 So we're going to be introducing bear with me because I'm going to introduce another panel and hopefully this goes a bit better than the last time It's gonna be called Douglas Adams the man and his galaxy it will be chaired by Dick Fitty with dirt mags John Lloyd and James thrift They're trying with me Oh Is this one working? Well, I think it's very fitting we're here in the British library because I'm a huge fan of the hitchhikers, especially the book actually and I think it's it's got an idiosyncratic comic style, which I think is Similar to his great hero PG woodhouse, but it has a voice like Damon Ranion's work And I'd say like spite Milligan in works like cocoon So I think it's very fitting that we're celebrating his career and his life here I live a new Douglas Adams, although I often think that I do know a bit about him because of the work because well I've read into it, but of course you three knew him very well And I'd like to see if I can learn a bit about him and his galaxy from you three so can we start off with this is James who's Douglas Adams half brother, I think that's right, isn't it? Yeah, and you must have you must have known him having the demons as he struggled to get this story out of him Can you remember recall any of those times? I Mean most of our growing up I can just remember pissing him off an awful lot He Yeah, he used to everything that Douglas was was manic. He was everything was conducted at a hell of a pace And it always used to be where He bedroom was down the corridor and the walls in between all our rooms were basically when his room was quite thin And so all you would hear Basically was this frantic frantic typing he would this and those typewriters You see there's a few of them online and around which he's sort of people either. He's I don't think you ever signed them Other people probably sign them and you would hear this frantic Absolutely frantic of him typing on typewriter and then slang in the carriage across and then typing and typing And then it would go quiet for a while And then you would hear things being thrown at rubbish bins And that guttural scream that I think is quite new and and then he just sort of disappeared into the bathroom for a while And during this period we would all just sit in the house just being very very quiet not known quite What was going on? This was a good moment for him terribly. They were utterly bad moments But yeah, it was quite is at the time We really weren't sure what was actually the cause of all this because you know, this is before Before anyone knew about hitchhikers to ask basically the big deal was the fact that he was a scriptwriter for for dr. Who and So I mean that was cool having a brother who basically worked on dr. Who, you know, that was cool Hitchhiker so I mean John would have known more about than the whole hitchhikers at that point because Long before I ever met the man basically the phone would ring in our house And it would always be for Douglas and it would either have been it was two John's We had the John Lloyd or John counter as invariably you quite, you know, it's John and which one So yeah, let's bring just neatly to John who is Instrumentally involved both with the radio series and in bringing the radio series to television eventually But can you tell us how you first became involved with Douglas Adams and first learned about the story? Well, as you know, dick, the whole thing's a disaster for me But yeah, I knew Douglas slightly at University he had he was in the next college and We were kind of rivals because he ran the st. John's review group Adam Smith Adams, and I ran the Trinity review So, you know, we were kind of friendly rivals as it were But we came very good friends after we came down and we were as good a friend as you could possibly be for several years before he became immensely rich and famous and We shared the flat and then the house together in Roehampton and Douglas struggled, you know through his whole life in many ways, but he was the most amazing companion and friend I mean funny and always fascinating and completely mad and And a delight in every way, but one day I came back to this weird house We had in Roehampton was a furnished house and for some reason Douglas's room had seven wardrobes in it Six of which were locked And And this is where one of this is the place where he got the idea for the captain the B arc Because he basically stay all day in the baths drinking cups of tea while I worked as a radio producer and came home And then we'd write in the evenings And I came home one night and he was sitting on on his bed. There was only one bed in the room strangely With his head in his hands and he said Johnny, I'm I've got to give this up I'm going to become a ship broker in Hong Kong because I'm not cutting it as a writer anymore And he was really tearful about it He was going to do the ship-breaking thing because Jeffrey Perkins had done that for a couple of years beforehand and he'd enjoyed it very much Anyway, the very next week he got the commission for the pilot of Hitchhiker's Guides of the Galaxy and the rest is history It just shows you on a sixpence the world turns so anybody who's ever found that they're in despair and And then nothing's working for them just stick with it a few days longer and it might come good for you It's my Philosophical thought today. I mean basically some day the weather will break always and it broke for Douglas And of course if you can get over that