 They're coming. Oh, there we go. They're not coming at all. Just so they've started the car. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the Theatre of the Absurd, I don't know, panel, I guess so. Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Kool, Richard Hope, David Lerner, Cindy Ellsworth and Jonathan Perlrich into the delightful, the delicious Kevin John Davis. I've got the purple one. Here we have, working from the far end, Mike Kool. One of this parish. And also came and played Mr. Prosser in the illustrated Hitchhiker's book. Anyone got the big silver book? Yeah, there he was in there. So, Mike, I've employed you several times as a vogue on the making of... It's 30 years in a matter of minutes. From the rainbow version is where we first met. And I encased your head in green latex as mask maker. And then Cindy Oswin. Now, Cindy, you had the unusual job, which you shared with Maya, of playing Peter Jones's role, which you were the narrator of the very first stage version. ICA in 1979. What can you remember about that? Well, I turned up at the ICA to talk to Ken Campbell because I was applying to be his assistant director. Applying to the Arts Council and I had a bunch of forms for him to fill in. And he was casting and he just said, Right, I've got part here. You're it. And that's how I am going to be the second half of the book. Which, you know, was tremendously long, as you all know. And we had to learn it. And next to you is Richard Hope, who was Ford Prefect. Now, Richard Ford Prefect, when you took that role at the ICA, had you heard the radio version? No. No, so it was all fresh. It was all fresh. It was sort of... And at the time, nobody had heard of this phenomenon at all. Ken had read it. I think because he was friends with Douglas. But at that time, nobody knew anything about it. Were you already part of Ken's troupe? I was part of his team. I think, yes, from the warp. And I did the third policeman. And the end is nigh. And, yeah, a few there as well as this one. Yeah, so he sort of... He got you in if you thought he could frighten you. I remember you guys because I was very lucky to be in the audience, which, you know, there were people banging at the doors trying to get into the ICA. You know, those who had heard it on the radio, they knew and they knew something hot was happening. Simon Jones himself tried to get in. And he kept saying, but I'm half a dent. And they looked at him as if he was mad. And I'm the queen of sheep. It's him. So, yeah. One moment I remember was... The audience was on this hovercraft, so the audience would be turned around by hefty guys on the corners moving. It's like a boxing ring affair. We'll have some pictures, you'll be able to see. And it was just ordinary chairs on this sort of boxing ring with hoverpads underneath. And we came towards you and a scene that was played with you in the airlock, with you and Arthur Chris Langham. Yeah. You took it in turns to put your wires on. Yeah, because it was very expensive to fly people up in space. And Ken, we thought, how do we do it? And Ken said, I know. I've seen aerial work from actors and trapeze artists. And so they said, well, what do we do? He said, no, you put them on in front of the audience. So we had to put these harnesses on and we used the towel to protect ourselves. And then we took it in turns to why it was just a pulley system, really, and to put people across the top of the audience. Right. And then we carried on talking until we'd had enough and then pulled one back and then the other one got on. We used to go, what's it like out there? And so people in the audience would start speaking. But it was quite a phenomenon. It was wonderful. The whole play began in the cafeteria of the ICA where people were buying these steaming sort of cocktails that were pangalactic gargle blasters. In test tubes, as I remember them. They were steaming. Yeah. And then the play began in the foyer. Yeah, I know. Good idea here. We're going to blow up the lobby. And so I want lots of smoke in the lobby. And that'll be the signal for the audience to go into the auditorium and they'll get a pangalactic gargle blaster. You stood there with a tray of these things. So people were quite inebriated by the time they got onto the show. And then I said, so what do I do? He said, oh, Ford Prefect, and he talked with Douglas Haddon and said, you just have to smile all the time, like you do. But when they look away, look as though you're going to bite them. There's a picture behind. There we go. There's Chris Langham on the left. And there's Richard. So it was very instant theatre. And you had to be up and running. You see, these photographs have just come to light this week. I've not seen many of these pictures before and I'm an archivist of pictures. So it was fantastic that John found all these pictures. Through you, I gather. Yeah, the photographer there was a checkpoint Roger Morton. He lives in France now. But he did photograph a lot of Ken's show. And I got them through Mitch Davis, who's here. He's in the audience. At the back, yes, being quiet. It was Zayfod Bebobrocks. Give us a wave. One half of Zayfod Bebobrocks. Before, indeed, we had a pantomime of Zayfod, didn't we? Yeah, well, and Ken, he used to say to Mitch, or to Steve and Davis, we played the other half of Zayfod, make it difficult for Mitch. And I heard Ken say things like, as you're going up the ramp, Mitch, try