Hitchhikers Guide: 42nd Birthday Celebration

hello welcome to a special hitchhiker's guide 42nd birthday celebration this panel discussion is part of blue dots a weekend in outer space featuring live broadcasts from the worlds of science music and culture from blue dot you can find out more and watch and listen to the rest of this weekend's activities at a weekend in outer space.com i'm kevin john davis and i'm the archivist for hitchhikers and i'm proud to be joined today by an array of hit tracker legends um including uh cast members uh writers co-writers and those who knew and worked with douglas adams across the years or maybe were even related to him and so first of all i'd like to introduce james thrift douglas's half brother and very much a keeper of the flame and um james uh you must have some great memories of your big brother and i'm sure we're going to cover some of them as during this hour so i mean you were just a little boy when your big brother douglas was um hammering away at the typewriter can you remember any little juicy bits of that era oh i mean i was 10 when it all came out so the start of him basically hammering away a typewriter uh was was was very early maya in my upbringing down the uh down the corridor um but uh primarily the the memory not so much of him as he used to always listen to the same album or the same tr song uh over and over and over so he's like paul simon's one trick pony um really oh constantly constantly uh my sweet george harrison my sweet lord um which but the anointing for him his turntable was was was precariously on a shelf on a partition wall um so you didn't actually have to close the door in the house that hard for it to jump the record which absolutely um so i i think i was probably hitchhikers would have come out an awful lot earlier if i hadn't actually been there i reckon well that's um just one of many excuses i'm sure that douglas threw up for not quite being ready on time um somebody who knows a bit more about that we're going to bring in now and that's john lloyd who uh well legendary producer of so many programs but we are going right back to the early days john you helped douglas on the very first radio series how long had you known him before that uh well i met him when we were at cambridge together he was in the next door college and we were both in uh reviews or trying to be in reviews uh and footlights in those days was considered a bit naff um and the cool the cool thing was in college review so i ran up on it um at trinity and douglas was next door at some john's so we're kind of rivals we used to meet at parties but and he was the year below me so we didn't really get to know each other until we both came down and started living in london and we became very very good friends i mean best absolute besties and spent before hitchhiker uh douglas wanted to be a writer and so did i but i was so poor i had to take a job as a radio producer to at least and douglas you know crashed around he wrote with graham chapman and we so used to come back from producing things like the news quiz and quote unquote and uh and then we'd write in the evenings and at weekends you know and we did loads of stuff we um we did a treatment for robert stigwood for a film at the guinness book of records all these were science fiction based because we were both science fiction nuts you know we knew every all of vonnegut and all of you know harry harrison the stainless steel rat and you know uh and then we did a wrote a pilot called snow 7 in the white dwarfs which is about two astronomers sharing an observatory at the top of everest and nothing nothing really took it was kind of dispiriting especially for douglas and the weird thing was that he was going to um he was going to give it all up he was going to chuck in the towel and i came back to we shared a house together with a mad guitarist whose name stranger was gibson in rowhampton and i came back from work and douglas is sitting on the on the bed in his room which it was a furnished house that we'd rented and it had seven wardrobes in it we never found what was in sixth and just only he kept his few clothes in and the other six were all locked and he's sitting on his bed really close to tears thinking i got i can't do this johnny i've gotta go and become a shipbroker in hong kong which oddly enough he was inspired because jeffrey perkins had been that a few years before turning to radio production and literally the next week he commissioned the pilot of hitchhiker and and everything was on the road and the whole world changed can you remember that james that that moment when it was all kicking off for douglas it was um it was a strange time because uh he was originally the script editor of doctor who um which for a nine-year-old kid was just it doesn't come much bigger than you you're living with somebody who that was when i first met him when he was i went and interviewed him for a fan magazine in 1978 and he was very much in the mode of well i've got this various things to do i've got these scripts to do and he and he was already talking about the bbc had talked to him about an animated hitchhiker and um and he then referred to the book and he just said darn i've got this book to write if only i could get the bloody thing finished and you just think well with hindsight you know drop everything else douglas just get the book done because surely he got he got the scripted job after hitchco had come out after the first series indeed um it it sort of overlapped it was very much um yeah he took the doctor who job because it was a nice regular day job yeah which he did for a year but during that year it all went crazy um the album came out there was a stage show everything was kicking off and of course they talked about the television version talking of which i see sandra dickinson well welcome son thank you for joining us it's a pleasure were you aware of hitchhiker before you got involved in the television version i was but um my ex-husband had been listening to the radio and i was asked because i was working with uh alan j w bell with roy kneer on the clairvoyant around the same time and i was asked to go along to audition for hitchhikers so i quickly read the book and thought it was wonderful but i thought i'm not going to get this because it's for an arabic looking woman um with long dark hair and but i went along to this audition very excited because it was an extraordinary book and uh it was a very small room and there was this giant man behind everybody else who was douglas um and i auditioned for it and it was very jolly and everything but i thought well that was that and then i was offered it so i was absolutely thrilled because for some reason douglas thought i was absolutely right for this thing that he wrote that was completely different from me and it also i mean it was defying the kind of dumb blonde role that you got cast in quite a lot because you know the trillion is is a yeah and well you had a physics background didn't you in your studies uh well i'm more psychoanalytic i grew up with a very famous psychoanalyst um and i studied botany at university so it wasn't really physics physics but all right i got that bit wrong sorry yeah um no it's more botany and cell biology related um but i do occasionally look up at the sky and i wonder and wonder how we all got here especially now um yeah