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Downloaded from
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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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This is the story of a book,

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a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy.

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Not only is it
a wholly remarkable book,

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it is also a highly successful one,

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more popular than
The Celestial Homecare Omnibus.

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Better selling then 53 More Things
to Do in Zero Gravity.

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And more controversial
than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy

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of philosophical blockbusters,

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Where God Went Wrong,

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Some More Of God's
Greatest Mistakes,

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and Who Is This God Person, Anyway?

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As kids,
we were fascinated by the future.

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Unlike most generations before us,

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we knew for sure that
it was going to be different.

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We just didn't know
what it would be.

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Would there be space travel?

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Would there be time travel?

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But I guess we can say
that our future is, for a while,

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going to be dominated by technology.

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Have a look at this.
What is it?

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy, an electronic book.

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Tell you everything
you want to know.

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Let's imagine a device like this
for a moment.

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In the real world,
if you want to know

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what the view from the top of
the Eiffel Tower looks like,

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you have to go there.

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In the soft world,
you could ask a guide device

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to show you what it looks like.

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How many of the cars you can see

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have Bach
playing on their in-car stereos?

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There's one playing your favourite
recording of the Schubert Preludes.

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Yes, she'll talk to you.

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What about having dinner together?

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A couple of restaurants
light up in the view.

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Then you remember,
damn, you're not in Paris,

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you're in New Delhi.

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"That's all right,"
says your new friend.

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"I'm actually in Albuquerque."

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GRIFF RHYS JONES:
My relationship with Douglas

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dated from the days
when we were in school together.

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It was a very hot-shot school,
Brentwood, in those days.

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It was like a sort of factory.
And you arrived at a young age

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and were turned into a sort of...
Frightening, really,

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with this sort of pressure on people
to do well.

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There were some of us

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who saw ourselves
as sort of would-be actors.

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And we volunteered our services
for the only drama

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that this school
ever allowed us to do.

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Called the Winter Theatrical.

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He played Julius Caesar, which was
a part that he was born to play,

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because of his conk
and his general sort of demeanour.

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I remember everybody running around
shouting "Ave, ave, ave."

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Douglas was always
not only huge, tall,

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and slightly full of himself,
but, also, older.

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He and his generation above that
were the clever, the clever set,

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and they saw themselves

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as being people
who would move from this school

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into the sort of varsity world
and on to conquer the world.

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Here at Cambridge
a student's room is his castle.

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He can barricade himself
against all comers.

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He can hold dinner parties
for five without permission.

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Decorate it as he wants to.

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And it's all kept clean for him
by a lady known as a bedder.

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The only trouble is, these bedders
have to be both old and unbeautiful.

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It's all in the college statues.

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DOUGLAS:
I was determined to get to Cambridge

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because I wanted to be
a writer performer.

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At the end of my first year,

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I'd been cast in a production
of The Rivals

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and we discovered that the guy
who was down to play Fag the butler

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was now languishing in a Cretan jail
as a result of smoking dope.

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I said, "There was this guy
I knew at school.

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He was a pretty good actor.
I don't know if he could do comedy."

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I arrived in Cambridge.

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In those days we had a pigeonhole,

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and in amongst them
was a little note from Douglas.

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I hadn't been there in Cambridge
for more than about three days

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and I was sort of being put through
my paces playing Fag in The Rivals.

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Douglas was playing
Sir Lucius O'Trigger.

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I did that drawing of him
sitting in a dressing room.

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I sort of launched myself
and followed, really, Douglas

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into this extraordinary
amateur theatre.

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The Footlights
was a club at Cambridge.

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It was all about doing sketches,
it was all about comedy.

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We'd do a show
and people would write sketches,

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and wannabe actors or actors
would perform those sketches

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and certainly Douglas was writing
from very, very early

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in his time at Cambridge,
and we were performing his stuff.

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Douglas' material
was always slightly surreal.

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It was distinctively different.

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Some of the strongest influences
on me growing up

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were The Beatles and Monty Python.

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Python was the idea that being funny

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was actually a way of
being intelligent,

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and that it was a different way
of looking at the world.

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Halt!Douglas referred to
John Cleese as the Master,

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and John Cleese and Graham Chapman

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had been
in the Cambridge Footlights Revue.

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Douglas amused the rest of us

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by going down to London to interview
John Cleese for a student newspaper.

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Ambition was frowned upon.

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We all wanted to be kind of cool
and sit in rooms smoking dope

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and listening to Pink Floyd.

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So we were dismissive of him.
We thought, how absurd.

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I had been completely fascinated
and hypnotised by Python.

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I wanted to be John Cleese.

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And of course,
I realised the job is taken.

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I got to know Douglas
after he came down from Cambridge.

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It was a very intense friendship.

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He had a go at all sorts of things
as a writer, as a performer.

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He got a little bit part
in Monty Python.

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He became very close
to Graham Chapman.

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They wrote a pilot together
called Out Of The Trees.

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It was something that seemed to me
as a young kid out of university,

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like, the heavenly clouds opening,
you know?

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Wow. Go and work
with one the Pythons.

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It wasn't
quite as straightforward as that.

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When Douglas and I used to go out
and have lunch with Graham Chapman,

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it would be
four pints and eight crosswords.

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Then Graham would get his willy out,
put it on the bar

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and pay the bill.

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And then we'd go back to his house
and have a bucket of gin and tonic.

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That was Graham Chapman's idea
of working.

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There was a sense for Douglas
of extreme frustration.

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About what,
what was he supposed to do?

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If you have two very, very,
clever writers,

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then there's too much ego
in the way of a partnership.

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One time I came home
and he was sitting on the bed

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with his head in his hands
and he said, "Johnny, I can't...

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I can't cope any more.
I'm not getting anywhere.

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I'm kind of desperate."

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I began to feel that there was
actually not a lot of future

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for me being somebody else's
sidekick as a writer.

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I thought, right, I'm going to go
off and be a writer all by myself.

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This I palpably failed to do.

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I had to go and do
various strange jobs,

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like working as a bodyguard
for an Arab royal family.

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They put an advertisement.

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It was saying, do you want to earn
£4 an hour, I think it was,

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being a... being a bodyguard.

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Douglas also being Douglas
immediately needed to tell everybody

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and so a pretty large number of
weeny, puny people like me

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followed in his footsteps,

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one after another of sort of arty,
recent graduates from Cambridge

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coming in
and offering their services.

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I just, I just remember it
as a nightmare.

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A nightmare. I'd never known
time pass so slowly.

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Like anything
that happens to you in life,

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it turns out useful
in some way or other.

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I think a lot of
the sort of weirder ideas

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came from long nights sitting
opposite the elevator shaft

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in the Hilton Hotel, just watching
the elevators coming up and down.

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(BELL DINGS)

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As far as we were all concerned,
it was all rosy.

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It was all going marvellously.
It was brilliant,

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which we believed until my mother
went to London one day,

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and just saw the...
that things weren't,

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weren't good, weren't all right,
and she said, "Right, that's it."

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And she packed him up
and brought him back down to Dorset,

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back to his old bedroom
at the end of the corridor.

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There would be this fanatical noise
of a typewriter going.

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Then it would be the bang
of the carriage going across.

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And then the noise of
a piece of paper

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being torn out of a carriage,
thrown up...

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and thrown across the room
with his grunt. When he grunted,

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he used to make this noise
that would echo the house.

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And then there would be silence.

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There was an old glove factory

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in the field behind the house
that was finally being demolished.

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And unbeknown to us, that
was then the start of the whole

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Hitchhiker's
and Arthur Dent's house

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and then leading on basically
to the destruction of the Earth.

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That's kind of where
the future started.

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The actual title came to me
while I was lying in a field

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drunk in Innsbruck at night
and just looking up at the stars.

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And there was a book around called
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe.

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It occurred to me,
somebody should write

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a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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And then promptly forgot about the
idea until about six years later.

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RADIO: The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy.

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By Douglas Adams.

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THE GUICE:
To tell the story of the book,

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it's best to tell the story
of some the minds behind it.

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A human from the planet Earth
was one of them,

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though as our story opens,
he no more knows his destiny

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than a tea leaf knows the history
of the East India Company.

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The first episode
of the first series

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of Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy went out.

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Douglas said,
"Any reviews in the papers?"

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And we all just laughed at him

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because in those days, nobody...

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Still to this day,
nobody reviewed radio programmes,

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but we opened all the papers
and bloody hell,

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there he was, reviewed all over
the nationals. The nationals!

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00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:22,160
This completely obscure, weirdly
titled comedy radio programme

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and it was
just unstoppable from that point.

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BFBS UK, on a Tuesday,

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00:14:28,160 --> 00:14:30,000
people of Earth,
your attention, please.

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Plans for the development of the
outlying regions of your galaxy

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require the building of
a hyperspatial express route

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00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:37,200
through your star system,

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and regrettably, your planet
is scheduled for demolition.

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Bizarre? Certainly is.
Now, Douglas Adams is its author,

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00:14:43,880 --> 00:14:47,680
and it looks like being
the comedy cult of the future.

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00:14:47,720 --> 00:14:52,400
An extremely tall man
got an extremely bright idea.

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00:14:52,440 --> 00:14:55,920
Shortly afterwards, this rotten idea
turned into four books,

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00:14:55,960 --> 00:14:58,680
two records, a computer game,
two radio series, a TV series,

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00:14:58,720 --> 00:15:00,320
and a constellation of money.

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It was quite something when somebody
you've been at college with

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00:15:12,640 --> 00:15:15,240
suddenly goes to
another stratosphere.

