Douglas Adams, The Radio and Sandwiches

No one listens much to the radio any more. In fact, for many of us, it is but a distantmemory – in my case of sonorous waves of sitar, to the accompaniment of which myobese, constipated uncle waddled his way to the loo every morning. But if there’s onething we should be grateful for, it’s that Douglas Adams came out of it.

Well not literally, of course, seeing as how he was an extremely large and mainlyunathletic person, with a mysterious tendency of leaping on top of tables and lecturingpeople while waving his arms about. And an inordinate appetite for sandwiches. And towels.

But all this is beside the point. The point is, one morning he woke up and decided todo a radio show. This in itself was not unusual. Many people before and since, have donethe same thing, strange as it may seem to the rest of us. Douglas, though, had been muchinspired by Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and wanted to do a radio show whichsounded like a rock album. And so was launched an odyssey involving sandwiches, misseddeadlines, bemused actors, hysterical sound engineers, and several busted recordingmachines.

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was, both on and off the air, like the MarxBrothers on radio. Douglas loved to end each episode with a dramatic flourish, leaving thelistener to think, "Geez, how are they going to get out of this one?" Thistended to be problematic, as Douglas quite often actually couldn’t figure out howthey would. In one episode, for example, having been insufficiently appreciative of thetruly unspeakable poetry of Vogon Prostnetic Jeltz, Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent areshoved out of the airlock of a Vogon spaceship by a Loud Vogon Guard. Having puzzled overmuch of the week as to how he could save his heroes, Douglas came up with the idea of theImprobability Drive – an engineering device specially tailor-made to camouflage thinplot devices.

Ideas, of course, was what Hitchhiker’s was all about, with about three weird oneson every page. From the Total Perspective Vortex, out of which only Zaphod Beeblebrox everemerged sane ("I’m hungry, man"), to Marvin the Paranoid Android("Life, don’t tell me about life!"), to the Dish of the Day, to Robot DiscoDancers, to The Captain Who Spent All His Time In The Bathtub.

Although it may not be apparent, Douglas was a great satirist, with a burning need toexpose the injustices of his time. At one point, Arthur comes across a civilisation wherethe whole race of a planet has devolved into scrawny, bedraggled birds, their entireeconomy destroyed by rampant competition on the part of shoe manufacturers. So theyfinally eschew the ground altogether and become the aforementioned scrawny, bedraggledbirds, amongst whom the word ‘shoe’ is never to be uttered. Evil shoemanufacturers and their poorly shod soldiers still roam the planet, ruthlessly seekingcustomers. This episode was triggered by Douglas spending an entire afternoon at dozens ofshoe shops on Oxford Street, and completely failing to find anything decent in the rightsize. So don’t let anyone ever tell you that he wasn’t alive to the major socialissues of his day, and that it was all just mere entertainment or something shallow likethat.

For those of you interested in odd things like factual accuracy, it ought to be notedthat Hitchhiker’s went on to become one of BBC’s most successful radio programsever. Many letters were received at BBC’s Bush House, addressed to MegadodoPublications, asking for copies of the guide. One enterprising customer even enclosed apenny, suggesting that BBC deposit in the bank, and then go forward in a time machine andcollect all the interest at the end of time, arguing that the handsome profits would morethan cover the cost of both the book and its delivery. Throughout the series, therecording was always done in bits and pieces, and Douglas was finishing scripts page bypage (the rumour was he used toilet paper, to save costs, presumably) , so the actorsnever had the faintest idea what was going on. In fact, two of the cast members met on aBBC talk show, and one of them told the other that he was in some show where no one seemedhave the faintest clue, to which the other one said, "Oh, yes, that must beDouglas’s thing, I’m in it too, actually…"

Hitchhiker’s went on to become a book, a record, a TV show, a computer game, asource of several hit songs, inspiration for a pop group (Level 42), Fox  Mulder’saddress (No. 42 once again), a massive towel franchise, and a movie that never gets made.Adams did other things too, creating Dirk Gently, the holistic detective, and pondering ongrave issues like What Happens If You Don’t Clean The Fridge Long Enough And ThenYou’re Too Scared To Open It.

He passed away a day or two back. We can only hope his spirit is out there somewhere,roaming the galaxy. So long as he has a towel, a copy of the guide, and enough sandwiches,he should be OK. And if not, well, that’s Belgium, man, really Belgium.