no it was really it was really thrilling to get to be a part of it we'll come back we'll talk about the television a bit more later on yeah but i'd like to go back to um to john to ask about writing the radio uh series which is where it all began this is what we're celebrating 42 years since the beginning of the radio show um john can you remember that because you used a bit of your book that you were writing didn't you or was it another script uh well i i i don't think any of it got used but i was right trying to write a science fiction novel at the time called gigax and um so i just said i've got pretty stuck you can have a look at the manuscript and see if you can find anything in it but oddly not because of this i just looked up the file today and my god it was terrible i mean [Laughter] i mean hopeless not something you're going to release hello there's service for you you're being well looked after can't get this done yeah so the thing is that as is well known um douglas was uh fond of missing deadlines and he got terribly stuck about four episodes in sort of four and a half really and he said johnny can you help me out here because i i just run out of ideas the pressure's terrible and as i remember it i'm so difficult these stories are so old now you never know how true they are but it had taken him 10 months to write the first four episodes and we knocked off the last two in just over three weeks it was fantastic fun there was no pain because of course you know once you there's two of you you can share all the woes and the problems and discuss them and most comedy writing is done in twos it's very unusual it's quite unusual to be a solo comedy writer but um yeah and it was it was really good fun and very exciting and i remember being there when the when the idea of 42 came up um and you know we were very very close as i say and then [Music] when when it all took off which again was amazing because we all mooched into radio where douglas had the next office to me as a radio producer when the first one went out and uh he said breezily said are there any reviews in the papers and we all laugh she said well you know douglas if you're lucky jillian reynolds gives you a mention once every 10 years in her radio column but otherwise not a chance mate and we opened all the papers because we lived on topical programs you know the news quiz and the news headlines and things so the papers are everywhere all over the office and we open them up one by one there they all were there's a reason at times what the hell is kind of exploded didn't it i mean unbelievably exciting you know because i mean both of us had put in really put in the hours you know we used to once he got a job as a radio producer we used to sit there in the evenings after hours writing animations you know moonlighting from we wrote this to these shows called doctor snuggles with us nothing animations but douglas had really put in the hours i mean like five years of really pushing and pushing to try and succeed including being at university and suddenly it was like it was magic you know that everything was going to come good and suddenly all these publishers started calling up i think six publishers asked us to lunch and when you're 25 or 24 as he was i think it's just incredible it's like your dream come true i'm gonna bring in our other guests now um uh phil pope is there who people might remember from um kytv and all the other uh the other stuff and the heebie jeebies so many other things chelsea one two three which i was there in the audience for um and toby longworth who is um has played several characters on the radio version of hitchhiker and on stage including sassy bartholos and wow bagger toby you were a big fan weren't you radio show yeah me and neil sleet i've just uh my wife's just giving me a feeling so i i don't know doesn't quite fit um i mean neil sleet the uh the guy who reads the news on radio 4 and who also reads the news uh uh i think in hitchhikers or more than me he took part in hitchhiker several times yeah he did indeed and we used to we used to absolutely love it and so we went and again it's it's that thing you you kind of you love it um as a fan and then you've you turn around one day and you you found you're actually actually in it and it's one of those kinds of hilarious uh turns of events is that the right pluralization turn of events i don't know it's like it's one of those things that you just hope your life will con include and it did um at the in 2009 at the royal festival hall um owen colfer who wrote the sixth book you know penguin were doing a big splash for him to launch that book um and um he was very excited when he arrived in the auditorium and all the cast were there because he said finally i can put faces to those voices that i've been living with all these years he was genuinely very funnish about it i'm going to ask phil phil um yeah how was you were moving in comedy circles at that time were you aware of douglas and what was going on with hitchhiker uh yes because he cast a very large shadow physically apart from anything else yes i mean we we were very much around also of course you know we were working with um with jeffrey jeffrey perkins so because he was he was you know really it was it was very much you know the his day job was was doing that and with lisa as well sort of um you know acting as a studio manager et cetera so it was we were we were all aware of what was going on and we all knew douglas and of course i was um also very interested in dogs because douglas being so musical and and he was he was always um you know we were always talking about music and and that's and that sort of thing and he was a great fan of as as as you said before of paul simon but he could also play the guitar you know which was amazing um in fact i remember years later being at a party when he had uh when he and he used to collect guitars when he used to go around the world um and he and he was there with um what's his name david from pink floyd and he and he and he said he's like oh dave i've got a new i've got a new guitar um come and have a look so he's we went up to this room and there he had about 15 guitars we have this brand new guitar and he said i picked it up from manny's in new york um anyway um yeah here have a go david kilmore picked it up and went i can't play it douglas and he said well come on come on we're ridiculous he said no it's left-handed all of dogs's guitars are left-handed but the story goes that he kept one didn't he james he had a hit where he did uh which david gilmour actually he i think he sold it recently in his collection he kept a right-handed uh left-handed guitar in his house uh and douglas kept a right-handed guitar and hit in in his house so when each of them went round oh they could sit down brilliant they could sit in it he you know going from those uh you know small beginnings he went to that kind of superstar status where he was actually up on stage with pink floyd playing at one of their concerts yeah that was his that was his 42nd birthday uh present uh yeah he went up he played brain damage at earl's court which um yeah it's kind of one of those moments where you kind of you think he's the effect on him was actually he always wanted to be a rock star um and and suddenly i think after that he actually realized that he didn't want to be a rock star um