hillock that speed bump it can completely transform your life But you were very I mean, did you tell you much about the story? Did you discuss it with him? Did you work on it together? I mean, how did you you became intrinsically involved in the series? Didn't you? Yeah, I mean He as famously was was very slow as a writer and Would agonize for you know with the books for example, he spent ten months of his year's deadline on the first paragraph Normous waste paper baskets fill the house, you know and then and write the whole rest of it in three weeks on a plane to Singapore or something crazy But so I didn't know much about what was going on. I just thought I've invented a few good titles in my life, and that is the greatest title I think you know you just immediately have to pick up the book, don't you you wonder what's about and all that and So that's really all I knew And about sort of four and a half episodes into the first series He got stuck and he said Johnny will you will you help me out and I said of course So and I gave him as some of you may know some Hiker fans I had I was trying to write a science fiction book myself. It's called Jigax and so I gave him this unfinished Actually, I read some of it recently was absolutely terrible. I Gave it to him said use anything you like and then we sat down and whereas the first Four and a half episodes had taken him nine or ten months to write the last two took us three weeks it was amazing fun and You know I spent a lot of my life being the sort of comedy cleaning lady, you know I've worked with Peter Cook and you know Graham Chapman people are mad Douglas all mad geniuses and Very disorganized and I'm an organized tidy up a person So I you know I plump up their cushions for them and you know Clean the sausage rolls from under the sofa and all that kind of thing And that's what I was so I'm an enabler So I helped Douglas was really good fun very enjoyable and it contains of course some of the most iconic things in The series including the number 42, which I remember sitting in in our flat talking about that So I didn't know much so I picked up from a standing start And it was really just helping him put order on his genius because the genius was always there It's just that sometimes he couldn't see which bits were good and which weren't good And that was my my job as a kind of script editor really and then I when I went to telly I I Did not the I clock news for a couple of series and he did quite well I went to my head of department John hard doves. It was a genius who didn't Being the first producer of Monty Python as some of you may know Produce all the 40 towers produce Reggie Perrin numerous other things absolutely genius very nice guy And I said John I there's this radius series called the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy and he goes That's a weird title. What's that? That's what it's a kind of science fiction comedy thing. He said Science-fiction comedy is it is that a thing? I said Well, it is now He said well, it sounds very intriguing Should we commission a pilot script you think and I said yes And that was how BBC commissioning used to work I was in there I think it was 18 and a half seconds So that's how the series came to be but then The BBC has always been a bit crackers because they then said well you obviously can't produce it because if you produce two Successful series in a row you'll have an impossibly big head and you're only 27 and we're all gonna hate you So they gave it to this bloke called Alan JW Bell Who didn't like science fiction and certainly didn't like Douglas and so it was all a bit sticky for that series and and I was thinking Well, what I often said is that it was literally translated because Alan's big hit before being lost the summer wine You know, which is very similar to hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy And he didn't really get it and so he tried to do everything literally so say ford Bebel Brock's It's said to have two heads as we all know in three arms So he had a sort of rubbery, you know CGI didn't exist in those days and this sort of rubbery You know like a used condom flapping on one shoulder And I said but Alan it doesn't have to be Realistic we don't know for example the text does not state how large say ford's head is or indeed wear on it His body it grows and it could be, you know up his bottom for all we know But anyway, he went ahead and so it's a slightly uncomfortable and Unhappy experience for me actually and if you look at the credits of the television series You'll see when my name name comes up as associate producer It is shot off into the outer reaches of the galaxy because that's how much Alan liked me Yes, sorry about opening old wounds there My name is John. I'm an alcoholic Now duck I'd like to talk to you about the radio series And I can remember hearing it for the first time and the thing that struck me of course was the sound It didn't sound like a radio series. It sounded as I think Douglas may have pointed out It sounded like dark side of the moon it sounded like one of those that really worked on progressive albums and I think you're known for making audio movies. You've taken on that mental But how did you come involved with it in the first place and what what struck you about it? I? Just joined the BBC in July 1978 as a trainee studio manager and Hitchhiker's office has had obviously just gone out and was almost immediately being repeated and it was on