and get up the ramp. And then he'd say, Stephen, as Mitch is trying to go up the ramp, don't want to go up the ramp. And so the beginning of this scene, when they started talking, it was for real. They were trying to go up. Well, the version I saw, on the night I saw it, they fell over. And I don't know whether that was deliberate. No, no, I caught them a few times. You never get away with that now. And there's Trillion at the back there, which is Sue-Janes Davis. Ah, there's Cindy on the right, Maya on the left. Now that's what happened out in the foyer. When the earth was then about to explode, the two space girls come out and invite us to be rescued from the destruction of the earth. And we all went into the theatre. The audience all filed in with you two like sort of space hostesses. Well, yes, it was necessary to actually guide people because they had had the pangalactic gargleblasted. They had been told the earth was about to explode. Look at that. You've got a great picture here. And they were confused. And there was piles of smoke coming out of the auditorium. So we helped everyone up onto the hovercraft at rather rickety staircase. Masses of smoke, big bang from a maroon. You know, the poor things were roughly disorientated. And then it rose into the air and did a 360 degree turn. There was smoke and sound effects and lighting flashing and it was amazing. So all the scenes happened around the edge of the building. The sets were built in a circle, weren't they? Yes, so you didn't know quite. And then it all went black as you went on your little hovercraft journey. Well, we hurriedly changed the sets or whatever and jumped up on these platforms. There's Ken with his dog down the front there. And I think we're rehearsing Vogue on poetry torture. It did give an extraordinary illusion of space because the ICA Theatre is not that big. And just to be whizzed around every few minutes was extraordinary and we were on it all the time and it never failed to amaze me what Ken had done with the space. It's astonishing. I've got one other tale that's quite interesting. There's no money for this project, no wages. Just people who want to be in it. He said, you will get an evening meal. All the money has gone on the hovercraft. We'll come back to talking about Ken in a little while. I'm going to skip on because that was the very first stage adaptation of Hitchhiker. Very soon after the original seven episodes of the radio. But then the next version was at Theatre Clued and so I'd like to introduce Jonathan Pedderbridge. Jonathan, you took all six episodes and you performed, you changed it into a theatre piece in your own way. Can you tell us about that really early version of the Theatre Clued version? Yeah, it was a mistake really. Yeah, wow. I was a really, really young stage manager director and they wanted some work in the very small studio at the Clued. Very, very small, beautiful black box and I and Martin Harris were going to do a season of War of the Worlds and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in promenade with dividing boxes which we thought was a terrific idea. Then Martin got cold feet and then the administrator decided that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was very popular and we should go into the main stage. So suddenly, it was thrust upon me to create an adaptation for Presenium Art and as you're saying, it's a very, very inspiring piece. It has a lot of space within it. That's not a pun. There's a lot of gaps for invention and stuff and like you, I remember is the moment when you start with a doll's house and an actor and a model of bulldozer and the voices of the voters. It was a model like a Tonkatoi bulldozer but it was the most, you know, the fantastic sound effect of a real bulldozer. The juxtaposition was hilarious. It's extremely poor theatre, if you like, in Brechtian terms and then we went to a huge machine in the auditorium that blew smoke and stuff onto the audience and then we cut to them dangling in space without towels to protect themselves. I'm afraid, but similar to Ken's version. There was another moment in it where it went from onstage with Zefod and Marvin and Trillian escaping and running out of the auditorium similar to here and then you would see a film of them in the bar again, stopping for a drink and going into the car park hijacking a car and then you'd go back onstage and you would find them sitting in a small mini. I think it was a mini or a Fiat 500. And then we blew that apart with an inflatable which became the Bogbrat Biest of Trout. I mean, this was at that time was incredibly innovative and fluid and quite, I think, actually quite beautiful as well. As I was saying to you, one of the things I want to say is that I find some of the writing and listening to the first series was a very beautiful thing. It is extremely funny, but also there's an aesthetic to it that is quite gorgeous and very surprising. When you didn't know the gags, when you didn't know what the answer to their question was, it was tuned in every week to hear what was going on. And your Marvin was our other guest, David Lerner. So this is long before you were trapped inside the tin can on television. This is Marvin at the very... You'd heard the radio version? No, hadn't heard the radio version. And it was only during, I think it was after we had started touring from North Wales to Bangor, that sort of area that