October.

The cloud sweeps from Cape York to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

For some time, Mr Pretor-Pinney believed he would not have the opportunity to witness the spectacle.

He waited for over a fortnight in the small country town with the sole ambition of seeing it.

Just as he was in a dither about returning to the UK without having done so, Mr Pretor-Pinney recalls seeing two indications to reassure him that the Morning Glory was coming.

The first was that the doors of the fridges in the one and only pub in town began to frost over.

Then, the tables in the café began to curl upwards.

The cloud came the next morning, he said.

Whether or not Mr Pretor-Pinney embraced the opportunity to surf the sea on his so-called “research trip” to Hawaii while writing his latest novel, I do not know.

I’ll fill you in once I finish the book.