everyone's lips it's been the the new big thing in in technology because it was so They were sending stuff off to radio phonic workshop, and then they were getting it back And then editing into this wonderful series and we were all told that we had to listen to this and I listened to it And I absolutely own up immediately. I just thought I listened to I think the first episode. I thought oh dr Who with jokes? And I walked away. I was okay fine And I kind of missed where it began to grow into this thing until I was on night shifts as a studio manager We went to bush house For the world service and we did night shifts and setting in the newsroom on a quiet night when no one's invading anyone else You've got a lot of time on your hands, and they were they had all these sort of bookcase full of reels of tape Some of which were bloopers some of which were this and there was the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy Series one it all though at that time. It was nobody knew there was going to be more than one series No one outside of lights end So I listened to it and I suddenly got what was going on And I realized that this was just pushing the boundaries in the way that no, I mean it wasn't round the horn That's for sure And and that was that was the thing it was an eye opener for me as a and as an SM and as Someone who who I was actually intended to go to television I was I couldn't wait to leave radio and that was going to shake the dust of radio from my feet going working television I want I wanted to do what John did without the the tedious but necessary business of learning how to do it So This was you know, this was a bit of an eye opener I think in a way it's sort of The curse was then on me because I realized what radio could do and then in turn I Eventually became a radio light entertainment producer and that's when I heard all the inside stories about it that it was the first stereo production by the department and that apparently Con Mahoney, I can't remember who was actually head of the department at the time Played it back and he'd only got one speaker of his stereo wired in So he then asked Douglas and Simon Brett who produced the pilot Where all the other voices were because all he heard was one side So you hear all the other stories about How things can go wrong, but you know, it was groundbreaking it was inspiring and I at the time I never in a million years Thought I'd ever get to work on hitchhikers because it was gone by the time I was in there But I think it had that lasting effect on me. Absolutely So, how did you get to work on it? I mean, what was that process? I I was trying stuff out I was doing the usual boilerplate comedy shows like the news headlines on which I thank you sir on which I learned everything I know about comedy and timing and writing and editing scripts If you've got a put a I mean John knows this But if you have to put a live show on once a week in front of an audience and turn it around in eight hours Flat and put it out in the air. That's a heck of a good way to learn the business of editing But I was also doing other things and one of the program ideas that got me into light entertainment because one of your Tasks was to offer them something and if they liked it and bought it you had a better chance of getting a job there was putting Superman on trial for his 50th anniversary and In doing so I was going to write it and Neil Cargill was going to produce it because you couldn't write and produce God forbid and Neil Neil did a fine job, but But I we did this Superman Because it was his 50th anniversary and I had the idea of writing it like it was a film and that was the moment That's sort of I thought hang on a minute I don't need pictures to tell this story and that drew that drew me into other Comic book related projects. It got me into a relationship with DC Comics, which has lasted. Thank God to this day because I'm currently working on a job with them and The the the big upshot of it was that Douglas heard one of these productions rang my boss Jonathan James Moore It was then head of light end and said If we brought if if you were to adapt these the the last three novels of hitchhikers to Radio, do you think this chap Dirk would be interested in doing it? Well, I was banging on the door 22 Duncan Terrace before Douglas had put the phone down Holy smoke And And I still pinched myself because I really don't believe it happened, but it did happen and I had an interesting insight into Douglas really because He was we we had a I think I was there for two hours the first day We talked about hitchhikers for 10 minutes and then for one hour and 50 minutes. We talked about drums and guitars That kind of was how it worked Procrastination I'd say can creative Destruction So after hearing what What John was saying I was wondering whether do you think if if Douglas had had a writing partner They would have been much more prolific and turned out a lot of stuff that it was working on his own That actually stopped him being more prolific Anything would have helped he hated writing basically he never He never went into this to be a to be a screenwriter. That's right to be a to be a novelist He wanted a basically to write his material and he wanted to be out there and perform it And in which case he never would be on his own he would always be basically as a script a gag As part of a team so when you look at when he's the University Adam Smith Adams and we used to get I Didn't