I heard it in for the first time. And I didn't know what to do for the voice or anything like that. But Alan Bennett had just been on the radio doing ear? Oh, yes. And that was it. This is fine. I mean, I don't know who this Stephen Moore is. I hadn't heard it. And then I heard Stephen during, you know, as I say, and I go, oh, he's quite good. And what I couldn't have known, what we couldn't have known, because I really should say here that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for this man on my left, Jonathan Patherbridge. It was Peth's brilliance, his imagination, his zest, his ability to take six times half hour radio scripts and turn them into a show. I was doing the music at the time. I was writing the music for Alibaba and the 40 Thieves. I wrote the music. And it was good. And such was the budget that we only had two thieves, didn't we, Alibaba and the two thieves? But I remember very well being at the piano and writing this crap music, this awful music. And he came in with the six half hour scripts and said, we're doing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I'm going, what? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And he said, you're playing Arthur Dent or Marvin. I don't know. I didn't know who either of them were. And eventually he would say, oh, Mike wants to play Arthur Dent. So you're playing Marvin. And we did the read-through, 1979. This was Christmas, 1979. And Sue Elliott, who played Trillion, we did in the theatre clue at Green Room. And I said that first line. I think you ought to know I'm feeling very prepared. And Sue went, Ray, great crowd. I had no idea what I had just said. When we came to play Banger, the theatre erupted. And I think I was like, what? And I literally looked round to see who else had come on. Because I thought that something was funny was happening. And I had no idea that what I had said would still be talked about 42 years later. That's where we are. Very good. Stephen Moore had exactly the same response, or rather the audience responded the same way to that line. His very first line, I think you ought to know. At the 2008 30th anniversary performance of episode 2 at the Royal Geographical Society. And he hadn't realised. We do have a video of it, but I don't think we've got it today, unfortunately. His smile just grew when he realised that one line lit up the room. Everybody loves Marvin. It is extraordinary. You're going to have to do it later, obviously. Because we're doing episode 2 again. We are doing episode 2 again. It's a good one because it's got everybody in it. But no, I mean, Peth is the man. And as a result of that, Alan J. W. Bell came to see the theatre-clued production. The BBC were scouting around. And I was eventually asked to audition for the TV, but that's the TV. We'll get on to the rainbow in a moment. Jonathan, you've got any memories of those earliest shows, any actual things in the performance that still stay with you? The Theatre Car Park, Bangor, where we opened. We divided it into three parts. You had to come over three evenings initially. And our designer, Paul Kondras, was very ambitious. And in the car park after the third night, you saw most of the set. Most of the set had been ditched. We each completely over-designed everything. And I just remember going, are we going to take this back to Klued? We're just going to leave it. It was before recycling, I'm afraid. And we left most of the set there and went down to a very, very minimally set. I mean, it was really minimal. Do you remember there was no curtain call? Just blowing leaves. Yes, yes. We left them wanting more. Well, the auditorium was empty. That's true as well. Do you also remember the... When we took to Cardiff, the party who came, there was a coach party who came, but they weren't wearing towels. They were all wearing black bin liners. And they sat in the back three rows and rustled quietly. Yeah. Right. Well, that's my memory. I saw these photos again. My memory of the ICA was that all the sets were very sort of cardboard, tin foil, you know, black bin bags. It was punk, you know, that time. There is a punk-style poster for the ICA version. I tried to find it today. I think it must be in my loft. It wasn't punk in north Wales. LAUGHTER That was quite that work. I do remember, I mean, all the credits were getting on at Cluid, but I do remember sort of Douglas saying that to Ken, here are the scripts, I don't think it will make a play. Get on with it. They said, oh, I think it will. I think you had to cut it down. The ICA version was a sort of more compact version. But we could do whatever we wanted with the radio script. Yeah. And I think the reason the radio scripts were on stage was because all you needed was imagination. Yeah. And a towel. And the ICA did depend on that. It was minimal sets. Another thing that I remember was the mice. How are you going to do the mice on stage? Well, there were pictures. I don't know if it shows the forced perspective table that Ford and Arthur sat at. Do you remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll explain how you did it. Well, we just did it with little fingers with our fingers through the table. LAUGHTER So you're talking to yourself. But what I remember is that you made no pretense that these mice were going to appear by surprise. No. Because there was... You could see them putting the glove on and then they'd pop up in the middle