Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42

The weekend marked the 42nd anniversary of the first broadcast of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the hugely influential BBC radio show. 42 is a significant number for fans of the innovative series by Douglas Adams so (carefully) pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, wrap yourself in a towel and join The Register …

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: Anybody fancy a game of...

Radio 4 Extra got Big Finish Productions to play around and produce a version of Shada. Wasn't that one of Adams' Doctor Who's killed by 70s strike action?

I'm still amazed by the fact that someone thought it was a good idea to put Douglas Adams in charge of getting other writers to get their Dr Who scripts in on time. Particularly given that Simon Brett only got the script for the pilot of HHGTTG out of him by locking him in a hotel room!

The radio Hitch Hikers is my favourite thing Adams did. After that, I think I prefer the Dirk Gently books, as they turned out, not as the Shada thing I heard done later on the radio. Although Radio 4 did do a rather brilliant adaptation of those too - with Harry Enfield in the title role.

Radio 4 also did a nice program called The Workins' of Perkins on Geoffrey Perkins and the great stuff he produced. Listed in iPlayer, but not currently available sadly.

[TRT]

Re: Anybody fancy a game of...

The BBC finally released Shada as a part animated story. It was seriously camp but very very good.

[Neil Barnes]

The benefits of working for the company

I had tapes of the every episode, recorded straight off the PCM feeds to Sutton Coldfield...

When I worked in BBC News, we would occasionally play Moira Stewarts' continuity announcements to HHGTTG just before she went on air. Never managed to get her to giggle on air, though...

[Roland6]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

>I had tapes of the every episode, recorded straight off the PCM feeds to Sutton Coldfield...

I assume that includes the entire live to air first series, (broadcasted on Radio 3 at 10pm on friday nights)?

Memory says that they forgot to turn on the recorders on one episode which caused subsequent problems as with last minute (ie. minutes before spoken live by the actors) script changes and live sounds, recreating that episode for the replays was fraught.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

The first series I acquired some months after transmission; I started work in July 78. The later series and odd filler episodes were from various colleagues working mostly in the presentation studios. H2G2 was very popular among the engineering staff.

Sadly, my copies were stolen in a car break in many years later, and I was never able to replace them.

Later published issues had minor changes in the scripts, and copyright issues prevented the use of some of the music, and it just wasn't the same somehow.

[jake]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

"my copies were stolen in a car break in"

There's a special place in hell ...

[jake]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

Stuart, Shirley ...

[Neil Barnes]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

Stuart. My bad; and I worked with her for years... doh. Thanks, Jake.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

This reminds me that Scottish spelling was variable until quite recently, and both Stuart and Stewart are variant spellings of "Steward", warden of the hall. It seems Mary, Queen of Scots, changed the spelling to "Stuart" so the French would pronounce it correctly. Sarah Ward, Moira Stuart, we are getting a bit aristocratic here.

So: not really wrong. And indeed getting it wrong is evidence that you speak sooth, because of course if you hear a name but rarely see it written it is easy to get the variant spelling (which is closer to the original).

[Steve Kellett]

Re: The benefits of working for the company

I had, maybe even "have" if I look hard enough, some second generation copies of the first series taken from the master tapes. A mate at University in '79 or '80 had a Dad who worked at the BBC, and whenever the periodically re-duplicated the master tapes of various radio series a bunch of other recorders would get shoved surreptitiously "on the bus".

Unfortunately the shops had already shut on the day when his Dad came home from work and asked him if he had and spare cassettes, so all he could do was record over a bunch of beat up mix tapes.

Still, it was better than the versions I had taken from the line out of a portable radio into the aux socket of a deeply iffy Grundig cassette recorder

[D@v3]

listening order

I have the 13 CD box, which has made several long car journeys much more enjoyable.

I have also found, that once ripped to your favourite format, shoved in a playlist and put on shuffle, it is still thoroughly entertaining, and only makes slightly less sense than in it's "correct" order, to the point where i have some of the best bits in music playlists, as they always put a smile on my face.

[Zarno]

Re: listening order

Infinitely improbable they'll play in the "proper" order, for practical purposes.