see basically the performance being performed All we used to see was these bizarre posters would appear in the house of Douglas in a chicken outfield on Brentwood station or what have you Absolutely loving it And churning out all this material of these guys and some of which we we went back and looked at again For the the Apollo his 60th birthday Of actually some of this material But it's only yes to the fact that The radio became the radio which so successful that we came into the book which as Marv's he picked up with Mark's play earlier That to turn the first book was actually really easy because he's already written it as a as a radio series So going on but basically yes him sat alone somewhere writing was was never a good idea Not at all So when you did when you did work with him John Did he take well to suggestions to notes to collaboration or or was he reluctant to take notes? No, no, he was great. I mean we So it was just baffling to me why he would put himself through the misery of I'm a team guy You know, I know that I don't do anything. I'm just good at picking people. So as a producer And so when you find somebody you get on with that well We shared exactly the same sense of humor both really interested in science and technology We've read all the science fiction books and we were friends. It was why would you not want that? But anyway, you wanted to do the lonely road and then that's that's fine. It's very unusual actually for Comedy to be written by one person. It's nearly always teams, you know you know, Muir and Norden and Gordon Simpson and Jones and Palin and Gleason Chapman and it's absolutely common because of that thing that What you need is a nutcase with all the ideas and somebody to tidy it up. That's it's classic. So But I'd never resented it because although it was a shock at the time it Is there was a kick I needed I Saying to somebody in the queue of the bookshop that book we wrote the meaning of lift together I know people who've had that book since 1983 in the in meetings. They sometimes say Have you ever read a book called the meaning of life? And I go, yeah, I kind of wrote it And they pull it out of their pocket just like this and they go, oh my god There's a name under Douglas's that's weird So And I you know, I spent a 45 years a producer I don't mind being a relatively behind-the-scenes person. I don't like Dirk I'm very happy to help other people do it. Well, I'm not to take the the obvious credit But it's like so you're talking about the writing the book James. So We booked this holiday Corfu the wrong bit of Corfu the Northwest corner where nobody Well, they still they go there now But it was like basically a beach covered in seaweed a church and a taverna and two little houses on the hill and a lot of dust everywhere and We booked this holiday and Douglas sacked me in the interim But of course I couldn't afford two holidays a year. I'd already spent the money. So we went together and In the mornings, I would eventually get up and go down to to turn the manthos. He's still alive He's 80 something now this bonkers Greek On the beach and Douglas would sit you could see him from the taverna up on the hill in this and the veranda with these big Writer's hat on enormous BBC type writers. He'd stolen from the office Tapping away and you could hear these people cursing and going Hear the clunk of things in the ways pope basket and eventually about 1115 you'd see him look at his watch and he'd slope Down to the divinery and open a bottle of retzina and that that was how the first novel came to be written And he had to throw it away at the end of the month because it was actually Kurt Vonnegut novel He hadn't found his own style yet. It wasn't that easy to turn the scripts into into a novel Anyway used to play this game When we down at the taverna on the beach which his his old English teacher had taught him Which is you have to say what's an epping, you know, what's a What's a heckman white? What's an what's an ely that kind of thing and out of that came eventually the meaning of lift so That month wasn't wasted, but it was wasted on hitchhike. He started all over again when he got back to London and then eventually found his feet So it was you know, it was fantastic fun working with Douglas. I mean I enjoyed it I wouldn't have fired him if I find somebody that good you cling to them, you know as much as you can But it's my lot in life dick. I've been fired by Ronan because an eight times now And you touched on the fact that sci-fi and comedy is not it's not common It's rare and Kurt Vonnegut Maybe it was a satirist bought satire to to sci-fi Perhaps only Robert Sheckley as someone that was riding out now comedy sci-fi and dirk you had to take on the mental You had to work with the words on the hitchhikers. How did you find it? And and what did you poison chalice? I'm still recovering. Well, you know, there's always history of hitchhikers and I come in this enthusiastic baby Light-end producer and realize I'm walking into a minefield and it happened quite early on actually And I was thinking this is as John was speaking because actually I think one of the things about Douglas was he kind of was like An oyster in order to make a pearl he needed a bit of grit And I think that John was that bit of gritters at one point and it didn't have to be I mean And I think John was a positive piece of grit. I think they were negative Stay with me. I'm not sure where I'm going I'm This Immediately that