of the table. And you did the sort of ventriloquist thing right? It was lovely because it just took the audience with them. You know, that's what I enjoyed. Now, I didn't get to see the Cluid version until you toured some months later. You could play with the rainbow for a moment. You toured it again in, I think, late 81 or early 80s. I think it was a year later. You disagreed. I don't know. I remember 82 was Plymouth. I thought it was 81. I've probably got a document on my computer that says the actual date, and I should have done my homework. We sort of compressed it into one long evening. I'm sorry if anybody came. LAUGHTER But I caught up with it at pool, which is where I met you. And shot some little interviews with you and Roger Blake, who was a book. And Lewis Coven. Roger was the book, the rainbow as well. He was. That's very good. Why did you come to the Towngate Theatre? Because my friend was studying at Southampton University. And we took a little car trip down to come and see the show. My abiding memory of playing in the Towngate Theatre pool was that there was an NCP car park. And I had a little mini in those days. And you'd park. You'd take a ticket from the bloke. Morning, morning, morning. And you'd leave. And of course you wouldn't pay because you were there all day. So you didn't have to pay. And eventually on Thursday morning, John, who was playing forward, he was just in the car in front of me. And he was parking at the same time. And he said, what's going on? And I said to John, I said, what was the problem? He said, we came to see the show last night. Well, yeah. And he said, you were bloody awful. And then he let me through. I'd arrived. Tough audience in pool, obviously. Well, let's step back then slightly from that 82 tour. 1980. The summer of 1980. Now, I spent the first part of 1980 working at the animation company, Pierce Studios, on the pilot episode of the TV version. So I was a young animator. The 12. I was 18. I was 19 that summer. And I went to the pub where all the science fiction fans meet in London or used to meet. The one ton pub at Saffron Hill. Oh yeah, that's me. And a guy came round. I was handing out flyers to come and see a first screening of the TV pilot because the management at BBC didn't know whether it was funny or not. So they had to record a laughter track at the NFT. It was expensive, but not necessarily. They were going to put a laughter track on and Alan Bell was fighting that desperately, didn't want that. Anyway, that was going to be recorded. And this other chap came along handing out flyers for a stage show of hitchhikers. Until then nobody knew about it. And it was only two weeks away. This typical Ken, isn't it? And this was John Joyce, the actor, great mate of Ken's. He was handing out those flyers. I was handing out the other ones. That's the program booklet cover. Price 50p, look at that. So he was looking for people to volunteer to make props and masks. So my friends and I all volunteered and I started sculpting Vogue on masks. I think I took a mold off your face or something. Yeah, it didn't look like you in that picture. Yeah, it was. It was almost like a rubber rain hat elastic chin strap. But your costume was inflatable. Yeah, it was. It was basically a series of balloons outside my body. They were still putting it together and gluing it together when I went on on the first night. So tell us something about the Rainbow Theatre. What I did like was they had this sort of big curved... Yeah, and Ken insisted that I do the obvious rude gesture with my... Blurgle crunch. Whatever it was. Or I'll slice your rendy. Yeah, that one. I thought it was a little wobbled. Blurgle crunch. I'm not proud of having been an actor. No. Well, on that I think that was the first time I met you. Yeah, it wasn't a shoe-in that I got Marvin at all. And indeed it was you probably who was instrumental in ensuring... No, no, no, no. ...that I knew that I wanted to do the telly. Yeah. Alan Bell came to see the Rainbow Stage show. But he left at the interval, apparently. But he did note you and Mike. So that led to you guys being in the TV version. But to get the stage role at the Rainbow I had to go to the leg of mutton. Was it... Ken's pub? Daisy can probably tell me that. Load of hay. Load of hay. That's right. Because my girlfriend at the time, Annie said the only way you're going to get is to go to his local pub. So I did. So I went to the pub and I said hello, I'm David. And... And I said I played Marvin. It's theatre good. So it was that conversation. It was really quite embarrassing. And I think we had some drink. And what happened was like a school play, David. Right. OK. And that was it. I got in touch with him not at all afterwards and thought because it was only a five minute meeting and several pints that the world was going to end and that I hadn't got the job but blow me I had. Yeah, he'll do. So I did. So I did it at the Rainbow. Well, my friends, Susan Moore, who went on to make Doctor Who monsters and Jonathan Saville and we took over one of the dressing rooms at the Rainbow and we wrote on the door rubber room because we were making like alien fruit for Millie Ways and various masks and things and people would pop their head round the door and then looked a bit disappointed. I think that's something a bit more exciting. And one day Ken appeared and he had this piece of paper which was a new page of script. This is like three days, I think, before the shows about to happen. This was a last minute edition by Douglas Adams and it was the dish of the day and it hadn't been done before and he came in and he says I want a big dairy animal. You can do a cow. I said I haven't got enough clay left to do a cow. There's no time to go and get it. It was quite late in the evening. It was commercial the next day. I kind of remember who played the dish. It was Mike. It was Godmass. I said I've got enough clay to do a pig. So he said well I do. So I made a pig overnight. And I remember laying up on the rainbow, it was a huge it's a church now. It's a massive, massive place. 