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00:15:15,280 --> 00:15:18,480
And when you're sharing
a flat with him, it's extraordinary.

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00:15:18,520 --> 00:15:21,000
One day you get
a call from somebody who says,

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00:15:21,040 --> 00:15:24,560
"This is Mr Adams' shoemaker. Please
tell him his shoes are ready."

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00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:26,160
Another time I pick up the phone

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00:15:26,200 --> 00:15:30,680
and that's a Hollywood film producer
saying, "Is Douglas Adams there?"

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00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:33,480
I said no, and the guy
refused to give me a message.

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00:15:33,520 --> 00:15:35,000
He pitched the film to me.

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00:15:40,800 --> 00:15:45,040
Douglas had this phenomenal,
huge success

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00:15:45,080 --> 00:15:49,320
and unlike everybody else's
success, it was worldwide success.

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00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:54,080
It was global. He was a global
phenomenon.

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00:15:55,680 --> 00:15:59,160
He bought a new Porsche
when he first became rich,

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00:15:59,200 --> 00:16:02,600
and drove it down Park Lane
at a ridiculous speed,

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00:16:02,640 --> 00:16:05,360
just loving life
and then forgot, as he said,

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00:16:05,400 --> 00:16:07,160
there was a roundabout at the end

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00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:10,040
and went smack
into Hyde Park corner.

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00:16:10,080 --> 00:16:12,200
Amazing to be still alive.

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00:16:13,920 --> 00:16:17,280
Positronic robots.
Telekinesis and clones.

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00:16:17,320 --> 00:16:19,080
The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy,

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00:16:19,120 --> 00:16:21,120
which adds a dimension
to science fiction

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00:16:21,160 --> 00:16:23,440
that is both comic
and domestic.

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00:16:23,480 --> 00:16:26,000
You're gonna have to accept it,
you know,

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00:16:26,040 --> 00:16:29,400
this bypass has got to be built
and it's gonna be built.

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00:16:29,440 --> 00:16:33,480
I could imagine comedy
might destroy the seriousness

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00:16:33,520 --> 00:16:35,280
with which the genre
should be taken.

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00:16:35,320 --> 00:16:37,880
I don't think so.
I mean, I see science fiction

238
00:16:37,920 --> 00:16:40,240
as a very good vehicle for comedy

239
00:16:40,280 --> 00:16:44,600
simply because it enables you
as it were to turn the telescope

240
00:16:44,640 --> 00:16:47,160
the wrong way round
on everyday experience.

241
00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:49,120
How would you react if I told you

242
00:16:49,160 --> 00:16:50,920
that I'm not
from Guilford after all

243
00:16:50,960 --> 00:16:54,440
but from a small planet somewhere
in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?

244
00:16:54,480 --> 00:16:58,240
I don't know. Think it's the sort
of thing you're likely to say?

245
00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:01,760
Drink up. The world's about to end.

246
00:17:03,520 --> 00:17:08,000
Douglas was taking a Pythonesque
view of the world,

247
00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:12,480
a sort of world where crazy,
silly things are happening,

248
00:17:12,520 --> 00:17:16,560
and applying it to science fiction.

249
00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:20,760
Nobody had done this before.

250
00:17:20,800 --> 00:17:22,000
When Douglas went there,

251
00:17:22,040 --> 00:17:26,520
he was entirely, I think,
the first word in that genre,

252
00:17:26,560 --> 00:17:29,960
and it's hardly surprising
that it managed to be both

253
00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:34,000
philosophically profound
and hilariously funny.

254
00:17:34,040 --> 00:17:38,320
This is your captain speaking.
All planet leave is cancelled.

255
00:17:38,360 --> 00:17:40,040
I've just had
an unhappy love affair,

256
00:17:40,080 --> 00:17:44,360
so I don't see why anybody else
should have a good time.

257
00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:47,920
Douglas understood that humour
was an integral part of humanity

258
00:17:47,960 --> 00:17:51,560
and so most of the comedy
of Hitchhiker's

259
00:17:51,600 --> 00:17:54,200
is about how not just humans
but all the aliens too

260
00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:58,320
represent ineluctable and eternal
human qualities,

261
00:17:58,360 --> 00:18:00,000
or rather vices, usually,

262
00:18:00,040 --> 00:18:04,800
of stupidity, lack of imagination,
dumbness,

263
00:18:04,840 --> 00:18:07,480
like, you know,
confusion, vagueness,

264
00:18:07,520 --> 00:18:11,280
and that's why Douglas
is so unique a figure,

265
00:18:11,320 --> 00:18:17,320
in that he, straddling both camps
of humour, novel writing and art

266
00:18:17,360 --> 00:18:20,800
and science and gazing into
the future through technology...

267
00:18:24,120 --> 00:18:27,600
Fish?
Very, very useful.

268
00:18:31,280 --> 00:18:33,520
What do you expect me to do
with that?Stick it in your ear.

269
00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:36,120
What?
It's only a little one.

270
00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:38,920
Douglas grew up watching Star Trek

271
00:18:38,960 --> 00:18:42,840
and I know wondering, why is it
everybody seems to speak English?

272
00:18:42,880 --> 00:18:44,760
Once more from the top, please.

273
00:18:44,800 --> 00:18:46,880
So when he came to write
Hitchhikers,

274
00:18:46,920 --> 00:18:49,160
he needed something
which will allow people

275
00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:52,200
to be able to communicate
in the multiplicity of languages

276
00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:54,800
in the universe.
Most people might have then thought,

277
00:18:54,840 --> 00:18:57,800
OK, I'll just put some kind
of universal translator machine

278
00:18:57,840 --> 00:18:59,280
in the ear.

279
00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:01,000
(ROAR OVERHEAD)
Listen.

280
00:19:01,040 --> 00:19:03,480
What on earth's that?
It's important.

281
00:19:03,520 --> 00:19:06,160
It's the Vogon captain.
I can't speak Vogon.

282
00:19:06,200 --> 00:19:09,680
Douglas' genius was not
just to then create a little tech,

283
00:19:09,720 --> 00:19:11,560
you know, a little sort of earpiece.

284
00:19:11,600 --> 00:19:16,720
It was to imagine a fish
which fed off brainwaves.

285
00:19:20,080 --> 00:19:22,640
What exactly am I doing
with this fish in my ear?

286
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:26,520
It's translating for you.
Look in the book under Babel fish.

287
00:19:26,560 --> 00:19:29,640
So Douglas chooses the name Babel
for Babel fish,

288
00:19:29,680 --> 00:19:31,520
an allusion to the Tower of Babel.

289
00:19:31,560 --> 00:19:34,920
But he also uses it as an
opportunity to take a pop at God

290
00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:37,920
because he's famously an atheist.

291
00:19:39,600 --> 00:19:42,760
Not only is the Babel fish,
of course, a wonderful idea

292
00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:46,200
and makes science fiction writing
so much easier.

293
00:19:46,240 --> 00:19:48,520
But also, the typical Douglas idea

294
00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:51,560
that this is a proof of
the non-existence of God.

295
00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:54,320
It's so remarkable,
such a giveaway

296
00:19:54,360 --> 00:19:57,680
for the existence of a God
that there can't be one,

297
00:19:57,720 --> 00:20:00,320
because God says,
"I never have to prove myself.

298
00:20:00,360 --> 00:20:03,520
I must be only found by faith."

299
00:20:03,560 --> 00:20:06,800
GUIDE: "But," said man, "the Babel
fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it?

300
00:20:06,840 --> 00:20:10,400
It proves your existence,
so therefore you don't. QED."

301
00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:12,600
"Oh, dear," says God.
"I hadn't thought of that,"

302
00:20:12,640 --> 00:20:16,000
and promptly vanishes
in a puff of logic.

303
00:20:16,040 --> 00:20:20,240
That paradox of faith and belief
in God

304
00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:24,040
is a... is again a just typical...

305
00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:26,960
a typical entry into a unique mind.

306
00:20:28,800 --> 00:20:31,640
I suppose there are mostly jokes
not about God as such,

307
00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:33,840
but about
the way people think about God.

308
00:20:33,880 --> 00:20:36,800
For instance, the thing right
at the beginning of the series.

309
00:20:36,840 --> 00:20:38,560
It starts off saying
Where God Went Wrong,

310
00:20:38,600 --> 00:20:40,200
Some More Of God's
Greatest Mistakes

311
00:20:40,240 --> 00:20:42,040
and Who Is This God Person, Anyway?

312
00:20:42,080 --> 00:20:45,840
Just deliberately being
controversial about religion

313
00:20:45,880 --> 00:20:51,080
in order to get people's backs up
and make them buy the books.

314
00:20:51,120 --> 00:20:54,160
Like me, I believe
he was not interested

315
00:20:54,200 --> 00:20:57,560
in offending religious people
or mocking their piety and devotion.

316
00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:00,440
It's the mystery of the human,
the enchantment of the world,

317
00:21:00,480 --> 00:21:03,080
is so much better expressed
without there being a God.

318
00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:04,400
You don't know the answer

319
00:21:04,440 --> 00:21:06,280
to all kinds of mysteries
and questions.

320
00:21:06,320 --> 00:21:08,840
Life, the universe
and everything is the question.

321
00:21:08,880 --> 00:21:11,960
But all these questions
are now awake and alive.

322
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,040
They are not solved
and closed down by God.

323
00:21:20,360 --> 00:21:22,840
Science fiction like The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

324
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:29,200
is incredibly important in terms
of trying to wear down people's fear

325
00:21:29,240 --> 00:21:30,960
of approaching scientific ideas

326
00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:33,000
and it was funny in a way...