the initial effort to to to bring about the tertiary phase was in 1992 93 and I had rung Peter Jones. He was aboard. I'd rung Simon Jones He was aboard Sue Sheridan I was bumping into in the sound house and she was definitely aboard I mean everybody was up for it But as soon as you start this is the thing about hitchhikers it attracts It doesn't just attract lovely people as are in this room now. He carefully said It also attracts All the sort of kind of you know Everybody's in it see what they can make out of it, which is kind of which would bring us on to the tour Earlier this decade, but let's not go there But the thing that happened there was suddenly everybody in management was really interested how it was going to turn out and there was this enormous meeting of people about who was going to write the script and The point where Douglas and I were talking that hadn't been decided yet And I'd thrown my hat into the ring quite early and I said look I could I could do a script and then you could read it And if you like it and you think it's okay, you can stick your name on it as long as somebody pays me I'm fine about that, but you know if it if it helps to have it all under one roof, but in the end Some agent or another introduced a very very charming writer into the mix called Alec Roe who was absolutely lovely and Alec Generated a first script for tertiary Into which he inserted a talking dinosaur and I was in my office in 16 Leningham Street where light entertainment was based at the time and this script came in and the Brown Miner envelope And I got it out and I got to page three and I thought I'm not sure this is where this is supposed to go at all and I had a courier take it round to Douglas's and I think I Didn't hear the explosion I'm assuming outdoors. It was it was audible by Selfridges because Jonathan got a phone call. No, I got a phone call from Douglas saying, can you are you able to come around now and the tone of his Voice suggested that I really ought to And I did and I went in and Jane showed me in and said he's downstairs sort of just with this cursory gesture So I went downstairs to the basement front room at Duncan Terrace and there was Douglas on his MacBook or whatever the equivalent was then Panging away furiously and there's this sort of driven quality that you've kind of suggested But he was absolutely focused like laser beam and he said I can't write this bloody book all over again I can't write this bloody book all over again, and I said was it the dinosaur. He said of course it was the fucking Did you read it and I said well I read enough to know that I thought that might be a problem And he's sort of he got about five pages in or whatever it was and he stopped and he closed the lid of the machine He said I can't do this with you know, this is a You know, this is a problem And I said okay Well, you know my office still there But you know do what you feel you have to do because I was happy you see I at the John makes a very important point There are people like John and I who basically are the tidier uppers and those the sort of Make it fit the format without killing the the spontaneity without killing the initial Spark you have to actually shape things to go out there in order for them to succeed And you have to have a sort of ordered mind. I think is is probably right Yes, and important not to like talking dinosaurs too much Have an inkling that your writer might be a bit pissed off So I kind of went back to the office and that was the talking dinosaur was where the 1993 Production of tertiary Didn't happen because we could have made it ten years before we did if This thing hadn't that I'm not saying I came in and saved it, but in the end I Was allowed to do the adaptation and what I did was try and make it as Douglassy If that's a sorry terrible adjective as possible I just tried to channel him and I'm not in his league in any sense not in terms of IQ not in terms of comedy Now certainly not in terms of altitude but But I do I was in the room with him when he was doing this and it impressed upon me How important it was that it had to reflect What he was trying to do in the books and I think by the time he wrote life the universe and everything Yes, it was an adapted Doctor Who script. Yes, it had elements of other things in but he had found his voice as an author by then And it's very much a hitchhiker book And so that led me into doing the the other two series from the third fourth and fifth were Based on Douglassy's books and by the time I got to the fifth series I felt we needed closure So I tried to bring the Vogue-ons back in a little earlier in the curve than he had and so on because I had the Advantage hindsight here when he was writing it. He was inventing on the hoof and I think that Trying to put on Douglassy's writing shoes That's that's a terrible analogy You're on it you're hiding to nothing But all I could do was try and channel them as best I could and And it's been immense on it, but I'm also very relieved to step back from it now And another couple of Douglassy's interest it seems to me informed the hitchhikers Work is his interest in the future and computers and where science is going But he also is interested in ecology and where the planet's going I mean, was he always like that or is it something he developed en route? No, there's something he very much developed en route. I mean he took the very early decision In his education that he would basically went down