Don’t Panic – Douglas Adams’ London
A towel.
Yes, a towel.
Because according to one of the most famous books ever written about the universe,
a towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.
Which raises a perfectly sensible question.
What sort of writer begins a story about the universe… with a towel?
The answer is Douglas Adams.
And today’s story begins on March 11th, 1952,
when the future creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was born.
But the strange thing is this.
The story of that wildly improbable book is really a London story.
And before we get any further, it’s salutation time: Top of the Morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
And you guessed right, here it is: your daily London fix.
Curtain up.
Today we’re raising a metaphorical towel to one of the funniest writers Britain ever produced.
Douglas Adams.
Now Adams wasn’t born in London.
He was born in Cambridge.
But like so many writers with ideas fizzing in their heads,
sooner or later he gravitated to the capital.
Because if you were a young comedy writer in the 1970s, London was the centre of gravity.
This was the age of experimental radio.
The BBC was willing to take chances.
And British comedy had just been detonated by a small group of lunatics calling themselves Monty Python.
Suddenly the rules had changed.
Sketches could be surreal.
Punchlines could come sideways.
Logic was optional.
Which meant the door was wide open for someone like Douglas Adams.
Now Adams was hard to miss.
He stood six foot five.
Tall enough that if he walked into a room his head sometimes arrived a few seconds before the rest of him.
He studied English at Cambridge. He flirted with theatre.
He tried his hand at writing comedy sketches.
At one point he even worked briefly with Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.
But like many young writers in London
he was still looking for the idea.
And then came the moment of inspiration.
Adams later said the idea arrived while he was lying in a field in Austria.
He’d been hitchhiking around Europe.
He had with him a travel book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe.
And as he lay there staring up at the stars he had a thought.
What the universe really needed… was a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
It was a ridiculous idea.
Which of course meant it was perfect.
Because when Adams brought the idea back to London,
the BBC did something unusual.
They commissioned it.
A science fiction comedy.
Now just pause for a moment and think about that.
Science fiction.
And comedy.
It sounded like the sort of idea a producer might normally respond to by quietly escorting the writer out of the building.
But this was the BBC in the late 1970s.
Curiosity sometimes won.
So in March 1978,
on BBC Radio 4,
the first episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was broadcast.
And within minutes the Earth was destroyed.
That’s quite a bold opening move for a radio series.
But Adams had no intention of thinking small.
The story followed Arthur Dent,
a perfectly ordinary Englishman who discovers that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a bypass.
Moments later he discovers something even worse.
The entire planet Earth is about to be demolished to make way for an interstellar hyperspace bypass.
Which tells you something about Douglas Adams’ view of the universe.
Namely that bureaucracy exists everywhere.
Even in outer space.
The series introduced a parade of unforgettable characters.
Ford Prefect,
the alien researcher who writes for the Guide.
Zaphod Beeblebrox,
the two-headed galactic politician.
Marvin,
the terminally depressed robot.
And somewhere in the background,
the vast computer Deep Thought calmly calculating the answer to the ultimate question of life,
the universe, and everything.
After seven and a half million years of processing, the answer finally arrives.
It is… 42.
Which is possibly the most famous punchline in modern literature.
And the beauty of it is that the answer arrives long before anyone has figured out what the question actually is.
Adams wrote much of Hitchhiker’s Guide while living and working in London.
He spent time around Islington, wrote in Soho cafés,
and was a regular presence at the BBC.
Like many writers he had a slightly complicated relationship with deadlines.
Adams once explained it beautifully.
“I love deadlines,” he said.
“I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Every writer listening to this will recognise the sentiment instantly.
The radio series became books.
The books became a global sensation.
Millions of copies sold.
Translations in dozens of languages.
Stage shows,
television adaptations,
video games, and eventually a Hollywood film.
All of it springing from a radio comedy that began life in London.
Douglas Adams died in 2001, aged just 49.
Douglas Adams’ grave in Highgate Cemetery, London.
Far too young.
But the universe he created is still expanding.
Readers keep discovering it.
Listeners keep laughing.
And somewhere tonight someone will open The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for the first time and encounter one of the most reassuring instructions ever printed.
Don’t panic.
Which is good advice.
Especially in a universe as large, strange, and faintly ridiculous as the one Douglas Adams imagined.
And also, come to think of it, not bad advice for life in London.
Ok, looking ahead to the expanding universe of London Calling.
Tomorrow’s This is London takes us somewhere very different.
Back to Covent Garden in the early 18th century.
Because on March 12th, 1710, a Londoner was born who would go on to write one of the most famous songs in the history of Britain.
A tune that has thundered out across naval decks… concert halls… football stadiums… and the Last Night of the Proms.
The man was Thomas Arne.
The song was Rule, Britannia.
Now Douglas Adams told us the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42.
Thomas Arne had a different answer.
Two words.
Rule, Britannia.
Join us for that.
Until then…
Don’t panic.
And always know where your towel is.
God bless, god speed, fare thee well, and here’s to lots of good Londoning. See you tomorrow.