3,000 plus seater in the balcony at 3am. While the guys from LA were practising the lasers. So I was a bit spaced out and tired anyway because it had been like long nights. And the laser was going all over the ceiling which was dotted with lights like stars. And that's an enduring memory I had of that. The next day, Ken comes in again I want a vogue on bum. You know what? In the dentrassi bit there's a hatch in the scenery and this green rubbery bum pokes through and shits all over the washing. Dentrassi had their laundry hanging up. Nobody knew what it was because it looked like a monster or something. Anyway, Jonathan Savill made it overnight again. I can't think why I've forgotten. Well, I operated props for a few performances and we had a big coke bowl full of, I don't know, some mixed up crap that we fired through this vogue on bum. It had like a distended anus coming out from between two big green sheets. You've brought it all back. And I do remember Mike being stitched into it because I was being welded with a soldering gun as we went on. But you were all silver. You were completely silver. And what happened was in like 10 20 minutes in, new scenery arrived didn't it, on the first night. The first night it was always the most well, not the most horrendous, that was doing children's theatre, but second most horrendous thing. We were doing the entire length of the series as our script. Nothing had been cut. Nothing added, nothing taken. And things, as I say technically speaking we were running the second half of the show without having had a tech run through. And in the second half of the show those lasers represented the destruction of the universe. So we did the destruction of the universe without technical rehearsal. And it got to the middle bit and somebody hired this rock group to be the band at Millieways during the interval. They were only supposed to be on for 15 minutes. 25, 13 minutes of their gig. You were obviously far too busy trying to remember what you had to do. What time did we get out of the theatre then? Gone 11 30 I think. But the thing was because it was at Finsbury Park in those days the tubes didn't run that late. And about halfway through the second act people started looking at their watches and getting up and going home. Which is sad because they had filled the theatre and they all knew the script better than we did and chanted it along at us. And then the next day they kept the script. But that was what it was reviewed on and that was why what was the review? Mr Adams has charted his travellers into a black hole. Which review I think we got. And we never filled the theatre after that. It was due to run 8 weeks I think it says it was there well it says limited season but it ran 4 weeks. That long God God. Now with a 3000 plus auditorium outside of the West End it had 3000 plus it had about 2 men and a dog in it by the time it closed down. There was money coming from somewhere but it wasn't always going to be actors. No idea. There was a bit of substance done backstage. It was that kind of show. Somebody said to me this show is losing a lot of street cred because it's a coke production rather than a dope production. I know at least one distinguished member of the cast was on nitrous oxide. I doubt that. Where was I? Are you aware we have libel laws in this country? There was an old coach parked at the back of the theatre in the side road at the back and it was run by some hippies and we were all working there long hours getting things ready, making props and they said I'm starving there's all this coach out of the back they do great veggie burgers veggie so I went out there and I said I ordered a couple of these burgers which were fab and I said have you got any coke? and they went oh yeah I said oh great I'm so thirsty they went oh no you'll have to go out the news agency. Straight faced! It's only one of my favourites the evening standard sent along a bloke Johnston to interview me he tried to chat me up rather unsuccessfully when he put his hand on my crutch but that was fine but he and he took me to the comedy store it was just open then anyway he got this interview and it ran in the daily they had that sort of you know what I like what I want to do my favourite things are and I started with this quote what would you prefer to be doing now and I said something like oh on a horse with Francesca Rannis I don't know and I was I was reading this and the evening standard got passed on Douglas came and he picked it up and he said oh there's a bit about you in here I said oh yeah like I didn't know oh yeah what's it say I said about this Francesca Rannis oh right do I come over well no you come over like a wanker ok I was going to ask each member of the panel if they have any personal