the art side. He went to Cambridge and studied English If he'd had his time again, it would have been completely the other way, but it's a lot of that the interest computers basically was an easy one because if you sit in front of a typewriter and you have to write There's really not a lot else that the typewriter is going to do for you apart from sit there. Hence the bars Suddenly basically word processes turn up and this was a brilliant notion because you could sit in front of it And you could be gainfully employed doing something with this machine now. It wasn't what he was being paid to do That was actually relevant But basically that he could and suddenly this opened up than the door that he could talk to these other people around the Basically, you know, he had an email address when most people never knew what a computer was And I think it was just his fascination of this world and how things got to work and very early on in the One of his other great distraction therapy was the digital village When they had this brilliant idea that everyone else I knew where my towel is it's on the floor In the digital village basically that they were all gonna make the dot-com fortunes And at a very early on he kind of realized that this this dot-com fortune idea was fantastic None of them could work out where the money was coming from But that didn't seem to put anyone else off so it didn't put them off And they absolutely and one of the guys that he was involved in that is chap called Richard Richard Harris who If any of you sit and watch basically television on demand That is an idea that Richard Harris came out with And nobody would listen to him So he quietly just went and did it and then sold them the company to them for millions and millions and millions and now They listened to him, but he he basically evolution was what he studied and Suddenly realized that that actually evolution and computers he went in it from the whole evolution side But computers are fascinating and you can actually then turn the two upside down and use what they all learned about the evolution to basically fuel basic computing which absolutely Fascinated Douglas and then he met Richard Dawkins And that was it but it's something that the spark in his in his life sort of you know completely cemented But I think you know had he had his time again And had he gone down that road. I think he would He would still have achieved great things. I think in the world of AI what have you today? He would you know, he would have been an absolute trailblazer How he would have got the comedy element into it. I have no idea What and he's interested in endangered species and trying to save the planet that way was that caught up in that No, that was distraction therapy as well He basically was sat there super you know having to work on do stuff and the observer magazine phoned him up and say Hey, we'd like to send you on an all-expenses paid trip to Madagascar With Mark Carl Woodeen who nobody knew at the time who basically then was a very respected zoologist And we want you to basically rummage around on this this tropical island looking for our eyes He wasn't gonna say no to that But it was a great byproduct because I think in many ways it's the best written of all Douglas's it's it's his It's his favorite. I mean he always said that basically, you know, what was his favorite creation? It was it was last chance to see and It's yeah, I mean that then opened the doors and basically so everything that his fascination And it basically just tied in because evolution Animals and a lot of him was just the futility the utter futility that surely everyone can see what we're doing to all these creatures I can see it. You can see it Mark who basically always said that he didn't kind of know why he spent all those years studying zoology To become one of the world's and he has just written the the absolute affiliative Bible on whales and dolphins that And he basically said that you know you get to that point in life that you you know absolutely everything You know what we're doing and yet it takes somebody like Douglas who knows absolutely nothing about the subject matter Mark always said he thought the Douglas had done more for conservation than any other single person that he knew that he knew of And that was you know 30 odd years ago and it is still You know, it is still going out there the last chance to see it Still got mileage and still people who look at it study who who read it and it's just where Douglas Douglas always have this fascination that you could go to In fact, he was bloody annoying actually You could go you could go with him to watch a play or you go to a console You go to him with something and he'd be sat there And you'd be sat here and you'd be all watching the same show and then the car on the way home You would discuss what you'd seen to realize that I watched it from being here You watched it from being here and he watched it for being sat up in a corner of the room And he saw something that none of the rest of us did and The reason it was really annoying is because you think well, why didn't you tell me? That you were gonna be sat up there because the show that you saw was a damn sight better than the one that will And that was his whole thing on life You kind of got the feeling that yes, we were all living this life We're all going through the same thing and yet he saw everything from a completely different aspect That's absolutely true right from