but he had been there um and he'd done it but i know that was huge it was one of the rewards of of what he created because he he drew people towards him he was very interested in meeting uh various other uh like-minded folk and um i think i think that was you know when he started to move in those starry circles and can you remember some of those parties that he used to throw oh it used to be um the the one because uh we still got all these photographs actually a chap here who who we know uh who played parship plugged uh which is i think that the uh douglas party that which actually was reviewed in the independent party it was a party that was reviewed in the independent it was astonishing and we were sat there trying to work out how many billionaires were in the room um and there was kind of paul allen who was wandering around who was the co-founder of microsoft um who was completely befuddled by an extension block um he couldn't work out why we need an extension block you know surely you just gonna build another another wing to your house and put more plugs on the wall why would you want this temporary sort of thing um but to be sat there yeah david gilmour gary brooker um at the time there's rixie and and robbie mcintosh and people so effectively paul mccartney's backing band um you know and half of uh pink floyd might have you sat in his sitting room um playing they were uh they were fantastic parties um everything and if i don't if we can share some of those photographs during during this we're going to add some pictures later on but there's love there's one of douglas utterly blissed out listening to the music which i love it's um and he i mean he was in a marvelous sort of thing but yes he was he was so fanatical about so many things um and whether it was like music or whether it was computers uh or evolution uh and he was in a position that he could basically he could reach out to to the greater goods so richard dawkins um um uh and there's one marvelous one where he um he suddenly realized that he had friends who knew gary brooker pro cohara and douglas is an absolute pro-kaharan nut uh and they basically simply here's gary's phone number give him a call and he sat there for ages trying to say well how am i gonna do this i mean i can't just phone up say hello um you know hi i'm a really big fan of yours um and so he didn't call him and he didn't want to and eventually gary basically phoned him up and said for crying out loud i hear you're going to call me um and again gary and frankie who became you know became lifelong friends yeah that was when i had a meeting with douglas i was doing the making of hitchhikers um documentary and i had this meeting and he said he was off to give some kind of inspirational talk to a very elite group and um he just casually name dropped that there was going to be i think it was george lucas francis ford coppola and the head of sony but it was i loved the casual way he dropped it you know in the conversation little did he know that they were probably saying we're going to be meeting him exactly yes yes well look at what um you know eon musk has done with um when that when he fired his um car into space oh yeah yeah yeah don't panic on the screen and the rumor is that there was a copy of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy in the glove box douglas used to get the digital village and he's he's sort of foray into the digital economy yeah and um he used to get really really frustrated he he used to have these ideas so that if i went online to go and buy something um and they didn't have it but wouldn't it be brilliant if you were just driving down a road and a device that obviously he didn't know about because the iphone hadn't been invented yet uh wouldn't it be brilliant i'm driving down up the street um for it to ping up and say hey do you know that album that you're really really interested in it's it's they're selling it in the shop here uh and he used to drop emails to jeff bezos and the very very days of amazon and basically saying you know wouldn't it brilliant if um and it was only after he died and we were going through emails to actually find the email conversations that they used to have um jeff bezos who basically sat there going oh my god i never thought about that the very idea of the of the hitchhiker's guide itself this incredible compendious device that you can get into your pocket i mean you know it's always amazed me that he's predicted that so successfully and the the prop the tv prop i remember i think you're involved in that where you kevin they're trying to make it so it would that batboy when you're trying but it came from the same mold but to get the picture on it was quite a pallava wasn't it it was there was a 16mm projector projecting on the back of the book the bat comes off all right i've got a bit of foam in there now but it's a piece of opal glass and the projector would be shining on there the projector was on a little trolley and the little trolley would uh swivel around it was on a long arm simon jones would be holding it and um it could be moved around and the projector would move follow unerringly you know i've got a little bit behind the scenes footage to show you that brilliant [Music] is one of those and that i think the single most extraordinary thing about the whole hitchhiker's ethos or you know the event of it the myth the the thing of it is that we now all of us have one in our pocket yeah and the way that it updates you know that yeah in he didn't see an ipod he didn't see an iphone he didn't see an ipad all the things and he would have been a great he would have been a great advocate um for it and he would have been championing the technology as soon as it arrived i'm sure obviously i remember having a over lunch um years ago with uh with a few people and um and then doug was saying you know wouldn't it be great if you could actually watch the television program when you wanted to watch it and and we used to say well no i'm just saying well you know well things like the fa cup final you know you don't want to do that everyone wants to watch have a shared experience and there used to be a program called you know did you see even you know it's one of the first tv eating tv type of things and i sort of said well it's just because you know you can't work out the vcr's just come out and you can't work out how to do it douglas i mean if you just worked out how to do that you'd be fine even you know because he was going around the world on these book tours and he was missing out on all these programs but of course actually it was a much you know it was a much more visionary thing that he was saying i have a little clip of douglas talking about it in 1995 and how he was listening to that even then he was an advocate for getting this country completely wired up long time ago there's another interesting thing about the technology that the fact that he was ahead of the technology all the time because when he first started becoming really well known as a writer nobody knew what he looked like because it wasn't google it wasn't wicked you couldn't just look somebody up and so very very few people knew him so he could sit on planes and things and have conversations with people and they wouldn't have no idea who he was and he used to love that he said it was fame because you'd be anonymous in the pub but