327
00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:37,200
with ideas that we'd not seen
be made funny before.

328
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:39,400
(BLEATS AND SNORTS)

329
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:42,560
Good evening, madam and gentlemen.

330
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:44,960
I am the main dish of the day.

331
00:21:45,000 --> 00:21:49,760
May I interest you
in parts of my body?Huh?

332
00:21:49,800 --> 00:21:51,200
In The Restaurant At The End
Of The Universe

333
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:55,000
where the cow comes up to your table
and shows off its flank

334
00:21:55,040 --> 00:21:57,160
and says,
"This bit you might find quite..."

335
00:21:57,200 --> 00:21:59,280
And Arthur Dent, of course,
is disgusted.

336
00:21:59,320 --> 00:22:02,920
And again, he's flipped it for us.
(LAUGHS)

337
00:22:02,960 --> 00:22:05,600
We think, eugh, eugh,
this cow wants to be eaten.

338
00:22:05,640 --> 00:22:07,680
That's against
all tenets of nature.

339
00:22:07,720 --> 00:22:09,720
He said,
"Well, no, it's evolved to say,

340
00:22:09,760 --> 00:22:11,520
I am your cow, please eat me.

341
00:22:11,560 --> 00:22:15,040
And you think that's worse
than being an animal

342
00:22:15,080 --> 00:22:17,280
that is terrified of violence

343
00:22:17,320 --> 00:22:19,400
and is programmed to run away

344
00:22:19,440 --> 00:22:23,600
at the sight of teeth and claws?"

345
00:22:23,640 --> 00:22:26,360
May I urge you,
sir, to consider my liver?

346
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:28,840
It must be very rich
and tender by now.

347
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:32,200
I have been force-feeding myself
for months.

348
00:22:32,240 --> 00:22:35,440
Once you're having a conversation
with what you're about to eat,

349
00:22:35,480 --> 00:22:38,400
it makes us think about levels
of consciousness in animals.

350
00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:40,480
The more perspectives we have,

351
00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:43,200
the more ways
we can question the world,

352
00:22:43,240 --> 00:22:45,040
the more ways we can empathise.

353
00:22:45,080 --> 00:22:49,600
He was such a curious person.
And again, you know,

354
00:22:49,640 --> 00:22:53,280
the best artist and the best
are constantly asking questions.

355
00:22:53,320 --> 00:22:56,200
I'll just nip off and shoot myself.

356
00:22:56,240 --> 00:22:59,360
Oh, God.
Don't worry, sir.

357
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:01,440
I'll be very humane.

358
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:21,160
DOUGLAS: At Christmas, we went...
my family, we went to Fiji.

359
00:23:23,040 --> 00:23:26,400
One day we rented a speedboat
and we sped across the ocean

360
00:23:26,440 --> 00:23:30,360
to the island where
they filmed the movie Castaway.

361
00:23:30,400 --> 00:23:33,440
And it's the perfect desert island.

362
00:23:33,480 --> 00:23:37,480
Sun, white sand, blue ocean,

363
00:23:37,520 --> 00:23:41,120
a single rocky hill,
clump of palm trees.

364
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:45,320
And perfect cellphone reception.

365
00:23:45,360 --> 00:23:47,560
Why was there perfect
cellphone reception?

366
00:23:47,600 --> 00:23:54,200
Apparently, it was in Tom Hanks'
contract that there had to be.

367
00:23:54,240 --> 00:23:57,240
I remember when Douglas got one
of the first mobile phones,

368
00:23:57,280 --> 00:23:59,560
which was obviously
the size of a house brick,

369
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:02,600
and you think,
"Well, what's the point of that?"

370
00:24:02,640 --> 00:24:04,360
"You can use your phone anywhere."

371
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:07,440
"There are phones everywhere,
Douglas. I've got two in my house.

372
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:10,520
There's a phone box on every corner.
Why would you want one?"

373
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:12,680
"But you'll see. Don't you see?"

374
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:14,600
"Not really."

375
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:17,920
But, you know,
he was always decades ahead.

376
00:24:17,960 --> 00:24:20,080
(PHONE RINGS)

377
00:24:20,120 --> 00:24:22,080
Hello?

378
00:24:22,120 --> 00:24:24,640
I'm sorry, he's out to lunch.
Can you call back later?

379
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,400
Cellnet's portable
is a true pocket phone,

380
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:29,680
but is at present
intended for mainly urban use.

381
00:24:29,720 --> 00:24:31,680
(PHONE RINGS)
Hello?

382
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:34,240
Douglas,
being a great conceptual thinker,

383
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,120
thought,
if I'm on the phone to somebody,

384
00:24:37,160 --> 00:24:41,600
how am I going to prove
that I'm using a cordless phone?

385
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:45,000
Yeah. Yes, hello.
Yes, it's for you.Thank you.

386
00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:47,440
During the call, he would wander off

387
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:49,560
and suddenly
you'd hear this tinkling.

388
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:52,800
And that was Douglas
in the bathroom urinating.

389
00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,120
He'd say to the person
on the other end of the line,

390
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:59,440
"Oh, sorry about this. It's just
that I've got a cordless phone."

391
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:06,640
When you're a child
you accept you turn a switch

392
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:08,200
and a light goes on

393
00:25:08,240 --> 00:25:11,440
and you don't actually really
sort of think about it

394
00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:13,120
because it's just
part of what happens.

395
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:16,680
Then you get a bit older
and you find out about electricity

396
00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:18,320
and where it's come from,

397
00:25:18,360 --> 00:25:19,920
everything that's
gone into making it.

398
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:23,240
Then you begin to get excited
and think, this is amazing.

399
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:26,280
And you walk into a room, press
this button and a light goes on.

400
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,280
So in a way, I mean, I find I get

401
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,560
more childlike wonder
out of something

402
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:34,040
if you actually
know something about it.Yeah.

403
00:25:34,080 --> 00:25:38,800
When Peter was small, he played
with these. They were a toy.

404
00:25:38,840 --> 00:25:43,360
And then he discovered they were
helping him to learn to read.

405
00:25:43,400 --> 00:25:45,360
So it is with microcomputers

406
00:25:45,400 --> 00:25:49,600
and the revolution in information
technology, it's begun with play.

407
00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:53,640
The hobbyists are the forerunners
of the microprocessor revolution,

408
00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,080
the nutcase micro geniuses
who have to do their thing,

409
00:25:57,120 --> 00:25:59,920
never mind the dinner getting cold.

410
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:04,920
One of the things that connected us
was computing.

411
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:08,880
I had become insanely excited
about the possibilities

412
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:11,520
of what were known as microcomputers
back then,

413
00:26:11,560 --> 00:26:15,160
so I could walk
or bicycle to his place

414
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:17,920
and we would play
with our computers.

415
00:26:17,960 --> 00:26:21,800
We have much to be grateful to the
hobbyists who can't get a girl

416
00:26:21,840 --> 00:26:25,480
because he's got a mind
full of differential calculus.

417
00:26:25,520 --> 00:26:27,440
No country could possibly pay

418
00:26:27,480 --> 00:26:29,720
for the accumulation
of research experience

419
00:26:29,760 --> 00:26:32,840
and criticism
that these nutcases provide.

420
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,680
He had a DEC Rainbow computer,

421
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:38,720
which was quite a sort of grand
office-style computer,

422
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:40,640
because as far as I was concerned,

423
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:43,920
he was insanely rich
and I was just starting.

424
00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:49,040
So I was in awe of his purchasing
power, and his enthusiasm.

425
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:55,920
It reached its height
in January 1984

426
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:00,120
when he bought a Macintosh computer.

427
00:27:00,160 --> 00:27:03,760
We were the first two in Europe
to own such a device.

428
00:27:03,800 --> 00:27:07,800
It's more sophisticated,
yet less complicated.

429
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:12,200
It can store vast amounts
of yesterday

430
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:14,800
or tell you what's in store
for tomorrow.

431
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:16,520
It was a new way of computing.

432
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:19,920
It had things that existing
computers just didn't have.

433
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:24,040
A mouse, pull-down menus,

434
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:26,160
a sort of graphic interface.

435
00:27:27,440 --> 00:27:30,800
With a little waste paper bin
in the corner.

436
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:34,400
And folders and these images
that are all so familiar to us now

437
00:27:34,440 --> 00:27:36,080
but were brand-new then

438
00:27:36,120 --> 00:27:38,320
and a thrillingly exciting way

439
00:27:38,360 --> 00:27:40,520
of manipulating information
and so on.

440
00:27:40,560 --> 00:27:44,280
And both Douglas and I thought
this was absolutely the future.

441
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:52,360
There was no Internet to join
until the very end of the '80s,

442
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:57,240
but there were modems and you could
connect with another computer

443
00:27:57,280 --> 00:28:00,320
by means of what was known
as a handshake.

444
00:28:00,360 --> 00:28:04,680
(DIAL TONE, NUMBER TONES
AND TRILL OF CONNECTING)

445
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:11,040
We had a microphone and
we had a speaker and we had a modem.

446
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:18,240
And eventually, after weeks of
tweaking the scripts and swearing,

447
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,920
we actually managed,
he in Islington,

448
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:22,840
to speak into his microphone

449
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:27,280
and it came out of my computer
in Dalston. (LAUGHS)

450
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:30,800
At one point the line dropped...
(TRILLING, WHITE NOISE)

451
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:34,680
..and so we called each other up.

452
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,200
Douglas said,
"I've just had an instant thought."