when I first met him. He was seeing the footlights He's told these things all smokers, which are kind of auditioned for the proper show and Sort of students used to turn up. You had to write your own stuff and I remember Douglas Coming on this amazingly tall bloke And doing this monologue about a tree that went on for about 20 minutes and people just looking at the notes in their program going No idea Because you know it took the rest of the world time to catch up really Because he always had such a weird take on things that if you didn't know him I mean now, you know that The corpus of work is so amazing. It's iconic and it's a text and almost like holy rip But when he started He was so odd that it took a really unusual person to get what he was doing, you know, I mean, you know, he'd do this I used to produce a show called weak ending which is a topical, you know political comedy went out very late at night on Fridays and Douglas got a little commission to write it and of course it was all about well the sort of things are in hitchhike He said no Douglas. This is about the news I'm thinking a bit dull if it's about the news That's the brief of the program So it I was it could say another interesting thing about meeting Richard Dawkins, which is I think it was You know became one of his passions atheism Douglas and I thought it slightly got in the way of stuff because The one thing you want as a writer is not to be certain about things I think if you if you start getting certainties, which he was so certain that Richard was right. I mean Richard's actually now backtracked a bit. He said he's only ninety nine point nine percent Because it's not scientific if you have you absolutely sure If you're a hundred percent certain, that's not science, but if there's some doubt it's okay, but I found that There was sort of areas that you couldn't talk to about with Douglas towards the end of his life before he would get on a Bit of a podium talk about it the good side that was conservation Which is always fascinating and passionate and the different the other thing was like, you know, there's no meaning There's no point. There's no no nothing. It's kind of like Doesn't feel like that to me Douglas, but never never did to him either. I thought it was not Not a healthy position personally, but it's funny Having adapted the last three books for someone who is a professed atheist how many references to God and Gods there are in it and then there's sort of and with I'm this I'm not ascribing anything to Douglas or anyone else But it's just very interesting. There's a sort of theistic culture But this is the thing that atheists are much more interested in God than the rest of us Most of us don't go, you know, three weeks. That's thinking about it. No, there's no such thing. Well, yeah He's one of his highlights. Actually Chris was down in Dorset. He used to love going to mid-night I'm at midnight mass any excuse to go to church. I thought it was a simple thing because he loved the core music the music side of it, but And his prescience of you know, like with hitchhikers sort of it almost Pre-guessing the internet and then with them with last chance to see Pre-guessing the current interest in conservation. I mean, that's one of the things that keeps his work alive Isn't it makes it seem so vital today and keeps it fresh? And I don't think that was something he planned was it that was just a byproduct It's really interesting that the thing about hitchhiker is one of those things will stand forever because it was Douglas's own truth Do you know what I mean? Especially those first two books I think and the radio series there's something about them That will stand forever and you know, I know kids You know 14 year olds today who read those first two books as if they've just been printed and they just It doesn't seem set in time. I read them It seems like it seems a book written in the 70s to me, but kids don't feel like that You've said that to me you said haven't hasn't it dated we were talking about something and we were talking about you felt it It sounded as if it was of its era and yet it was me who dated not the books Oh, I wouldn't go that you said I wouldn't go there John But what's interesting is that you so many people discover it when they're between 12 and 14 and and when we did the tours and It was wonderful because a lot of breed people brought their kids and it's the kids who are falling about laughing and the kids could not know That Simon and Jeff for the original Ford and Arthur or anything like this They were just laughing at the material and and this was the high point for me And this is a story I've told many times what I tell it quickly again was when Douglas's mom came with Jane to the Southampton show and We met in the foyer beforehand and of course everybody's in dressing gowns and towels and they've got their kids in the same and Jan Douglas's mom said to me says I'm not sure I'm going to like this and I said oh, what's wrong? She said it's all a bit like a cult, isn't it? Yeah, it kind of but actually in the most inoffensive nice way really and Jane said don't worry. I'll text you if we leave Fine So we do this show and I was Selfishly playing drums in the band and helping with the sound effects because I wasn't going to miss it for anything because it really was enormous fun and At halftime go backstage grab a glass of water Look at the texts and the first one says mum mum is is enjoying the band She says