memories of Douglas did you deal with him on any kind of basis on these projects well he let me sleep on his sofa for a week during the rainbow so I did not learn a lot of him about him except he does keep guitars around yeah he lived around the corner from me in Kingsdown Road in North Islington for a while and he was constantly awoken because somebody in the vicinity had a cockerel so that was also disturbing his writing and of course you got hired then around this time of this show to record for the LP the vinyl LP record of Hitchhiker yeah it was a surprise towards the end they asked me to record all the female voices on both of the albums so you played Trillion yeah it was great can you remember anything about those recording sessions I remember I left the iron on I thought I'd left the iron these are the important things an actor's nerves so Stephen Moore kindly came all the way back with me to find that the iron must have been turned off but it was done in quite a hurry yeah we had to get a move on Richard did you deal with Douglas at all yeah no he just like I did admired Ken's danger and so he wanted anything that was daring or dangerous Douglas gave a thumbs up to it and so that was our sort of mantra for the evening really many years later you also shared something else with Stephen Moore who played Marvin you were both dressed in green as I remember yeah we played Silurians in various Doctor Who episodes yeah so we sort of reminisced and chatted to each other he was always moaning because his makeup took a bit longer than mine because he had to have hands done as well Silurian hands I managed to get away with that wearing gloves and you also had a mask it's very fashionable nowadays yeah well it's brilliant makeup by Millennium X I mean you still do it but I do miss Stephen a lot so yeah we have a little video later today as a tribute to Stephen now what we got here pictures from The Rainbow that's Lewis Cohen in the Star Trek show David Brett playing Ford in the Stripey Red and White now he got famous a bit later on because he was a member of do do do do very good flying pickets yeah they're flying pickets blank for a moment there oh Roger no yeah Roger that's Roger in the pod that pod was really high above the stage and he got lowered down from this immense arch which has this kind of Italian 8 village built all around the sides her name was Beverly was it in there she was in Flash Gordon as well as spotted was she married to a vicar I have no idea but I'll tell you what yeah she and Roger spent quite a bit of time in that pod in the shadows before they had to be lowered down to do the next bit of the book that's the bar scene we got there I can't recognise them all no idea that was the one side of the stage Dave was the barman I can't remember Dave's surname actually that's Mitch on the X Mitch is it yeah more detail in the program booklet Beverly Andrews there you go Lewis Cohen I thought was very good he played loads of parts like you had 12 parts I think some of them were just voices from the week dear me the disaster was Marvin not Marvin I'm sorry of the parts that I played the disaster's deep thought which is odd because it's how I got the job I was a young and innocent comparatively innocent actor I didn't know anything about Ken Campbell and I didn't know how absolutely bonkers it was that he had been given the chance to be the director at Liverpool and that's he was fairly bonkers so I went to I wrote him a letter saying you're casting the you're casting the season could I come up an audition and I thought this was going to be a normal audition I was wrong I got in there and he said right what part can you play in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and he said a deep thought he said I think acts interesting I never thought of having you on stage before I I just sat there but eventually I did it fairly straight to start with in the rehearsals and then he came up to me and he said Michael deep thought you're being boring which is a sort of notable actor really treasures and he and he had me do it in Arthur Mullard voice I don't I honestly can't say it was my finest act the rest was alright let's see now there's a prosthetic vogue on geltz and various voices and a mouse we did the mice on stage with big mice heads off to one side we were being blown up from our natural size very odd and mostly nude as the captain of the Archie B the glory of my career well we do there's somebody missing from this panel today Terry Johnson was going to be here now he did a fantastic play called Ken which I saw in 2016 I gather it's been done in a few places all about Ken Campbell and we're very lucky to have in the audience today Ken Campbell's door to Daisy who would like to welcome to the stage what we have we have an excerpt from Terry's piece about the rainbow stage show do you want to stand forward I don't think you need that one well you better keep it to yourself there we go it's all a yes yeah we haven't rehearsed in true Campbellian style of course and if I'd had a pen I'd have cut some lines but I didn't each I just guide the galaxy had been an enormous and celebrated success on the radio an enterprising chap called Richard Dunkley decided it deserved a wider audience Dunkley thought anything could be achieved with a roll of gaffer tape and a strong joint his instinct as a producer if something were possible would be a way beyond that