if you want to say somebody says what do you do so i i write science fiction books oh really what's your name i'm douglas oh my god that's a famous story of him being on a plane to chicago and he was talking to this guy he was a massive fan and he said well you know hey douglas you got to come to a party we got a party you know and gave him the address so i just turned up to this massive gated community on the lakeshore you know and uh rang the doorbell and the apartment and he said the guy opens the door and he goes yeah and douglas says i'm douglas adams and the guys oh my god you're douglas hey everyone douglas adams is here man this is so great there's a great party and eventually he sort of says wondering where his host is the guy who invites him and where's where's phil and the guy says who's oh oh he lives upstairs he comes to the wrong party sandra do you remember do you remember the um launch or not launch for the rat party that doug was through after um the final day of hitchhikers on telly do you remember going i remember going to parties at his house um i don't remember that particular one no it no i just remember i just remember um going to i mean going to his house with the very high ceilings and um gilmore was there um um i mean there were a lot of famous people there i went to one of the parties about the time my marriage was about to implode that was a bit stressful but um but it was lovely you know going to them because um i mean it seems like everybody who was there was famous for something he liked he liked the high life didn't he because one of these great things while you were making the tv series was um a good food guide yeah and we drove all over cornwall going to all these wonderful restaurants at the end of the day's filming they'd throw me into makeup and do my hair for tomorrow's shoot and i put this scarf on a bit like a sort of babushka and off we go into the night to these wonderful restaurants it is vw golf yeah yeah oh god it was a whole it was almost like a secret life i was leading you know um you know along with my own cote d'iv um but he he was um he was just this huge life force in every sense wasn't he he was i've got a nice photograph that we could pop in here if you um uh with douglas on the set you're on that turntable set that was the last gold yeah control room and douglas is standing there chatting to you and then of course in order to get him out the way the producer would stick him behind the scenery so that he could do the voice of eddie the computer to feed you and i think it was the producer's way of just getting him out the way yeah no we we um we almost kind of linked up at one point when we were both single and then um he was just so tall i thought i could never really reach him somehow and his his brain was sort of six foot four inches up there you know minus the top one um he was always sort of distracted by you know otherworldly things somehow so um but but we were great dear friends i'm listening to all this and thinking oh my god i never thought of that i mean it was some i i felt like just a sort of small cog in the entire universe of hitchhikers and i was already i came to it so you had quite um a saucy costume which is a script doug this was very specific that he wanted it to be a little bit unseemly [Laughter] yes somebody brought it recently because i although i wasn't in the original radio i have been in a lot of the subsequent you know recorded variations of it and somebody brought the costume to this photo shoot oh maybe a couple of years ago and i thought it was ready yeah there's no way i'm gonna get in that i mean i would sort of go on my thigh now you know um i was a good deal slimmer in those days i'm determined to get back to that but um probably be on my deathbed and kevin showed me some pictures recently and i thought oh my god i was amazing because when you're in that mode you think oh i i rather plain and you know i don't i don't have this and i don't have that and now i see it now i think i should have been conquering the world but it's really fascinating to listen to all your stories because um as i say i i had a very small focus to learn the lines and do the do them on the first take and behave myself and just count myself so lucky to be a part of it you came back to the radio series later on yeah yeah trillian was um uh infatuated with um wow bagger rather improbably what have you done probably what a love story that was yeah it was in two hearts clifton twain finally it was radio let's face it oh no you have to snatch it away i went to uh i went to one reading of the original script um at the geographical society and i was invited to come along and then uh susan sharon didn't was sheridan was introduced as and now the real trillian well that was a bit of a below the belt you know what i mean i mean we're all real variations of you know i don't realize that washington come really yeah um but and then when they began to weave us together in the interpretation of the part i must say i did get rather confused as to who i was well i think it was it was lovely because um douglas clearly wrote that idea into the fifth book the last hitchhiker book that he wrote the idea of two trillions and it was clear from the description that you were the other trillion yeah the real trillion the real trillion yeah depending on which way you look at it yeah when we did the recent british library uh reading of it i i did try to uh pay a bit of homage to susan by doing it in a slightly more english accented reading than than my actual tv appearance um but still yeah and and toby this really uh live performance of hitchhiker you've both taken parts in the in various live shows what's it like to do this kind of material to an audience because you know usually it's a radio thing or a tv thing is kind of made in isolation but when you've got the crowd out there what was that like got any memories of the live shows i always thought it was a bit like what it must have felt like uh maybe a version of monty python live at the hollywood bowl because everybody's really they're singing along with the sketches yeah i remember the the the 2009 show at the the for the pan anniversary at the at the festival hall and rosie my wife was was was was in the audience with uh one or two of my children and at the end of it she said i said how did it go how did you know did you enjoy it and she said yeah but it was a bit weird because you know everyone in the audience was was actually was speaking the lines with you it was you know it was i felt rather left out yeah on when we were on tour that we had a different book a different reader for the book john of course uh read read the book very very elegantly more than one occasion um but we had different one and different people had different levels of familiarity with the script and sometimes if uh if one of the books wasn't familiar with a word or a pronunciation of a planet or or something the audience were quite quick and and eager to uh correct any any mis mispronunciations or that was quite interesting they were talking about doing another uh run at the stage show again recently weren't they yes i think so uh yeah we don't know i don't think that's but unfortunately that was all sort of you know the current pandemic has paid to that for the time being yeah um never say never as an anniversary thing but