453
00:28:37,240 --> 00:28:41,080
I said, "What's that?" He said,
"We already have a technology

454
00:28:41,120 --> 00:28:46,280
that allows us to speak to each
other remotely. It's the telephone.

455
00:28:46,320 --> 00:28:50,280
Why are we making the telephone
go through a whole other system?"

456
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:52,200
It was a complete waste of time.

457
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:58,680
But the pleasure of doing it, I
cannot tell you. It was so exciting.

458
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,040
He rang me from the South of France
because he'd forgotten a book

459
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:09,760
he was halfway through, and he
wanted me to take it down with me.

460
00:29:09,800 --> 00:29:12,520
And I know what it's like
when you're reading a book

461
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:14,160
and it's gripping
and you've left it.

462
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:17,680
So I was searching the house,
and I needed some more information.

463
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:20,720
I said, "I can't find it."
And it was a computer manual.

464
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:23,360
(LAUGHS) I was like...

465
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:29,840
Hi, this is Eddie,
your shipboard computer

466
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:33,200
and I'm feeling just great, guys."

467
00:29:33,240 --> 00:29:37,560
Douglas saw very early on that the
computer wasn't just a typewriter.

468
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:42,000
His overwhelming sense was
excitement about the possibilities

469
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:44,560
that it was all going to bring.

470
00:29:44,600 --> 00:29:47,280
Much bigger than that
was what he saw

471
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:49,680
the impact likely to be on society.

472
00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,000
Life is the most powerful phenomenon
on this planet,

473
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:59,360
and artificial life
is going to be

474
00:29:59,400 --> 00:30:04,800
the most powerful phenomenon
that we have created.

475
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:08,920
If you look at huge science fiction
monoliths in our culture

476
00:30:08,960 --> 00:30:12,160
AI to Star Trek
was merely, "Computer,

477
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:15,920
where is that star system?"
(FLAT) "It is in the place..."

478
00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:19,080
You know, it was basically
just relaying information.

479
00:30:19,120 --> 00:30:20,640
Well, that's not intelligence.

480
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,960
And Douglas' immediate leap
from that form of science fiction,

481
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:29,960
a rather dull form of what
an intelligent computer might be,

482
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:31,760
was to understand that intelligence

483
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:34,280
is also to do
with social intelligence,

484
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:37,280
to do with personality
and if an AI had infinite

485
00:30:37,320 --> 00:30:39,720
or at least close to infinite
knowledge,

486
00:30:39,760 --> 00:30:45,240
then its guesses would be
surprising and interesting.

487
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:49,040
GUIDE: One day, a race of hyper-
intelligent pan-dimensional beings

488
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:53,440
built themselves a gigantic
supercomputer called Deep Thought

489
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:58,120
to calculate once and for all the
answer to the ultimate question

490
00:30:58,160 --> 00:31:01,600
of life, the universe
and everything.

491
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:05,920
One of the things that I think
is captured by Douglas Adams

492
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:09,960
is the importance of imagination
in the scientific endeavour.

493
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:13,760
It is an imaginative process. It is
a moment where Albert Einstein

494
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:16,400
is thinking about going down in the
lift,

495
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:20,640
or looking at the buildings as he's
on a tram and he goes, but what if?

496
00:31:20,680 --> 00:31:22,840
Now, of course, science fiction
and fiction generally

497
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,160
is very often saying, what if?

498
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:29,000
But the "What if?" question
is very, very important.

499
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:31,840
Oh, great computer...

500
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:35,280
We want you to tell us the answer.

501
00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:37,320
The answer to what?

502
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:40,160
Life.
The universe.Everything.

503
00:31:41,480 --> 00:31:43,840
Tricky.

504
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:45,800
After eons of time,

505
00:31:45,840 --> 00:31:48,960
it eventually was ready
to come up with the answer,

506
00:31:49,000 --> 00:31:52,240
which astonished everybody
because it was 42.

507
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:55,240
BOTH: Forty-two?

508
00:31:57,240 --> 00:31:58,640
When you take a concept,

509
00:31:58,680 --> 00:32:01,400
what is the answer to
life, the universe and everything?

510
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:05,680
It's got to be philosophical.
It's got to be complicated.

511
00:32:05,720 --> 00:32:08,760
It's got to be huge in concept.

512
00:32:08,800 --> 00:32:11,240
And Douglas said, 42.

513
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:16,160
It's got a sort of cosy feel
about it, 42.

514
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:18,960
Sort of a plump,
sort of likeable number,

515
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:22,440
nothing offensive or spiky about it.

516
00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:27,080
There's whole Wikipedia pages
on 42,

517
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:30,240
and the significance of it
in the actual world of physics

518
00:32:30,280 --> 00:32:33,400
and, you know, history and
archaeology and everything else.

519
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,480
He kept his cards close to his chest
because he absolutely relished

520
00:32:41,520 --> 00:32:46,480
how perplexed, almost to the point
of enragement, people were by this

521
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:47,920
and wanted to know more.

522
00:32:47,960 --> 00:32:51,160
And where he got the idea from,
and could he explain it further?

523
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:53,400
And he loved just going...

524
00:32:57,680 --> 00:33:00,840
When he came up with the number 42,
would he ever imagine

525
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:02,840
that for the rest of his life

526
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:06,560
and then for decades afterwards,
people would be asking the question,

527
00:33:06,600 --> 00:33:09,280
what is the significance
about the number 42?

528
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,480
The Kumars at No. 42, Level 42.

529
00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:15,480
So many things out there
and you think it's a coincidence

530
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:17,840
and then you delve into it
and it's not.

531
00:33:22,080 --> 00:33:25,560
The idea that life, the universe
and everything is a single number,

532
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:29,400
that's a work of genius because they
haven't asked the right question.

533
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:30,720
They've got the number right.

534
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:32,720
But now we have to work out
what is the question

535
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:35,520
that results in 42 of anything?

536
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:38,440
And if we find that, we will
actually know the meaning of life.

537
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:40,920
But it was the great question,

538
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:46,880
the ultimate question of life,
the universe and everything.

539
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:49,880
And so, not satisfied, they decide

540
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:54,520
that they just simply have to build
an even bigger computer,

541
00:33:54,560 --> 00:33:59,560
which turns out to be the planet
Earth. That's what Earth is.

542
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:02,960
It's a computer experiment
run by white mice.

543
00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:04,640
Now, Earth creature, we have

544
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,200
been running your planet
for the last 10 million years

545
00:34:07,240 --> 00:34:10,480
in order to find this wretched
thing called the ultimate question.

546
00:34:10,520 --> 00:34:14,080
We always thought we were using
white mice in our experiments.

547
00:34:14,120 --> 00:34:16,880
It turns out they were using us.

548
00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:22,920
No, it was a joke.
I mean, what can I tell you?

549
00:34:22,960 --> 00:34:25,520
Once I'd decided, OK,
the answer is going to be a number

550
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:27,680
and that's the joke.
OK, what's the number?

551
00:34:27,720 --> 00:34:31,080
Well, I think it should be
a very small, ordinary number.

552
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:33,680
Why not? I don't know, 42.

553
00:34:33,720 --> 00:34:38,240
There was a moment years ago
when the Hubble constant,

554
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:43,520
which is the measure of how fast
the universe is expanding, was 42

555
00:34:43,560 --> 00:34:46,800
and Douglas was absolutely
jumping with joy.

556
00:34:46,840 --> 00:34:50,000
He's actually found
the answer to literally everything.

557
00:34:50,040 --> 00:34:54,280
Anyway, it's now not 42.
It's some other number.

558
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,000
The robot, weighing 17 stone
and costing about £3,000,

559
00:35:05,040 --> 00:35:07,560
is a robot who can be programmed,
says his maker,

560
00:35:07,600 --> 00:35:09,480
to do ordinary household chores.

561
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,080
Judging by his performance
in trying to cross the road,

562
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:14,040
he may need a bit more fine tuning.

563
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:17,120
I commanded Clay II to bring me
a glass of wine.

564
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:20,120
He couldn't open the bottle,
but he brought the tray.

565
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:22,560
If you see the robot as
all the dreams of our future

566
00:35:22,600 --> 00:35:24,560
and in the 1970s,
there'd always be something,

567
00:35:24,600 --> 00:35:29,280
before long, you won't have to wash
your kitchen floor because this...

568
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:32,400
And you'd see all these things.

569
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:34,560
All in all,
as a butler, or domestic help,

570
00:35:34,600 --> 00:35:37,280
seems to need still a watchful eye
and a helping hand.

571
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:39,840
But he's clearly coming along fast.

572
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,000
Most of the robots, they were
just normal human characters

573
00:35:43,040 --> 00:35:46,280
that also happened to be computers.
"They'd always talk like this."

574
00:35:46,320 --> 00:35:51,640
ROBOT: I am capable of speaking
any language... except Greek.

575
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:54,600
Douglas had that wonder
before the world,

576
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:56,720
because he could take
a scientific concept

577
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,440
and make it funny,
make it absurd,

578
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,920
root it in a story or a parable
or an idea

579
00:36:02,960 --> 00:36:04,960
and because of his love
of technology

580
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:06,960
and because of the speed
at which technology

581
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,040
was growing and emerging around him,

582
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:14,560
it gave him that space to play
and to think and to imagine.

583
00:36:14,600 --> 00:36:17,840
It says
"Genuine people personalities".

584
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:23,720
Er, it sounds ghastly.
It is, absolutely ghastly.

585
00:36:24,600 --> 00:36:27,600
Douglas saw that robots,
if there were to be such things,

586
00:36:27,640 --> 00:36:30,160
wouldn't just be...
(FLAT) "I will obey."