for something almost certainly impossible this was the spirit that impressed Ken and saw Dunkley march into the rainbow theatre in Finsbury Park and hire it the logic behind this was impeccable the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was a romp through space and time hitherto confined to a tiny stage at the ICA conversely the rainbow theatre was the biggest auditorium in greater London thus more closely resembling the universe I should have smelled a rat there were two weeks into rehearsal when Ken called me I should have sensed the way wind was blowing John Joyce wasn't going to be in it with the wind in that direction I should have smelled that Ken liked things to be free in every sense of the word not because he was mean-spirited but because he had an increasing body of work behind him that was at its best when produced in penury that fucks it up you have to account for it every time you spend something you owe someone else a fee for something else and people start moaning if he's got a wig why can't I have a bus fare into the equation then there's not enough of it it's like being there I have to say I lived it baby I lived it baby very good stuff for Hitchhiker Dungley had raised a shitload of money the Russian gangsters looking for UK investment thought they were getting a rock gig it was obvious as soon as I entered the desultory church hall that the show was in trouble Ken's A team had deserted him for the national theatre and the telly around the edges of the room were a group of girls who with a couple of honourable exceptions were well out of their death I want you to play Zaifat Bebelbrox it'll suit you he thinks he's the hero but he's not well in fact I want you to play one half of Zaifat Bebelbrox this is Doug he's playing the other half of me duly Doug's used to being at the front so you'll have to go at the back and put your head over his shoulder Zaifat Bebelbrox had two heads we haven't got the two footed boats yet but when we do it'll be much easier to walk it wasn't Terry is it oh hi Doug how's it going you're my third other head so far sit Doug's head it wasn't an easy part to play and Doug was at the front he got all the best lines Ken and Richard had gone all out and hired a very illustrious designer who had gone all out and designed a transforming sculpture of a set to fill the enormous rainbow stage it's complete rubbish and we can't afford it which is an advantage because it's complete rubbish so Doug said about designing it himself there was a scene on the moon I don't remember that he designed a long crescent shaped bit of scenery that layer across the four states from wing to wing Richard what is that well I thought the moon should be made of cheese so that's the rind I I don't think it reads well it's not painted yet it's going to say Edam on the side he designed a spaceship cockpit with flashing controls and a ramp leading up to it this was Zafod's domain Zafod was being played by two men in one pair of boots we never once made it up there there were lasers that bounced off tiny mirrors in the auditorium and formed a geometric representation of the prowl of a spaceship another ladder was rigged another ladder was rigged to create a cone of light pointing down at the apron through a cloud of stage haze right Ford and Arthur stand on the apron when that laser goes off I want you to jump jump? yes jump jump where? into the orchestra pit the watch is in front of you just step off can it about ten feet? well that's why those mattresses are there are you men or mice? jump the lights went out they jumped Jesus boy in Christ ow lights up sure enough Ford and Arthur were nowhere to be seen Ken was ecstatic yeah fantastic yeah that's a first class example of great theatre craft the ingenious juxtaposition of a 3000 watt diode laser and an old mattress any year now they'll be doing it like this at the Nash on the opening night nigh on 3000 people turned up all of them overweight men between the ages of 17 and 34 far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun 3000 people raised the roof the curtain had risen at 7 30 by 10 past 8 out of scenery the lasers were switched on but the circle was cantilever designed to shift a couple of inches when full this it had done and shifted the mirrors with it the lasers failed to create anything resembling a spaceship but they did shoot out a random matrix of green and mean laser beams bouncing off handrails and chandeliers potentially blinding anybody daft enough to look at it it was an audience of sci-fi enthusiasts most of them risked it fantastic that was good, thank you for that Daisy one thing I remember about I mean health and safety wasn't in it but the laser beams went everywhere did you bring me some water? yeah you want one it had a huge inflate whale which was incredibly heavy it was massive that's my one jerkers and everything nowadays backstage everyone was sort of touching elbows but anyway anybody else anyway this whale this whale was enormously long almost the size of a single decker bus and it lay in a sort of rather deflated state up on the circle and the idea was they were going to drop it off the circle at the given moment in the story the whale would descend and bounce off the heads of the people in the stores and I went up into the circle and looked at this thing it was this thick heavy rubber and it would take some industrial pump to fill it up and they decided