you know it may you never know but i mean the great thing about doing the show live was just how was the the warmth that came back from the audience and the reaction was just extraordinary i mean it was like a rock concert really totally totally it was um and so it was and and the audience were just with you and it wasn't just all you know hitchhikers fans uh you know the original hitchhikers fans and i think there were people and what the great thing was that people were bringing their you know their their family their children their grandchildren even yeah and so it was it was a real occasion and and it was good fun marvin was a huge um hit with the kids i remember like i shot some uh box pops after one of the tours in 2012 2013 and the children were absolutely in love with marvin now i think we should pay a little uh tribute here to obviously we've mentioned um susan sheridan but stephen moore yeah was uh the original and and you know best marvin let's be honest um he uh you know he was stunned when at the 2008 uh 30th anniversary of hitchhikers um at the royal geographical society when he said marvin's first line it brought the house down it was cheers and everything and he talked about it afterwards he was he was um quite touched by that and suddenly realized how much this character meant because he said we had him we'd had him on tour on on tape with us so he didn't become on tour but he was he was on twitter it wasn't available normally i i went and um filmed when uh dirk mags um you know the great dirk who was uh adapted everything of recent times um he he recorded stephen because steven wasn't going to be available for the hitchhiker and we got really stephen's final ever performance as marvin that day and of course the recording went on to have a life beyond it's been used and it was used at the uh the live show the uh bbc yeah at the bit yeah what memories what memories we got of that well that was amazing because i was doing the voice of the book yeah doing whatever it's complete live radio it's one of the most exhilarating things ever that countdown at the beginning to the moment when it was going live that was because i hadn't done i'd done live radio since douglas and i worked together in radios to do a two-hour live show on radio 2 called late night extra which is the adrenaline pumping is really amazing i was going to say john there have been several people that have read the book the voice of the book for various um uh radio shows obviously peter jones the first one and um actually i did a little video with him for um when we premiered the tv series episode one they needed a little warm-up video so i popped up from under his desk and he demonstrated how how to wear the headphones off one ear because they wanted to record the laughter track you know but peter was fantastic and you read it with that slightly bemused you weren't really sure whether he got what he was saying but he delivered it with canash he always never to understood a word of it so [Laughter] he did understand it but yeah yeah and then william franklin uh took over and um he admitted at first that he didn't get it but he practiced it quite a bit and used to play recordings to dirk while he was rehearsing it at home and he said that douglas's words were like um surfing the waves at bondi beach which is where he grew up you just hang on to dear life to the end of the century this is so true kevin i mean when i did the hexagonal phase book which i did with dirk mags all in one day all six episodes and wow these sentences they come at you and i mean these words you know quiggle quaggle google you i know have any rehearsal and it's absolutely draining and anyway we i went away and phoned up the next day so don't you got the voice quite right can you come and do it again and i thought it was just me but he said they were all exactly the same everyone else these are impossible paragraphs to read it's really it's really a test i watched william franklin go through it in uh what was that 2005 um or 2003 when you first did it and it was it was exactly the same sort of struggle with with the whole rhythm and the flow and um but you know nailed it and so did you i i watched you struggle with it um for the hexagonal phase but yeah good good direction from dirk is just don't cry so hard just do it and then it flat you don't try and be peter jones or bill or stephen fry for that matter yeah um it's just to let the words speak for themselves and then it all comes good can we talk a bit about the um the different adaptations that there have been and that you might have witnessed uh as um as viewers or as listeners you know has anyone got anything to say about the books versus the television versus the movie i just think the first two books i mean i think they're really amazing pieces of work i think they're particularly those i know people usually real fans usually say the radio is the thing but for me the books are they're they're just kind of masterpieces really and it's it's actually you know because as is again probably well known douglas gave me the sack after the first series and and we went on we were we booked this holiday in corfu together and so he was the great novelist sitting up on the hill on the terrace and i was the drunk in the to verna but on the beach and we spent a month together we've been trying to write this book and it was fascinating because the first draft was actually kurt vonnegut you know it was a kurt vonnegut book and i said you can't do this don't see that you haven't caught your own voice they started all over again and it's one of those things you know at the time being sacked by your best friend is not not an amusing experience particularly but once you see the work you think i understand this now you know the pain is necessary to produce something that good because actually i'm a great believer in this i think nothing great is ever achieved without tremendous struggle i can certainly say that about my television productions for example people who say oh it went great it was such fun we all had just a huge laugh you think that's not going to be any good yeah yeah it's got to be difficult at some point and i think that you know i i always felt that you know at the time um you know douglas was making a mistake and ever since i thought no no he he has made him an immortal and it's kicked my ass to go off and do something different you know do something of my own it's one of those things that you always hear if people say that they had fun making a thing you always go oh christ it's going to be awful this isn't it it's always that was a bit like someone coming out of an exam saying oh i think i did really well yeah i aced it i i felt about the film that it was just too over produced because it had kind of lo i lost that uh collegiate sort of charm you know didn't quite get to the sense of humor either i feel no it was just most unbritish i thought speaking as an american brit but um i just thought it lost its charm really well again it was the thing it was it wasn't douglas was it it wasn't i think the visuals were fantastic and i know that the uh cameron tongs the the uh the producer and director they they really had douglas's best interest at heart but they didn't really have good i think the studio controlled what what happened to the script yeah right so they they messed with the dialogue