587
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:34,160
But that if you can make something
that appears sentient

588
00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,000
and can listen
and obey an instruction,

589
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:39,400
you would also throw in
a personality.

590
00:36:39,440 --> 00:36:43,120
In the case of Marvin,
of course, paranoid misery.

591
00:36:43,160 --> 00:36:44,880
But in the case of other ones,

592
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:48,760
outrageous California helpfulness
and cheerfulness.

593
00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:51,520
In both cases, you'd want to
run screaming from them.

594
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:57,960
Life, don't talk to me about life.

595
00:36:58,000 --> 00:36:59,840
What Marvin is
a wonderful example of

596
00:36:59,880 --> 00:37:03,880
is that if you become truly sentient
and you're aware of yourself,

597
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,760
all of the problems
come to you as well.

598
00:37:06,800 --> 00:37:09,920
All of the "Why am I here?
Why am I doing this?"

599
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,280
Here is something
with a brain the size of a planet,

600
00:37:12,320 --> 00:37:15,960
but with depression. They'll just
keep opening and closing the door

601
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:17,680
and bringing you drinks.

602
00:37:17,720 --> 00:37:21,960
What are you supposed to do
with a manically depressed robot?

603
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:26,680
Douglas was interested, endlessly,
in what science really had to,

604
00:37:26,720 --> 00:37:29,280
to offer in terms
of the exploration of the world.

605
00:37:29,320 --> 00:37:32,880
I think science fiction
gave him that playground.

606
00:37:32,920 --> 00:37:34,480
I see from our instruments

607
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:37,080
we have a couple of hitchhikers
on board our ship.

608
00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:39,800
I've sent out a search party
and as soon as they find you,

609
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:44,520
I shall turn you off the ship.

610
00:37:44,560 --> 00:37:46,480
He saw the world, the galaxy,

611
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:48,960
the universe,
as fundamentally relational,

612
00:37:49,000 --> 00:37:53,320
fundamentally
a web of surprising connection.

613
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:57,440
That was a big theme in terms of
how Douglas liked to think.

614
00:37:57,480 --> 00:37:58,840
We've been picked up by a ship

615
00:37:58,880 --> 00:38:01,000
with the new
Infinite Improbability Drive.

616
00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:03,240
I mean,
this is incredible, Arthur.

617
00:38:03,280 --> 00:38:04,800
As you jump into space,

618
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:06,920
the likelihood of you
surviving is very, very low.

619
00:38:06,960 --> 00:38:08,960
And so he has a plot device,

620
00:38:09,000 --> 00:38:11,520
which actually is
an extremely interesting

621
00:38:11,560 --> 00:38:14,760
exploration of physics
and quantum possibility.

622
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:18,320
As the ship's drive reaches
infinite improbability,

623
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,720
it passes simultaneously through
every point in the universe.

624
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:25,840
The ideas really possessed him,
and he did understand them.

625
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:30,760
He understood
the nature of quantum mechanics.

626
00:38:30,800 --> 00:38:33,040
And he saw that, therefore,

627
00:38:33,080 --> 00:38:36,400
that there must be a use
for this mad idea.

628
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:38,440
And in his case, it was travel.

629
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:40,600
You could just be there and there,

630
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:44,280
because a particle can be
and has now been proved empirically.

631
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:48,240
GUIDE: The Infinite Improbability
Drive is a wonderful new method

632
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:51,240
of crossing interstellar distances
in a few seconds

633
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:55,000
without all that tedious
mucking about in hyperspace.

634
00:38:55,040 --> 00:38:57,640
We now are obsessed with it
driving AI

635
00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,640
as it sees what has
happened in the past

636
00:38:59,680 --> 00:39:03,200
and works out the probability
of this being the right answer,

637
00:39:03,240 --> 00:39:05,880
or that being the right answer.
It's a question of probabilities.

638
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:07,200
That's what allows ChatGPT

639
00:39:07,240 --> 00:39:10,480
to work the large language models
that we use today.

640
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:24,960
GRIFF: He knew that Hitchhiker's
had been very brilliant.

641
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:31,120
But Douglas had a thing
about writing and writer's block

642
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:35,400
and an inability
to get pen to paper.

643
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:41,160
He didn't find it easy.
That was never...

644
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:43,320
He didn't set out to be an author.

645
00:39:43,360 --> 00:39:47,160
He set out, his initial thing,
was to be a writer performer.

646
00:39:47,200 --> 00:39:49,840
Go and write sketches.
That was what he wanted to do.

647
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:52,880
He was an accidental novelist.

648
00:39:52,920 --> 00:39:58,120
He used to find anything that he
could do rather than write.

649
00:39:58,160 --> 00:39:59,760
He used to try and think of ways

650
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:02,320
that he could pretend
that he was going to work.

651
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:05,000
And when he was at work,
he was going to write.

652
00:40:05,040 --> 00:40:06,840
That was him going to...

653
00:40:06,880 --> 00:40:10,120
So what he used to do
is he used to go into a room

654
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:12,160
where he had an exercise bicycle,

655
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:14,640
and he would cycle
for so many miles

656
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:17,960
and that was him going to work.

657
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:19,520
When he got off the bike,

658
00:40:19,560 --> 00:40:22,320
in his mind, he said,
"That's it, I'm at work."

659
00:40:22,360 --> 00:40:26,680
But the trouble is to get to his
office where he would sit and work,

660
00:40:26,720 --> 00:40:29,120
he'd have to go past the kitchen.

661
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:34,360
He would find everything to do
rather than go upstairs and write.

662
00:40:34,400 --> 00:40:38,400
When I started out, I did
something on radio, on television.

663
00:40:38,440 --> 00:40:40,680
And then because the book
was such a hit,

664
00:40:40,720 --> 00:40:42,000
it meant the next thing I did
was a book,

665
00:40:42,040 --> 00:40:44,480
and the next thing after that
was a book, and...

666
00:40:44,520 --> 00:40:49,160
You know, that wasn't the kind of
life that I really wanted,

667
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:53,720
but there was huge pressure on me
to keep on doing that.

668
00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:01,960
I found myself sitting in a room by
myself, really not enjoying myself.

669
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:07,120
He had a classic writer's
melancholia and remoteness.

670
00:41:08,720 --> 00:41:11,720
That guy,
man, could he could use a bath.

671
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:13,800
He'd be in there for hours.

672
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:17,400
I mean, you'd expect him to come out
and be a six-inch prune of a man.

673
00:41:17,440 --> 00:41:21,800
He was so... just in there,
you might say, depressed.

674
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:24,440
But at the time we just thought,
well, that's Douglas.

675
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,160
He's just thinking hard.

676
00:41:28,120 --> 00:41:32,440
The one thing that was unbearable
when he sat down

677
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:36,040
was to face the blinking cursor.

678
00:41:36,080 --> 00:41:39,680
And every blink
is a stagger to the heart.

679
00:41:39,720 --> 00:41:42,400
He could start off a sentence
so beautifully

680
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,320
and then get really worried

681
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:49,760
because the next sentence
wouldn't be as beautiful.

682
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:55,240
He would have an idea
and he would write,

683
00:41:55,280 --> 00:41:58,160
and he could do,
say, six pages,

684
00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:00,000
and then he'd go back
and rewrite it,

685
00:42:00,040 --> 00:42:02,160
and then he'd go back
and rewrite it,

686
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:04,080
and then he'd go back
and rewrite it.

687
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:09,560
And he was so particular
that at the end of this rewriting,

688
00:42:09,600 --> 00:42:14,200
instead of having six pages,
he could have six words.

689
00:42:14,240 --> 00:42:18,400
Douglas would spend classically
three months on the first paragraph,

690
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:20,360
then realise
he'd got to do something,

691
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:23,160
and then get stuck
because there's something about...

692
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:26,160
His personality got in the way
of him actually doing anything

693
00:42:26,200 --> 00:42:29,600
because he was so...
"(GROANS IN FRUSTRATION)

694
00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:32,200
It's all about me. I can't
do this. I'm not good enough."

695
00:42:35,720 --> 00:42:39,000
He was quite
vulnerable to depression.

696
00:42:39,040 --> 00:42:41,560
He did get very low
when things weren't going well.

697
00:42:41,600 --> 00:42:44,600
It was as if he had all the ideas
boiling around inside him,

698
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:49,360
and they were a bit inchoate
and a bit sort of undisciplined

699
00:42:49,400 --> 00:42:53,320
and it was that process of actually
finding a way to give it structure,

700
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:56,360
form, cohesion, articulacy,

701
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:59,840
get the idea out
that he found incredibly hard.

702
00:42:59,880 --> 00:43:02,000
It's been a bit of a muddle
of a year, really,

703
00:43:02,040 --> 00:43:06,520
because at the beginning of it when
I was doing the second radio series

704
00:43:06,560 --> 00:43:09,040
and, you know, the scripts

705
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:12,640
are being written within minutes
of transmission sort of thing.

706
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:16,480
That's not quite true, though
it's not a million miles from true.

707
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:19,600
I had the second book hanging
over me, which had to be written.

708
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:21,840
I was putting that off
and putting it off.

709
00:43:21,880 --> 00:43:24,080
Because I couldn't
get the thing started.

710
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:26,880
If you imagine that feeling,
you've got a piece of work to do

711
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:28,520
you've got to hand in
in the morning

712
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:31,600
and you attach millions of pounds
to that,

713
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:37,720
that's a big pressure. Like anybody
watching your brother suffer,

714
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,120
I remember being really angry

715
00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,440
with the publishers, with
the agents, with the, you know...

