Where did the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy start

A.� The comic science fiction epic started on BBC radio and the series quickly became a cult hit. It led author, Douglas Adams, to give it a new lease of life as a book and ultimately it became a BBC television series.

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Q.� What was it about

A.� Adams allegedly had the idea for the series while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck. It is very loosely based on his own hitch-hiking experiences around Europe.

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The story begins on earth with mild-mannered suburbanite Arthur Dent trying to stop the council demolishing his house to build a bypass. It moves into space when his friend Ford Prefect reveals himself as the representative of the planet Betelgeuse and informs Arthur that the Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyberspace express route. They hitch a ride in a Vogon spaceship and their voyage begins.

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On their way up, they meet up with part-time Galactic president, Zaphod Beeblebrox and his pilot Trillian, actually a girl from Islington called Trisha, and the woeful Marvin The Paranoid Android, who has been given a 'genuine people personality', which has made him a manic depressive.

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Q.� WIll it be made into a film

A.� Author Douglas Adams was in America discussing plans to film the series when he died in May this year.�Following the success of Hitch Hiker, Adams wrote a number of books in a similar vein - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, The Universe and Everything, and eventually moved to California to work on a Hollywood movie of Hitch Hiker, the film rights of which was in the hands of the Disney corporation at the time of his death. The movie script could be completed by writers by the end of the year, although his literary agent, Ed Victor, has described�the prospective film as 'development hell at the moment.'

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Q.� Will Hitch Hiker be shown again

A.� The BBC plans to screen the series from Monday (July 30), and a special tribute Omnibus Special: Douglas Adams will be shown on BBC2 on Saturday, August 4.

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By Katharine MacColl

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