i think that's the only thing i can't say about it i loved some of the visuals misunderstanding what do you mean by the end of the universe well there was one version uh every now and again when douglas used to come back from america um and come and stay and it was accepted saying that we didn't mention the film until he did oh right this is sort of this is going back for you know for decades almost um uh the one time when you he walked in and you could tell that there was something was seriously wrong but again you don't mention the film if he mentions it we'll go there if he doesn't mention it we don't go there at all and that was the one where disney suggested that maybe we could delay the blowing up of the earth until the end of the film [Laughter] basically because you know we wanted to get absolutely everything that build up the relationships into the move on and all ending in this catastrophic massive explosion um and you see yeah that movie the history of that movie so i remember when it first came up douglas and i he was trying to pitch it in and he'd taken donna summers beach house in mala malibu for the summer this had been 82 and he was pitching this movie and we'd had this idea for writing the meaning of liv so he said johnny can you i'm really sorry to do this but i can't make the meeting if you come out to malibu could you for like you know month oh i don't know all right yes all right well if it's donna summer's house i can't it wasn't donald summers summer house was it yes it was really it was amazing time and um he'd go off in the day and he come back tell these terrible stories about meeting some sort of dwarfish guy with an enormous cigar for lunch you know and this guy one guy said to him oh dougie what should i call you dougie doug or douglas and douglas said douglas please he's okay dougie we're gonna have a little a little something to eat and a little something to drink and then we're gonna talk about what kind of animal you like to sleep with that was the kind of emilia he moved in and he kept over all those years what was god 20 or more years you know um not 20 years but however long it was struggling to find the right director and the right producer and he never really hooked up it was very you know really sad that he didn't bring it off really yeah but i think what you said about hammering tongs uh who um at the time were actually living uh they they made commercials uh and the one thing that they were fantastic on was was creating amazing effects amazing visuals without hollywood money yeah music videos with where they go yeah uh and they were actually at the time their office was it was a barge uh which was like a quarter of a mile from douglas's house uh around the corner and going and um and when he went into the art department on the the heart of gold you never saw it on the film um but the the the the front of the heart of goal was his ring and looking at it close up the detail of basically all the things about douglas's life uh were included in that the love that these guys put into it was absolutely massive it was meant to look like a good team wasn't it yeah but on the film you know nobody um nobody and then the visuals when they uh with slightly barf fast when they go into the factory floor um a magnet and so they go through the tunnel and they come out on these so like the extending arm just goes and goes and goes the um the artwork um the the the fanatical attention to detail but the thing that always got me you're saying that when you actually went and watched the live shows um and you suddenly realized that all those people around were a word was wrong they were yeah all of douglas's words everything that made and even now um every five minutes you know douglas says all his little phrases which were made for twitter these little snapshots uh which appear all over the place uh were completely missing from the film yeah almost you know that that vision of douglas it was it wasn't there and i think that was more the studio rather than hammer and tongs because essentially it was the it was the text which was the most important and where it all stems and it was their first feature film they made some really successful music videos with brilliant imagery in them but of course that doesn't involve any dialogue and i think they had quite a heavy hand from above from the district there hasn't been an iteration in which it hasn't brought something to the table whether it be uh the visuals of the film or you know i mean i i remember very clearly the the book i think you had a part in uh that given the illustrated the illustrated i have it here [Music] there's very few uh iterations of the of the of the very lovely marvin i was very proud yeah it's really good yeah that was made by a friend of mine john savile um and just a beautiful piece of work all sorts of things in there there have been so many people there's also um another character we should mention who's a regular hitchhiker uh contributor on the casting side there's mike kill as mr presser who was the bogon guard on the television version and he's been your sidekick toby what's that playing vogue on captain jelts it's great playing in various different versions haven't you yeah i've i've taken up the the jelts reigns uh from uh bill bill wallace wasn't he who played it originally yeah who did it originally yeah and i i actually weirdly found out only a few years ago that i lived like three doors down from him in bath we both lived in the royal crest above and so it kind of like one day he stopped being jealous and i started being jealous just moved a couple of doors down there you've made him a lot more uh what's the word a bit rougher yeah i i i think he's closer to well i have in my mind he's closer to what he looks like than what he you know you mean he's uh i wanted the the poetry to come out the kind of person that would make that kind of poetry that's why that's why used as a as a steer yeah and you had uh mike jewel as your sidekick in in uh now which radio series was it the quintessential i think i think and that's in the british library and the british library yeah yeah and uh who else did you have ah well uh dirk's son was was playing uh constant mound constant moan and i think um we've got a bit of footage of you doing that sequence we're gonna drop a snip it in here whack a bit in there oh the earthlings are defenseless mind you that torpedo was rubbish i was expecting a proper bang the mother of all explosions i ask you across a thought rather than another quest why don't i fire half a dozen low-yield warheads that should be enough to vaporize the earthlings after all it would be within our remit to confiscate the planet these people purchased gunner that is a fine suggestion why don't you pull your chair a little closer to me i believe i would like to rub your head my greasy crown would be honored sir there now oh lovely sir thank you you paying attention constant that's how your green nose [Laughter] tell me what is the history of jerk mags i mean he's become this extraordinary writer from he he started out as a drummer right well as a studio manager he was for a long time okay and producer yeah he's his drumming is uh his legendary drumming is is basically uh as a side thing but of course but of course he he did um play the drums you know in the in the in the live show and of course