716
00:43:43,480 --> 00:43:46,480
I was like,
this isn't worth it.

717
00:43:46,520 --> 00:43:51,200
But looking back now,
I can see he needed the adrenaline,

718
00:43:51,240 --> 00:43:52,960
the fight or flight.

719
00:43:53,000 --> 00:43:58,240
He needed to get to the point where
everybody was like, "Oh, my God."

720
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:02,160
Eventually, when Pan sort of
read me the riot act

721
00:44:02,200 --> 00:44:04,680
sometime in the beginning of August

722
00:44:04,720 --> 00:44:07,320
about the continual none appearance
of this book,

723
00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:10,280
saying, "How much have you done?"
And I had to...

724
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:13,960
I didn't admit
I hadn't done any, just worried,

725
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:18,280
and I basically had a month left
to write it, and that was it.

726
00:44:18,320 --> 00:44:21,160
Otherwise it was
concrete overcoat time.

727
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:28,080
When he'd got
the million-pound advance,

728
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:29,800
or won a Golden Pan
or something,

729
00:44:29,840 --> 00:44:32,120
he wanted to hang out
with Paul Allen.

730
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:35,120
You know, the guy who started
Microsoft with Bill Gates,

731
00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:36,680
who had a massive yacht,

732
00:44:36,720 --> 00:44:38,760
and Douglas would be on the yacht
with Paul

733
00:44:38,800 --> 00:44:41,840
and a few other nobs
going around Antarctica

734
00:44:41,880 --> 00:44:43,960
and partying
like there was no tomorrow.

735
00:44:44,000 --> 00:44:46,400
And then as the year wore on

736
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:49,880
and he'd written just the first
half of the first paragraph,

737
00:44:49,920 --> 00:44:53,720
and he's starting to get panicky,
and then he'd get really desperate,

738
00:44:53,760 --> 00:44:56,800
and then he'd want to see his old
friends. He felt safe with them.

739
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:58,560
And so he'd get worse and worse.

740
00:44:58,600 --> 00:45:01,920
And the publisher would then
hold the gun to his head

741
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:06,040
and make him write the book, which
was agony, but he had to do it

742
00:45:06,080 --> 00:45:07,400
and he did it in three weeks,

743
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:10,160
because it's
all done by the subconscious anyway

744
00:45:10,200 --> 00:45:12,920
and then the book would come out
and it would sell millions

745
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:15,240
and then Douglas would be off again.

746
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,840
He only wanted to hang out
with millionaires and Steve Jobs.

747
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:27,160
The phone rang and the voice said,

748
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:30,320
"We want you to go to Madagascar.

749
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:34,560
We want you to look for the aye-aye,

750
00:45:34,600 --> 00:45:37,320
a very rare form of lemur."

751
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:39,040
I, assuming
they'd got the wrong number,

752
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,920
said yes before they could
discover their mistake.

753
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:44,360
But in fact,
it turned out that they'd decided,

754
00:45:44,400 --> 00:45:47,000
here's somebody who doesn't
know anything about lemurs,

755
00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:49,840
anything about the aye-aye,
anything about Madagascar.

756
00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:52,320
Let's send him.

757
00:45:55,720 --> 00:45:57,560
Every science fiction writer

758
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:00,560
tries his own version
of an alternate world,

759
00:46:00,600 --> 00:46:04,280
a place where time
has broken its banks.

760
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,680
Madagascar is just such a place,
only it's real.

761
00:46:07,720 --> 00:46:12,040
Something like 100 million years
ago, it broke loose from Africa,

762
00:46:12,080 --> 00:46:17,640
and its plants and animals
have evolved in isolation.

763
00:46:17,680 --> 00:46:20,280
I first met Douglas in Madagascar,
of all places.

764
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:23,840
And he'd been sent there
by the Observer colour supplement.

765
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,560
We had to go straight
from the airport into the jungle.

766
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:30,800
And that first night, we slept
on a concrete floor in a hut.

767
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:34,040
Spider-infested hut.
Snakes everywhere, rats everywhere.

768
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:37,760
And he was really
thrown in at the deep end.

769
00:46:39,240 --> 00:46:42,480
At the time we went,
the aye-aye was considered

770
00:46:42,520 --> 00:46:44,640
one of the most
endangered animals on the planet.

771
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:48,800
They were believed only to live on
this one island called Nosy Mangabe,

772
00:46:48,840 --> 00:46:53,440
and the population was
thought to be as low as just 12.

773
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,120
We got there
with all our camping kit,

774
00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:58,960
thinking there's going to be
nobody else there.

775
00:46:59,000 --> 00:47:01,640
And then we got to this
little hut in the forest.

776
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:04,000
There was an American
photographer there

777
00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:06,600
and he'd been there for three months
on his own,

778
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:11,040
trying to photograph an aye-aye.
He'd never seen one.

779
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:14,280
The first night,
rainforest pouring with rain,

780
00:47:14,320 --> 00:47:16,760
we went off, didn't see anything.

781
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:18,840
The next night we thought,
we'll go again.

782
00:47:18,880 --> 00:47:22,280
And, you know,
we're going to keep trying.

783
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:25,960
50 yards from the hut, we sensed
something, looked up with a torch.

784
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:30,840
And there on a branch was
a real-life aye-aye.

785
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:37,680
We went rushing back to the hut
and told this guy.

786
00:47:37,720 --> 00:47:43,920
Of course, he almost collapsed
in tears because he hadn't come out.

787
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:46,120
After we left,
pleased with ourselves...

788
00:47:46,160 --> 00:47:47,720
We left a couple of days later.

789
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:53,120
He spent six more months
on the island. Never saw one.

790
00:47:53,160 --> 00:47:56,440
I was absolutely transfixed
by that moment.

791
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:00,960
You suddenly think, there is a huge
amount of history to this moment.

792
00:48:01,000 --> 00:48:05,320
Our roots in this planet
go back an awfully long way.

793
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:07,200
And it takes a confrontation
like this

794
00:48:07,240 --> 00:48:11,440
to realise how broad and deep
your family goes.

795
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:14,680
"Imagine the lemurs' surprise.

796
00:48:14,720 --> 00:48:17,800
For millions of years, they'd
been all on their own as primates.

797
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:22,320
And they'd never seen an ape since
they last shaved off from Africa.

798
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:24,200
And then suddenly apes returned."

799
00:48:24,240 --> 00:48:28,840
And I said, "Oh. So,
when humans arrived in Madagascar,

800
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:31,800
did they bring monkeys
and apes with them?

801
00:48:31,840 --> 00:48:34,840
Douglas said,
"No, the humans were the apes.

802
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:38,160
We are apes, don't forget."
"Oh, yes. I'd forgotten that."

803
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:40,160
He was constantly reminding me.

804
00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:46,400
Of course, while these poor lemurs
had been living in Madagascar,

805
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:48,560
apes and turned rather surprising.

806
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:51,720
They had turned into things
that could build ships.

807
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:58,200
A lot happened in those few weeks.
He definitely did change

808
00:48:58,240 --> 00:49:01,760
and he basically said,
"I'd like to do more,"

809
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,680
and so we hatched this plan
to spend a year travelling

810
00:49:05,720 --> 00:49:09,640
around the world together, looking
for other endangered species.

811
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,480
And as soon as we got back
to London,

812
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:14,520
he invited me
up to his house in Islington,

813
00:49:14,560 --> 00:49:18,840
and he'd already put a map of the
world on the wall and said, "Right,

814
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,240
where are we going to go?"

815
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:25,400
The idea was to set off
straight away.

816
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:29,080
But Douglas being Douglas
was running late on a book.

817
00:49:29,120 --> 00:49:32,040
Douglas Adams, you're on
the Grand Tour, as I call it,

818
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:35,640
to publicise this book Dirk Gently's
Holistic Detective Agency.

819
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:38,040
Having read the book
and having enjoyed the book,

820
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:40,280
but not having understood
the book very much,

821
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:43,280
how would you describe it?
A ghost horror detective whodunit

822
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:45,680
time-travel romantic musical
comedy epic,

823
00:49:45,720 --> 00:49:50,360
which is a genre
it has peculiarly to itself.

824
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:53,320
Instead of leaving like within
the next month or two,

825
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,440
three years later, he had finally
finished his book,

826
00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:57,800
done his author tour,

827
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:01,000
and then we could go off and do a
year travelling around the world.

828
00:50:24,440 --> 00:50:28,560
I don't think I'd seen him
so excited for a very long time.

829
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:30,760
It's not that he got bored by books.

830
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:36,120
He got excited when he started Dirk
Gently as a new stream of fiction.

831
00:50:36,160 --> 00:50:40,840
But it was still agony writing them
but this woke up something in him.

832
00:50:40,880 --> 00:50:44,440
He saw it as immensely important.

833
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:55,840
All I knew was that he was
going round the world with animals.

834
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:59,280
He'd taken a shop's worth of
cameras, with huge lenses.

835
00:50:59,320 --> 00:51:03,640
How he travelled through the jungle
carrying all this stuff,

836
00:51:03,680 --> 00:51:05,640
I've no idea.

837
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:11,440
He literally
turned up with a pile of books,

838
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:14,680
which he reckoned was
The Complete Works Of Shakespeare.

839
00:51:14,720 --> 00:51:17,200
Another time he turned up
with a cricket bat.

840
00:51:17,240 --> 00:51:19,560
What are you
going to do with a cricket bat?

841
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:24,360
Of all the animals we went to see,

842
00:51:24,400 --> 00:51:27,040
my favourite was an animal
called the kakapo.

843
00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:29,720
And the kakapo is a kind of parrot.