Douglas sort of like this The second one is mum is laughing at the jokes and the third one is mum is on her feet clapping So there's a fighting chance mum might still be here at the end of the year and indeed she wasn't we met at the pub down the road from the Mayflower and And she came up to me and she slapped me on both cheeks quite hard and I thought ah obviously Act 2 needs some work But she and she said When my husband and I your dad Used to go to bed and hear it We would fall asleep because it was quite late at night and we didn't really understand it But I've now I've seen it with all these people in the room laughing I realized how funny Douglas was and that was a wonderful moment because she hadn't known just that Douglas's stuff made people laugh the way it did and that made the whole Thing worthwhile that that that trip to the to the show I think that was kind of almost the defining moment of her when she did realize that it was funny because up to that point Hitchhikers basically the birth of hitchhikers in the house. She would just be sat there making peanut butter sandwiches And farming them up and never knowing if it was a good, you know Was it a good time to knock on this door and was it not a good time? And it's quite funny just before coming here early today I was going through some stuff and there was a letter from General Bell to Douglas basically saying at the end of the series But he's saying here are two awards. Obviously Douglas wasn't around to pick it up I understand a lot of the cast and people you know upset There's not gonna be another series But the way that he hints even in that letter that he's still at that point not sure if it's funny Yeah, and that so to mum basically the whole thing it was it wasn't a pleasant process Hitchhikers being born in all the forms that it came through And then when Douglas Ed Victor who famously went and sold the rights to one of his books for for millions Which upset everyone in the publishing world because what you did as an agent is he went to the publisher of the last book and said My dear fellow, would you like to publish the next book same fee rounded up a bit? Ed basically threw it out the window and went out into the marketplace and said Douglas Adams is gonna write a book. How much money are you gonna give and it was something like 2.2 million pounds a Douglas made a really really really profoundly stupid mistake and he divided the number of words that he was going to deliver By 2.2 million quid so any of you who saw basically that the markers at the play early today That was his notion that he would go upstairs He'd be in Duncan Terrace and And Sue Freestone who is his editor and she but before they got to the point when he was locked in hotel rooms she would sit in his in his kitchen and he'd be in his study on the top floor and He would so I sit up there and he go typing and typing and typing and typing and he'd come down by sort of Ten o'clock in the morning coffee and he'd have a thousand words and Sue would sit there thinking. Thank you God, this is brilliant and off he go upstairs and he come down at lunchtime and he proper these pages in front of her And she couldn't help but notice, but it was significantly less words That was on the pages when he come down at ten o'clock in the morning And she think well don't say anything don't say anything because obviously he's gone And he's got this as there's a plan and then he disappeared by the end of the day He would have got those a thousand words down to a hundred and fifty But as far as he was concerned they were a hundred and fifty words worthy of what he was being paid For those 150 words what really pissed him off at the time is that Stephen Fry who is another distraction therapy? Not in that way Who who live around the corner and they used to argue amongst themselves as to who bought the first apple mac in the UK? Second Stephen was absolutely convinced he gave in the Douglas. I'll let you buy basically the first one Douglas As long as we can tell the world that I bought the second one Unfortunately at that point Douglas came out with a receipt for two Apple Macs So Stephen had a bit that okay, he bought the third one But he would sit there wanting to go upstairs and play Basically play on computers play do anything and Sue's say I'm really really sorry Stephen But until he comes down with a decent body of work. It's not happening And over this period the pair of them basically Sue was saying to Stephen Do you know what you could do this and he said well I could do what you could you could write a book You could sort of go I couldn't write a book honest She said you could write a book you write a book and I will edit it for him And he didn't say anything about it, but he disappeared for three weeks and came back with the hippopotamus Of which then Douglas Douglas and Stephen had an awful lot of fallings out And I think that was the first one basically they realized that how easy he found it was to go and do it Whereas Douglas would just be sat there with this. Yeah, there's constant constant block as to how to actually get it out Well, thank you so much. I do think now that I have a much clearer image of Douglas in my mind Hearing from you three guys. Thanks ever so much and thank you all for coming and then it's great as I say to have it here in the British Library, it's it's fitting a Tribute place to have his work in and also it's great to be on stage with three positive grits. Thank you