he was you know because of him and simon jones uh without them you know the live show would not have happened he's very much them you know along with james of course the keeper of the flame he's he's been the mastermind behind so many versions of the flame i remember when you were about your son's age well i was even younger it was 19 on the set of pictures well you're very much one of the stalwarts of the kids yeah i remember taking pictures of you crawling around on the floor looking for your mice and also kevin i just want to say um you know present company accepted your work's the best thing in the television show because i was as you know associate producer i wasn't allowed on the set i wasn't allowed anywhere oh yeah oh no well you were busy with the fantastic not the nine o'clock news which i adored you're probably in the studio next door i'm pretty sure on one occasion you were and i i was instrumental because it was going well i went to my head of department and i told him about hitchhiker which he'd never heard of and he said that sounds interesting should we commission the script so that's how it started and then they wouldn't let me because they said that that guy he'll get far too cocky if he has another hit just you solved a problem that i didn't know how anyone was going to do it was amazing and again way ahead of its time i might as well tell that little story i was in a very uh lucky position that um i'd been in the job a couple of months a little animation studio in west london and i heard r2d2 bleeping down the corridor and um i went into the area that i shouldn't have gone in it was overflow cutting rooms from the bbc rented a few cutting rooms there and um i met alan bell by sheer fluke because i he was cutting a film for jim will fix it um and it was a little boy on the set of the empire strikes back meeting arthur dito and luke skywalker and that's what led me down there and he said uh are you a science fiction fan then i said yes he said have you heard of something called the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy well i'd already interviewed douglas for a fanzine i'd already been to the stage show the year before um i was all you know i bubbled on for five minutes and once i shut up he said i said oh yeah i understand there's going to be a tv show and he said there is and i'm going to produce it so i introduced him to my boss the genius rod lord um in the studio next door where i worked and um about 10 days later he came back with a script and had a formal meeting and after the graphics department got a bit grumpy because they'd already budgeted to do it and their their budget was twice what rod had quoted we landed the job and then douglas came to view the first half of the babel fish sequence and that was it sign sealed delivered it was definitely our gig you certainly still see that influence those graphics nowadays a lot of people that the lettering running in which yes and then added all the little bleeps and it's it definitely is very much part of the kind of computer lingua franca i think that's what people think style the style was pinched for commercials yeah all over still they still do it a little bit now and i thought when they did the movie i thought they did quite well because they had to make it international the tv graphics all those years ago that we did had a lot of uh type that would yeah yeah make a blizzard of information on the screen too much it was it was almost first program made for people who had free frames on their videos yeah absolutely that's exact that's something i i wanted to do a program that would have that in it and um uh herrick liam herring did it and i was like ah damn they got their first but they only ever did it as a result of having seen all that information going on and you could just go through it but friend by frame which me and mostly yeah it was groundbreaking the movie did very well to make it uh more international by not relying on type there was very there was very little anything on the screen that was actually you know the english language because they wanted it to go international so they became like road signs you know like the international road signs yeah they were symbolic and um is all down to anyone a bafta for it my boss rod lord his studios i'm still very proud of that it was a brilliant year for me as my first year in the business i bet the people in the film made use of some sort of computer whereas you were using actual gel and animated cutting it all up and yeah i have to show you a little snippet of video online oh yeah stick that in there every land learn broad lords um sticks you know some of the original graphics on on ebay um and the demand the demand for them yeah every night and there's always i love it the way so you know that the condition used you know a little bit of sellotape worn or selling tape on it you know where it's all been stuck um and i had a friend of mine who's he he thought he's one they need to say he said i'm gonna sit and wait because one day i'm gonna pick up one of those cheap it's like if i post one of his links on a forum you know there's a couple of the hitchhiker forums on facebook pages the price goes rocketing up yeah yeah he's got his regular mailing lists and with those yes do a plug for it if you want something it's a piece of his tv series artwork yeah it's a piece not just of hitchhiker's history though and i think that's what's what i i really try to the visual element but also the conceptual element of the of the the whole hitchhiker's ethos that's the one i'm working for ethos um has shaped the way we uh use computers in the computer in our pocket and all of that kind of thing is is its first step was uh being delineated and described by douglas and so the world we now live in for good or ill was his idea well yeah i remember that douglas i mean of course he was a as we all know he was a mac guru wasn't he yeah he was you know apple an apple master master beg apple used to uh apple used to send them off around the world to basically preach the uh preach and um are those loads of them it was him um stephen fry was here as well uh yeah stephen fry was but he kind of didn't go around so much muhammad ali was one loads of hollywood guys uh and so he would then be flown off to uh to go and talk at an apple event um and it was crazy that none of them were paid and at the end of it they would just be given like a new bit of kit oh my god though brand new and it was definitely sun micro systems were paying him 75 grand to go and stand on a cruise ship and give a talk for two hours um and apple got it for free um uh you know for giving him a little bit of kitten what have you purely because they all just evangelize they love the kids they love it i know i wanted to ask when did you ever remember when douglas moved from from typewriter to computer and did anybody notice a difference was that is it was anybody there you know that moment i remember him showing me uh the original apple uh mac you know with 128 k or whatever it was yeah yeah and and bill gates famously said you know um you'll never need more yeah no one will need will ever need more than one two eight okay um and and seeing this computer and douglas saying you know this is going to revolutionize the world and i sort of looked at it i thought well basically a typewriter isn't it with a screen