I'm too lax to do the math on that shuffle and get actual probability of that happening.

Need to get another car towel...

[Francis Boyle]

I have done the calculation

and can assure you that it is a finite probability.

So there's no chance of you accidentally finding yourself on Magrathea though you may end up at your destination naked. (Your clothes will be in the boot).

[Zarno]

Re: I have done the calculation

But if my clothes are in the boot, where is the snake going to live, under the bonnet?

I'll see myself out...

[Sweeper]

The Radio Series and Only the Radio Series

I listened to the first radio series when I was a brand new undergrad who had just discovered Radio 4 on Monday evening at 6.30pm. THHGTTG hit all the right notes, and in all the right order. The actors had great delivery and the whole package was funny and clever at once. Having listened to the series on the Radio, on Tape (both self-recorded and purchased) and CD I can still find new things to chuckle about on the tenth rerun. The first two series were great and series 3 to 5 were not bad either. And it is clear just how big an impact THHGTTG has made when the latest Ben Aaronovitch book starts of with "The Serious Cybernetic Corportation" and then wangles in various other elements. Still worth listening to even now that I live in another universe (Germany and the EU).

[Version 1.0]

Re: The Radio Series and Only the Radio Series

I bought the albums and they are wonderful!

[Baroda]

Re: The Radio Series and Only the Radio Series

I rarely looked at the Radio rather than TV pages of the 'Radio Times', but through sheer luck saw the entry for what I thought would be an interesting Astronomy programme. It was the first episode of HHGTTG broadcast. I was glued to the rest and recorded them. I loved the little additions after each episode which I think (am I right?) are lost from the episodes you can purchase. One that sticks was something like 'and you can hear a repeat of that episode through a wormhole in space on Radio 3 at 10:00pm on 11th March 1958'.

[Admiral Grace Hopper]

Re: The Radio Series and Only the Radio Series

The announcers' comments are certainly on the BBC CD edition that I have. They are very much part of the episodes as broadcast.

[Zebo-the-Fat]

42??

42 years?? there must be some mistake, I'm not that old! (am I??)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 42??

Depends on which number base is being used.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: 42??

Depends on which number base is being used

Apparently, my wife is currently 39 (more accurately 0x39..). Which is a complete mystery to me as I'm 55 and she's older than me!

[DBH]

Re: 42??

I've chosen to alternate between 20 and 21, by changing the base every second year

[Allan George Dyer]

Re: 42??

Did you start doing that when you were 20₃?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: 42??

"42 years?? there must be some mistake, I'm not that old! (am I??)"

Yes, you are. 42 is also, not entirely but almost coincidentally, the age of the home computer. '77/'78 is arguably when the first ready to use out of the box home computers went on sale, the TRS-80 and Apple II in '77 and the Commodore PET in '78.

[jake]

Re: 42??

Arguably, the first real home computer WAS released in 1977[0], but it wasn't a toy like the TRS-80, Apple II and PET ... it was the Heath H11. A 16-bit PDP11 built for home use. Most of us bought them in kit form, but you could purchased a fully assembled, ready to run version.

[0] Wiki says '78, but mine was my Xmas present to myself in '77. I have the invoice to prove it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is amazing how many phrases H2G2 introduced into the language. I wonder how many are still used?

I occasionally make a reference to a problem being "a pink spaceship" or an "SEP" - and not everyone understands the inference. Our company found that problems were being reported - but not being resolved as no one was chasing them. So they decided that whoever reported a problem would own finding a solution. Overnight there were no more problems reported.

Pots of geraniums and whales are not worth throwing in. "Brain as big as a planet" is a good verbal eyes-roll. Leopards and basements etc are always useful in the face of jobs-worth bureaucracy. Ditto "lemon scented tissues".

[Sweeper]

SEP is still a phrase I use a lot, and over the decades it still needs to be explained, but when the acronym is made clear, almost everyone nods their head.

[A.P. Veening]

Translation

"SEP" is another one that got a creative translation as the literal translation would give a rather unwieldy TLA in Dutch, so the translator came up with "NOP" (Niet Ons Probleem - Not Our Problem). It took me ages to internalize the original "SEP" once my English was up to the necessary standard.