844
00:51:29,760 --> 00:51:32,080
It lives in New Zealand.

845
00:51:32,120 --> 00:51:35,080
It's a flightless parrot.

846
00:51:35,120 --> 00:51:37,640
It's forgotten how to fly.

847
00:51:37,680 --> 00:51:43,320
Sadly, it has also forgotten
that it's forgotten how to fly.

848
00:51:43,360 --> 00:51:47,240
A seriously worried kakapo

849
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:51,520
has been known to run up a tree

850
00:51:51,560 --> 00:51:54,080
and jump out of it.

851
00:51:56,440 --> 00:51:59,280
Kakapoo were one of the birds
in New Zealand as many others

852
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:02,640
which evolved to be flightless.
They had nothing to be scared of.

853
00:52:02,680 --> 00:52:04,680
There were no predators
in New Zealand.

854
00:52:04,720 --> 00:52:07,160
So they had no reason to fly away.

855
00:52:10,960 --> 00:52:14,480
These poor creatures
would walk to a cooking pot,

856
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:17,080
go, "Hello, everybody."

857
00:52:17,120 --> 00:52:19,680
You could just...
You didn't have to run after it,

858
00:52:19,720 --> 00:52:22,480
just picked it up
and put it in the pot.

859
00:52:22,520 --> 00:52:26,080
It's appallingly tragic.

860
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:29,600
This is where evolution goes wrong.
It's sensible for millions of years

861
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:32,440
but it doesn't foresee
that predators

862
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:34,800
might move
from continent to continent

863
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:37,920
or from island to island
and then suddenly you're done for.

864
00:52:49,400 --> 00:52:52,680
We got back and Douglas
was staying in a villa

865
00:52:52,720 --> 00:52:54,760
in the South of France.

866
00:52:54,800 --> 00:52:57,680
We were doing a book
of our travels.

867
00:52:57,720 --> 00:53:00,680
So the first morning
we went to walk along the seafront,

868
00:53:00,720 --> 00:53:03,200
and talked about anything
but the book.

869
00:53:03,240 --> 00:53:04,600
We sat and had a coffee.

870
00:53:04,640 --> 00:53:06,120
Still not happening. So...

871
00:53:06,160 --> 00:53:09,920
OK, well, we'll have lunch.
We'll have lunch. That'll help.

872
00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:11,240
We'll have some wine.

873
00:53:11,280 --> 00:53:14,280
We'll have some wine. That'll help
the creative juices to flow.

874
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:16,520
Had a bottle of wine,
wasn't really happening.

875
00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:20,280
So we had another bottle of wine and
we're getting a bit drunk, so, OK,

876
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:22,680
we're too drunk to do this now.
We'll go back to the villa.

877
00:53:22,720 --> 00:53:25,880
It's very hot. We'll have a nap
and it'll be cooler this evening.

878
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:27,880
We'll start this evening.

879
00:53:27,920 --> 00:53:30,000
That went on for four months.

880
00:53:30,040 --> 00:53:34,120
And, we, I think after four months
we had one page written

881
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:36,160
which never made it
into the final book.

882
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:38,880
And in the end,
the publisher got so fed up with us,

883
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:40,880
they made us come back to London.

884
00:53:40,920 --> 00:53:43,640
They locked us in his house
in Islington, and they said,

885
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:47,120
"You're not allowed out
until the book's finished."

886
00:53:47,160 --> 00:53:49,400
They didn't realise
you could get out of his office

887
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:52,360
down the drainpipe,
onto the roof at the back,

888
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:54,280
and then down
and out through the back to the pub,

889
00:53:54,320 --> 00:53:56,240
which we did quite a lot.

890
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:06,040
This really, to him,
combines so much of what he loved

891
00:54:06,080 --> 00:54:08,040
because it combined the science,

892
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:12,280
the science of conservation
and environmentalism and zoology.

893
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:14,160
He put in
an enormous amount of energy

894
00:54:14,200 --> 00:54:16,840
into the charities
he was involved with,

895
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:19,640
Save the Rhino in particular.

896
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:23,320
Douglas Adams,
patron of Save the Rhino,

897
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:27,000
joined the walk one week before
the ascent of Mount Kilimanjaro.

898
00:54:27,040 --> 00:54:29,840
From the first day,
Douglas assumed his rhino role,

899
00:54:29,880 --> 00:54:31,560
giving the rest of the team a break

900
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:36,560
from the overwhelming
sweet smell of the costume.

901
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,480
I walked with him
and that was incredible.

902
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:43,040
For him it was...

903
00:54:43,080 --> 00:54:45,040
"Look at this. Marvel at this.

904
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:48,240
We need to do something
around keeping this."

905
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:53,280
The breadth of biodiversity we have
on this planet is just astonishing.

906
00:54:53,320 --> 00:54:55,600
And he was astonished by that.

907
00:54:57,960 --> 00:55:03,240
The story goes that Douglas climbed
Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit,

908
00:55:03,280 --> 00:55:06,480
which he did not
because he had to leave

909
00:55:06,520 --> 00:55:10,360
to get back because he'd
missed a deadline. (LAUGHS)

910
00:55:10,400 --> 00:55:14,760
So we left them at the foothills
and quickly flew home.

911
00:55:14,800 --> 00:55:18,120
That's better
than any exercise bike.

912
00:55:21,880 --> 00:55:24,320
In those days many people
thought conservationists

913
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:27,400
were weird,
weird people with pony tails

914
00:55:27,440 --> 00:55:29,040
and white socks in sandals.

915
00:55:29,080 --> 00:55:31,360
And, you know,
it was an extreme activity.

916
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:34,360
Celebrities weren't being used for,
you know,

917
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:40,560
promoting conservation or human
rights. It was quite a novel idea.

918
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:45,280
Lemurs used to be the dominant
primate in all the world,

919
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:49,120
and then Gondwanaland split up.

920
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:52,680
It almost sounds like
some sort of '70s rock group

921
00:55:52,720 --> 00:55:57,960
going their own way for reasons of
musical differences. (LAUGHTER)

922
00:55:58,000 --> 00:56:00,280
If I was doing a lecture
there'd be 50 people.

923
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:01,960
But he'd attracted thousands,

924
00:56:02,000 --> 00:56:04,920
and he talked about it
in such a way

925
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:07,880
that people were laughing
and they were crying.

926
00:56:07,920 --> 00:56:11,000
And, you know,
he made conservation entertaining.

927
00:56:11,040 --> 00:56:12,520
There was nobody else like it

928
00:56:12,560 --> 00:56:15,800
that I can think of
on the planet at the time,

929
00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:19,600
who was fronting conservation
in a way that made people listen.

930
00:56:26,960 --> 00:56:28,680
GUIDE:
One of the major selling points

931
00:56:28,720 --> 00:56:32,720
of that wholly remarkable book The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

932
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:35,000
apart from its relative cheapness

933
00:56:35,040 --> 00:56:37,960
and the fact it has "Don't Panic!"

934
00:56:38,000 --> 00:56:40,440
in large letters on the cover,

935
00:56:40,480 --> 00:56:44,360
is its compendious
and occasionally accurate glossary.

936
00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:46,480
the Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy,

937
00:56:46,520 --> 00:56:50,240
the object rather than the series
of books or the radio shows,

938
00:56:50,280 --> 00:56:55,240
the actual thing itself with "Don't
Panic!" in large, friendly letters,

939
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:58,560
if that isn't an iPad or a tablet,
I don't know what is.

940
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:00,760
It's just astonishing
how right he was

941
00:57:00,800 --> 00:57:03,520
that you could have an object

942
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:05,920
that contained
all the knowledge in the world,

943
00:57:05,960 --> 00:57:10,160
or in his case, all the knowledge
in the galaxy, in a handheld device.

944
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:12,560
GUIDE: Its simplistic style
is partly explained

945
00:57:12,600 --> 00:57:16,040
by the fact that its editor, having
to meet the publishing deadline,

946
00:57:16,080 --> 00:57:20,120
copied the information off the back
of a packet of breakfast cereal.

947
00:57:20,160 --> 00:57:24,720
The idea, in 1977, '78,
when he was writing that,

948
00:57:24,760 --> 00:57:28,280
that he could have seen it,
is phenomenal.

949
00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:31,600
We want to be up for your high shot.

950
00:57:32,720 --> 00:57:34,520
Ford, who are you?

951
00:57:34,560 --> 00:57:37,440
I told you. I'm a field researcher
for the Guide.

952
00:57:37,480 --> 00:57:39,200
I got stuck on the Earth
longer than I meant.

953
00:57:39,240 --> 00:57:42,520
Went for a week,
got stuck for 15 years.

954
00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:46,320
Can you lift the book higher now,
Simon?

955
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:49,240
Douglas saw very early
that now people were talking about

956
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:54,480
this thing called
user-generated content.

957
00:57:54,520 --> 00:57:59,320
He wanted to see whether we could
create the Earth edition,

958
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:04,320
the real edition of The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy.

959
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:07,520
I went though a real sort of
midlife crisis.

960
00:58:07,560 --> 00:58:09,480
You know, "What am I doing?"

961
00:58:09,520 --> 00:58:13,440
A little while ago, I thought,
I've got to do something different.

962
00:58:13,480 --> 00:58:18,240
And so I've set up a company with a
bunch of very, very bright people,

963
00:58:18,280 --> 00:58:22,240
and suddenly all
the creative juices are flowing.

964
00:58:22,280 --> 00:58:25,600
The original concept
was that we would have a website

965
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:31,200
and that people would start to
upload their Guide entries

966
00:58:31,240 --> 00:58:34,080
and of course it was
life, the universe and everything.