that against it because it would have probably broken several people's necks if it had landed on them like shambling pink floyd here well something like that in the end I think they had a much smaller inflate before they dropped on the stage but this thing was enormous and so they decided well they couldn't waste it they'd got it from somewhere green piece or something they put it on a truck on our bridge and throw it off the river police were not happy it was a good publicity stunt I mean the rainbow is now legendary as being the disaster of hitchhikers which you know I can understand I'm fond of it because it was the first sort of stage thing I'd ever worked on but you know you can't deny that it was definitely Jonathan's version fluid that sort of had time to get it together and it turned and it did it properly and there hasn't I mean there's been lots of different stage versions there's not many professional ones I'm not sure that it's even possible now is it because Disney have it all wrapped up and so there is the the radio live tour in 2012 and 2013 they also did it on radio but that was kind of a reading which is what we're going to have later this afternoon if you say too but anyway fond memories I don't know if we've got enough time there's a three minute clip of the rainbow with subtitles because the sound's not brilliant it was just shot on video at the back of the stalls so if the tech team are ready the owl got a thumbs up there we can have a three minute clip of the rainbow just over three there's no way we can talk we've got to talk talk and drink it's vitally important that we talk and drink what's the matter with you or that man watching on my house now well he can do it while you're away I don't want you to then what is the matter with you listen hardware I've got to tell you the most important thing you've ever heard in your life and I've got to tell you now that's not going to stop you what? because you're going to need a very skit to drink so what you're saying is I like to touch it because underneath my me, Carlos heart-less experience I think you just want to be loved is that it? well I mean don't be all deep down no I just want to touch it with my me Carlos heartless experience I'm going to throw you on the ship anyway you know what Egypt I've been ordered to take you up to the bridge here I am praying for the size of leather and you tell me to take some off call that job satisfaction because I can't I've got a car same as you are for a extra ride after all with a degree and you ask me how do you do it either that or the don't care what am I saying well what else can a tall gal do whether it's a Tory gal or a skit I'm going to stay around today I've seen a black couple all the time yeah well Boston I'd like you to make a trade I've been doing this is my semi-cousin we share forever same numbers hey it's going to happen every time you see it put it in probability drive probably come on with your life unique in the future today sir that's a big issue I need to see you in parts of my body hey my man we're pleased to see you you're not no one ever needs you you're a beauty mother we are right hanging around waiting for someone's time the first 10 million years the worst and the second 10 million days the worst third 10 million I didn't enjoy at all after that I waited for a bit of time interestingly I'd forgotten national tour learn disaster and it was your epic idea to put deep thought at the front of the show I was just asking backstage about that the deep thought thing has always been quite a long stretch very similar isn't it it's quite heavy going so that was a great idea to put the first half of deep thought right at the very beginning and there are other shows that have done that I think since I need to get the scripts out again because I think it's probably quite interesting you asked earlier about Douglas meeting Douglas I met him a few times and I was so arrogant I was suggesting I was sort of saying to him what was wrong with his radio series I think it's a cut and short I mean absolutely stupid he didn't I'm not sure what he thought about theatre quite honestly he sort of with our version he sort of went okay do it if you must you must do it like that I think he had to see it he quite enjoyed it oh yeah he was in awe he really was in awe that's not what he said to me that's not the notes I got and also to Ken as well when I went to see Ken at Liverpool and I had a long conversation with him about doing I suppose having done it and the conversation was actually quite a serious conversation about the divergence of the literatures the idea that science fiction is a very very serious form that in a way has been slightly marginalised around the sort of 40s, 50s and has never really probably been taken seriously even you know despite Arthur C. Clarke and people like that and I remember that and that thought has always been quite important to me what he actually said was that if you think about it all literature is just people coming in and out of doors he's angry with the air very good ladies and gentlemen I've really enjoyed this reminiscence of all the different early stage versions of Hitchhiker please thank our panel to Toby Longworth thank you in those 15 minutes there's going to be some there is a break if you do need to wait but there are some brilliant bits but don't try and do both at the same time because it will end in tears