yeah but but he but of course you know we shared uh uh i already talked about this you know we had this sort of love of music um but of course douglas was always you know i was the k i was a professional composer um but he always had the most fantastic kids he always had sort of much investigation he was very generous though i mean he would you know if if he was going off on to on on a world tour or something and i s and i remember once saying to him look i guess my computer's broken i don't know what what you know what to do and he said he said um okay well i've got a i've got a 2ce you could have that for a couple of months or something so this was you know and i was he i said well can i just use it and he said he said yes i mean just don't touch anything on it and then i sort of i was amazed that he had about 200 apps uh and this was in about 1982 or something just like what i didn't even know these things existed but he had the music and the stuff he had the most extraordinary collection of music stuff as well anyway so yes he was he was really at the at the forefront of these things i remember him showing that computer his house at um in in in in duncan terrace and livington uh which he kind of bought as a shell um and completely gutted it and turned it into this amazing place and as well i think when he was off with mark corwadine going off around the world making last chance to see um and he was turning the top floor which was going to become his his kind of study playroom and i'd always remember this marvelous one that the the electrician who phoned up and basically said there's something wrong here um can we get hold of douglas was the same well no because i think he's in guatemala patagonia in the middle of nowhere what's the problem and he said well i've got it down here that i'm supposed to put 58 sockets into this cupboard that can't possibly be right and we said well no that's yeah no that's his music cupboard that's basically so there's a couple doors when you open it up and that's where all the sampling all this wall of racks and stuff and the keyboards yeah that's about right just 58 yeah in recent times to the music you were picking up the mantle uh you know created by paddy kingsland all those years ago um hesitate to be mentioned in the same breath ah uh but you know i mean you were playing live as well so you were preparing cues and can you tell us a bit about that the live music side of it the light stage tour and um i mean dirk to his credit was very you know he's very particularly very keen to keep as as toby says you know the ethos and the whole sort of um flavor of the original and douglas's vision of it because i mean dirk you know had been talking to dogs about doing the radiate series back in the 90s or what have you i mean the books um three and four this series three and four so when we did this the stage show and we talked about what sort of music it should be and we wanted to try and have a flavor of um this is a conversation i had with dirk and i remember very clearly you know talking about um this what sort of music would douglas have wanted or might have wanted um so we wanted to keep a flavor of of the the radiophonic workshop stuff if possible uh paddy kingston stuff and but also to try and make it you know as of now as it was then in in 2012 or whatever it was but but also to try and have some the sort of music that douglas liked so and that's why we started it with with one of these days by pink floyd because you know he was a big pink floyd fan um but also there were one or two pieces in the in the uh the voice of the book passages and those sort of things i thought well douglas was a great fan well fans are wrong word he was a great admirer of j s bach so there was one piece in particular which was called space where i sort of tried to write something which was a sort of like a sort of um uh like a prelude or something but by bar you know which obviously wasn't but um and and so it was it was that sort of thing where we tried to sort of get us some melange of of all those things trying to get the new technology trying to get a flavor of the original radio series but also a little bit of what douglas you know liked as well well we've covered many of the different versions of hitchhiker we're gonna have to wrap it up in a few moments there was due to be a new series being shot at elstree around about now it was all being set up and then of course the coronavirus epidemic occurred and everything got put on hold i understand that series is still due to go ahead um i wish them luck with it uh i wonder what they'll do how's that going to be um what do you think is going to be the future the kind of legacy of douglas and the future for hitchhiker can you imagine another version in the years to come when we're all gone but is are they shooting a new hitchhiker yes television series who knew disney i know disney but i mean do you know who the director is on producing uh it's yeah it's google it but it's um yeah that's the only way you find out i haven't got the notebook to hand yes i think it was it was sort of uh announced last year or something wasn't it yeah but it was all booked there's a couple of a couple of um big um hitchhiker fans i think who are behind it i think yeah nobody's phoned me yet so i'm not they will they well you know no one's phoned me under me yeah exactly if they haven't phoned you i doubt they'll phone me yeah well i know that's anybody who can uh who can pick up the mantle of uh simon jones and uh uh you know well first of all jeffrey mcgivern who came back to the role in the radio series after many years i think we realized that um talking to dirk that it was hitchhikers was at its best when ford and arthur are together going through the adventure there's essentially a sort of buddy thing between them and simon and jeff bounce off each other so well uh in the tv series it was david dixon i don't know who we're going to get next but i think and i hope you'll agree that i mean the books are going to be there forever whatever other versions may yet to come i hope they're as successful as all the versions that all of you took part in and um i've got to wrap this up now it's been fascinating actually yeah thanks thanks to all of you for your time and for taking part oh thank you for having a fascinating discussion uh we look forward to um seeing you at blue dot next year hopefully because it all got cancelled this year they have talked about doing a hitchhiker uh 42nd anniversary a year late next year um well i hope we get to do something maybe the world will be virtual from from now on the whole world will be vertical we're not going to meet it yeah i'm in a hot tub now i mean we all meet at the restaurant the end of the zoo movers yay on that note on that note i've got to say thanks to everyone all of you for tuning in at home uh blue dot returns to jodrell bank on the 22nd to the 25th of july 2021 if you'd like more information on the blue dot festival and blue dot universe of music science and cosmic culture visit discovertheblue.com thank you thank you everyone and goodbye bye bye lovely to see you guys bye you

Channel: bluedot festival

Views: 2,001

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: bluedot, festival

Id: w26V2RJijBk

Length: 67min 29sec (4049 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 25 2020