967
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:38,600
So, that idea of tens of thousands
of field researchers for the Guide

968
00:58:38,640 --> 00:58:44,800
absolutely was now a possibility.

969
00:58:44,840 --> 00:58:50,400
It was an idea so radical. He said,
"It's kind of an online community."

970
00:58:50,440 --> 00:58:52,240
I said, "What does that even mean?"

971
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:55,160
He said, "Well, it's like the world
is a village,

972
00:58:55,200 --> 00:58:56,880
and we can all get in touch online,

973
00:58:56,920 --> 00:58:59,640
and then we can have
interesting articles

974
00:58:59,680 --> 00:59:01,760
and we can talk to each other.

975
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:04,920
I said, "I've no idea
what that even means."

976
00:59:09,080 --> 00:59:11,280
We were a little bit
before Wikipedia

977
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:14,720
and we had The Hitchhiker's Guide
running on mobile phones very early.

978
00:59:14,760 --> 00:59:17,720
This was pre-smartphones
that we were doing this.

979
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:21,000
So the idea of having the Guide you
could carry around in your pocket,

980
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:22,440
we were making it real.

981
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:25,920
We had home pages which people were
able to decorate for themselves.

982
00:59:25,960 --> 00:59:28,680
We had chat functions
so people could talk to each other.

983
00:59:28,720 --> 00:59:33,720
So we had this very rapidly growing
community, creating the Guide.

984
00:59:33,760 --> 00:59:36,240
It was one of the big dot-com booms.

985
00:59:36,280 --> 00:59:40,040
And then
we had the dot-com crash of 2000.

986
00:59:41,560 --> 00:59:44,120
A year ago there were
hundreds of Internet companies

987
00:59:44,160 --> 00:59:46,920
being floated here on the Nasdaq,
but not now.

988
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:49,320
The rose-tinted spectacles
have come off.

989
00:59:49,360 --> 00:59:52,000
The Emperor's new clothes
have been seen through.

990
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:54,360
The lunatics have been
put back in the asylum

991
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:56,960
and the Internet bubble,
well, it's burst.

992
00:59:57,000 --> 01:00:00,280
It was a sort of combination
of Google and Wikipedia

993
01:00:00,320 --> 01:00:04,080
and Facebook and Twitter,
everything, all in one.

994
01:00:04,120 --> 01:00:07,120
And they just didn't quite get there

995
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:09,720
before everybody else
made billions out of it.

996
01:00:09,760 --> 01:00:12,560
The guy could have been Elon Musk
and Bill Gates

997
01:00:12,600 --> 01:00:18,680
and Mark Zuckerberg
all rolled into one. Easily.

998
01:00:21,600 --> 01:00:24,000
Now I'm here
to talk about the future.

999
01:00:24,040 --> 01:00:27,920
The only thing I can tell you about
the future with any confidence

1000
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:30,240
is that I will be telling you
a lot of stuff

1001
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:32,720
that'll turn out not to be true.

1002
01:00:32,760 --> 01:00:38,480
Like a lot of people, I've just lost
my own brilliant dot-com company.

1003
01:00:38,520 --> 01:00:41,640
Just like everybody else's
brilliant dot-com companies,

1004
01:00:41,680 --> 01:00:44,800
it was based on
the wonderful mathematical notion

1005
01:00:44,840 --> 01:00:47,680
that if you multiply zero
by a sufficiently large number,

1006
01:00:47,720 --> 01:00:50,920
it'll suddenly turn into something.

1007
01:00:50,960 --> 01:00:53,880
It was a great shame,
because I think we had a shot

1008
01:00:53,920 --> 01:00:57,560
at being a truly global
social media company

1009
01:00:57,600 --> 01:01:00,200
coming out of this country,
coming out of the UK,

1010
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:02,360
because of
the global nature of the brand.

1011
01:01:02,400 --> 01:01:05,600
But, yeah, it was, as the chief
executive founder of a company

1012
01:01:05,640 --> 01:01:07,760
in that moment of
the dot-com collapse,

1013
01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:10,480
it was a pretty tough experience
all round for everybody.

1014
01:01:19,960 --> 01:01:24,120
I was at home in Dorset.

1015
01:01:24,160 --> 01:01:27,800
I was on the phone in the bath.

1016
01:01:27,840 --> 01:01:31,240
He'd got into being healthy
and going to the gym.

1017
01:01:31,280 --> 01:01:33,800
He was in the gym.

1018
01:01:33,840 --> 01:01:37,680
He went to reach for his towel
and he collapsed

1019
01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:42,400
and his trainer saw him collapse
and he died immediately.

1020
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:05,680
He died just after
the first dot-com boom and bust

1021
01:02:05,720 --> 01:02:08,520
as things like Google
were coming into the world

1022
01:02:08,560 --> 01:02:11,720
but six years before the iPhone.

1023
01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:14,320
He never saw an iPhone.
It's hard to believe.

1024
01:02:14,360 --> 01:02:18,200
And six years before
Facebook and Twitter.

1025
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:22,280
And therefore,
he never experienced

1026
01:02:22,320 --> 01:02:28,920
the weird and distressing...
side of things.

1027
01:02:28,960 --> 01:02:33,840
Douglas would be disappointed, to
say the least, by what has happened.

1028
01:02:33,880 --> 01:02:37,760
By the souring of it all,
by the dream being tarnished.

1029
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:51,720
Douglas imagined the future,

1030
01:02:51,760 --> 01:02:53,720
and the only word we have for it
is a visionary.

1031
01:02:53,760 --> 01:02:57,400
He saw things
that other people didn't see,

1032
01:02:57,440 --> 01:03:00,840
especially things
that weren't yet visible to anybody

1033
01:03:00,880 --> 01:03:02,320
because they were in the future.

1034
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:06,440
But he saw things in the present and
how they could be adapted as well.

1035
01:03:06,480 --> 01:03:08,920
But to put together
an idea of the future

1036
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:13,440
is, is wonderful and a gift.

1037
01:03:18,760 --> 01:03:22,520
Douglas was brilliant
at imagining many different

1038
01:03:22,560 --> 01:03:27,720
kinds of perspectives and that's,
I think, his great imaginative feat.

1039
01:03:27,760 --> 01:03:29,000
He did it with humour.

1040
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:31,640
He did it with a great affection
for our absurdities

1041
01:03:31,680 --> 01:03:35,880
and the absurdities of mankind.
And we're racing into a world

1042
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:39,040
in which some of the things
he imagined are now very real.

1043
01:03:43,800 --> 01:03:46,760
Douglas definitely saw the gravity
of the situation

1044
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:50,200
all those years ago, long before
the situation we're in now.

1045
01:03:50,240 --> 01:03:52,840
And he was one of the first people
to really bring to life

1046
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:55,720
the fact that this is not just about

1047
01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:59,040
some extreme little interest
for a small group of people.

1048
01:03:59,080 --> 01:04:03,280
This is about protecting humans
and protecting life on Earth.

1049
01:04:03,320 --> 01:04:05,440
(APPLAUSE)

1050
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:18,280
Now, imagine,
if you will, an early man.

1051
01:04:19,240 --> 01:04:22,840
He's standing surveying his world,
and he looks at it and thinks,

1052
01:04:22,880 --> 01:04:25,080
this is a very wonderful world
I find myself in.

1053
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:26,720
Behind me is the mountains,

1054
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:29,040
there are caves
where I can shelter.

1055
01:04:29,080 --> 01:04:30,760
In front of me there's the forest,

1056
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:33,760
and the forest
is full of nuts and berries.

1057
01:04:33,800 --> 01:04:35,200
And here's a stream.

1058
01:04:38,480 --> 01:04:41,880
This world, he says, so who made it?

1059
01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:45,640
It must be something
a little bit like me.

1060
01:04:45,680 --> 01:04:49,800
Obviously much, much bigger...
(RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER)

1061
01:04:49,840 --> 01:04:53,760
..and necessarily invisible.
(LAUGHTER)

1062
01:04:55,440 --> 01:05:00,800
So what did this person
who made this world intend it for?

1063
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:05,640
And this is the point where you
think, well, it fits me very well.

1064
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:08,760
He must have made it for me.

1065
01:05:11,360 --> 01:05:16,600
And it's rather like
a puddle waking up

1066
01:05:16,640 --> 01:05:21,880
and thinks, this is a very
interesting world I find myself in.

1067
01:05:21,920 --> 01:05:25,120
It fits me very neatly.

1068
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:28,800
It must have been made to have me
in it. (LAUGHTER)

1069
01:05:28,840 --> 01:05:33,160
And the sun rises and gradually the
puddle is shrinking and shrinking.

1070
01:05:33,200 --> 01:05:35,920
And by the time the puddle
ceases to exist... (COW LOWS)

1071
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:41,000
..it's still trapped in this idea
that the hole was there for it.

1072
01:05:41,040 --> 01:05:45,160
And if we think the world
is here for us,

1073
01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:47,160
we will continue to destroy it

1074
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:50,880
in the way that
we've been destroying it.

1075
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:55,160
And we are behaving
as if this extraordinary,

1076
01:05:55,200 --> 01:05:58,560
utterly, utterly extraordinary
little ball of life

1077
01:05:58,600 --> 01:06:03,440
is something we can just
screw about with any way we like.

1078
01:06:05,400 --> 01:06:07,640
And maybe we can't.

1079
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:15,440
(BEEPS OF CLOCK COUNTING DOWN)

1080
01:06:15,480 --> 01:06:18,800
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