[Nunyabiznes]

It's been so long I don't remember if I came up with SEP on my own or if I read/heard it from the original source (much delayed because not within BBC broadcast range).

[jake]

Back in the 1960s, one of my Uncles was prone to admonishing us kids to "not make it Someone Else's Problem". You could hear the CAPS in the spoken words. According to him, he picked up the phrase in the Navy, so I suppose it may have originated as military slang.

[Uncle Slacky]

Sometimes I use "a whelk's chance in a supernova" or "not worth a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys". Quite often I encounter things which are almost, but not quite, entirely unlike "x".

And of course last week there was an article on "the biggest bang since the Big One":

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51669384

[I ain't Spartacus]

A friend of mine is a kitchen designer / cabinet maker. Talking to a couple about what they wanted he said, "and this oak cupboard will go on this wall and hang in the air, just like bricks don't."

Husband laughs - wife looks bemused, then complains that they're being silly. He should have painted it in Vogon constructor fleet yellowy-green.

[DCFusor]

A code

One of the many benefits of THHGTTG is that once you know it - and some friends do as well - you have a code, moderately secret, with which to communicate.

We see it here on the Reg all the time - a fraction of a line from the series will bring a relevant response from all those clued in.

Few works have had this wide power to transmit context with few bits. While there are some tag lines from popular movies that do the same - none have more than a couple of them that are useful - Hitchhiker's stands out as the most prolific by far (in my opinion).

Friends and I (at least those who are hoopy froods) use this, Firesign Theatre, and some lines from popular movies in our banter to great amusement, and of course humorous confusion of those present but not in on it all.

Thanks, Mr Adams!

[DJV]

Re: A code

Yes, and there's probably time for another bath as well.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: A code

One of the many benefits of THHGTTG is that once you know it - and some friends do as well - you have a code, moderately secret, with which to communicate.

We see it here on the Reg all the time - a fraction of a line from the series will bring a relevant response from all those clued in.

Few works have had this wide power to transmit context with few bits. While there are some tag lines from popular movies that do the same - none have more than a couple of them that are useful - Hitchhiker's stands out as the most prolific by far (in my opinion).

While I admit THHGTTG is pretty prolific, there are others. The reason you don't notice them is because you don't the code. And no, I am not going to tell you those because some of us would like to keep some codes secret. I hope you can grok that.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: A code

because you don't know the code.

Somehow that slipped past my editing skills.

[stiine]

Re: A code

Yessir, Mr Smith.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: A code

“Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.”

[zapgadget]

Re: A code

Once you grok bistromatics, you can grok anything

[Sweeper]

Re: A code

In one of my earlier jobs back in the nineties myself and a guy who designed CHP plants using Lotus 123 (Excel at the time couldn't handle the vast number of rows he needed) used to spend a lot of time in the tiny kitchen conversing in THHGTTG code whilst making coffee. Everyone else just rolled their eyes as we rolled of goodly chunks of an episode.

[Evil Scot]

Re: A code

You would think that only 1:1,000,000 people might get it. But the odds are more likely 9:10.

[Mike Timbers]

Re: A code

I would argue that Monty Python and the works of Pterry have a similar code.

[A.P. Veening]

Re: A code

Don't forget some (definitely not all) works of Robert Anson H.

[This is not a drill]

Douglas Adams predicted the future.

"New guidance has been issued aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus in Scotland's workplaces.

The latest advice from Health Protection Scotland urges routine cleaning of phones and keypads."

hxxps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51798558

See two thirds of the population could be wiped out by a virulent diesese caught from a dirty telephone.

[Andy Non]

Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

Especially if the last person to use it was a Vogon.

[FrogsAndChips]

Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

Time to build those Arks!

[Version 1.0]

Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

The Arks are ready but we're waiting for the sanitizers

[Blofeld's Cat]

Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

"The Arks are ready but we're waiting for the sanitizers"

And possibly some lemon-soaked paper napkins.

[TRT]

Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

All right, wise-guy... you tell us what colour they should be?

[This is not a drill]

Re: Douglas Adams predicted the future.

Sums up every marketing department ever.