Douglas Adams

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer who can't bear writing. An imaginative but remote child, he found it difficult to communicate with the outside world. However, music as diverse as Bach and the Beatles convinced him that he wasn't entirely alone, as later did his fascination for Monty Python.

Presenter0:46

At the age of twenty four, he invented a fantasy world for radio, which was to reinvent science fiction. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with its anarchic humour, pointed up the idiocy of the human existence, and, spawning books, a television series, stage plays and computer games, has made him a millionaire. Now forty one, he's more interested in future reality than in fantasy. I enjoy, more than anything, making a new discovery, he says. He is Douglas Adams.

Presenter1:15

Let's talk about your dislike of writing then, Douglas, that's made you a millionaire. How great is it? I mean, does it border on hatred?

Douglas Adams1:20

I just find it fantastically difficult to do. People assume by the time that you've reached a certain level of recognition and status that you must therefore have mastered something. You find that actually makes it more rather than less difficult. Oddly enough, I mean, the one thing that sort of gives me confidence from time to time when I most need it is not anything to do with critical reaction you might have received or numbers of books sold or bestsellers and so on, but is the fact that once when I was must have been about 10, 11, my English master at my prep school gave me 10 out of 10 for a story, and apparently it was the only time he ever did it. That's my kind of bedrock. That means I must be okay as a writer.

Presenter2:01

So you touch back down there again and then it So it's fear really, is it? It's fear of being found out.

Douglas Adams2:02

Unless you

Douglas Adams2:05

Fear of

Douglas Adams2:07

It's te it's I think it's partly a terribly British self consciousness, you know, that that people are actually going to read this stuff and you're terribly embarrassed about it. So why you would then become a writer is something I really don't have a good answer for.

Presenter2:20

So, what do you do not to write? Well, I mean, what's the displacement actually? Well, many years ago.

Douglas Adams2:20

Do you know?

Douglas Adams2:23

Well, many years ago it used to be baths. I was convinced I had my best ideas in the bath, you know, so I would uh get up in the morning, get in the bath and lie there till I had an idea and then of course by the time I'd got out and sort of toweled myself dry and got dressed and so on, I would have forgotten what it was, so I'd have to never have another bath to remind myself. But these days of course the major displacement activity is computers, and what a writer does all day, well particularly this writer, is reconfigure his operating system.

Presenter2:48

Yeah.

Douglas Adams2:49

Well, it just means sort of fiddling around, really. The interesting thing is, you know, it's it's a much more useful form of displacement activity to have, because in the days that I used to have baths the whole time, I mean, that was really sort of a waste of time. Whereas now that I've spent an awful lot of time fiddling around with computers, I've actually become a considerable expert, and now I'm sort of going lecture around the world and sort of consult to various companies. And I was never asked to lecture about bathing techniques.

Presenter3:12

But but you must be a publisher's nightmare. They must really they must nag you to death.

Douglas Adams3:15

Really? They must nag to death, huh? A little bit, yes. I think I cause a certain amount of sort of hair to be pulled out.

Presenter3:22

Music, then. I mentioned that it's important to you. You not only listen to it, you write it and you play it on the guitar.

Douglas Adams3:25

We listen to

Douglas Adams3:28

Yes, I do, yes. I mean I I learnt to play the guitar I mean I started when I was about twelve for years actually because I'm left-handed, which is a kind of problem if you're on guitarist. And I could never play anybody else's guitar and uh only had a very, very sort of cheap, boxy little guitar as a kid, and that was the only thing I could ever play. I've only relatively recently of course discovered

Douglas Adams3:48

that I can get le left-handed guitars if I want to and I've now got about twenty-four of them because I'm a little bit obsessive.

Presenter3:54

Which sounds like a very good cue for your first record.

Douglas Adams3:56

The first time I ever became excited by the guitar was listening to The Shadows when I was a kid. Hank Marvin, who owned the first ever Stratocaster in England. And this is a particular favorite of mine, and it's The Shadows playing Man of Mystery.

Douglas Adams4:39

When I was a kid I used to and I listened to the shadows obsessively before the Beatles came out. I used to walk around the whole time, you know, playing air guitar and walking into lampposts. I mean, I was so obsessed, I'd just walk straight into lamp posts.

Presenter4:50

This was trying to do the Hank Morvin film. That's right. That was Man of Mystery from the Shadows.

Douglas Adams4:52

That's right, yes.

Presenter4:55

Let's talk about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I mean, i is there is such a mouthful. Is there a short form?

Douglas Adams5:00

Uh it's hitchhiker.

Presenter5:02

Hitchhiker. Right. Where did the idea come from?

Douglas Adams5:04

Well, various different places. The actual title came when I was hitchhiking around Europe in 1971. I was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck on one occasion. I have to say about the story, I've now told the story so often that I can only remember the story and I can't remember the event anymore, so I have to take my own word for it that it's true. But I was lying drunk in this field in Innsbruck, and I had with me a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. And it occurred to me as I stared up at the night sky that somebody ought to write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I think this is largely because I thought the Innsbruck was dull.

Presenter5:39

But had you been keen on science fiction before? Was it your thing?

Douglas Adams5:41

Bamu

Presenter5:42

Ay, yes and no.

Douglas Adams5:43

Oh, I've started most science fiction books, but I only can't do about page ten on the side.

Presenter5:48

So hitchhiker's got rather more to do with Monty Python than it has Asimov.

Douglas Adams5:51

I think so, yes. Python was a huge, huge influence on me. I think taking a line out of that, Python sketches, you know, would would would create a new world with a new set of rules. That really was the line I was taking out. Let's start out with a world that has certain rules and just see where that goes in the long run. Something that starts out as a silly idea actually has to have consequences in the real world.

Presenter6:18

And did the names of the characters mean anything? Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect well, Ford Prefect, we know where it comes from, but Zephar, did did they mean anything to you or were they just imagining?

Douglas Adams6:23

Safe.

Douglas Adams6:26

I used to be a great fan of doing crosswords. You know, when you're fiddling around with with anagrams, you know, you get sort of wonderful jumbles of syllables that become interesting.

Presenter6:35

It was the perfect or is one of the the most perfect radio creations in a sense, isn't it? Because it leaves an awful lot to the imagination, although you're leading the listener that

Douglas Adams6:42

Although you're

Douglas Adams6:44

Absolutely. Well, I think I mean to be absolutely honest, I mean the reason I did it on radio to begin with was because now I was at that point too junior to do television, if you like, but I mean that was the the best thing that could possibly have happened to me'cause I'd discovered what a wonderful, extraordinary medium radio was and it's still in many ways my favorite.

Presenter7:03

And it has, as I said at the beginning, become a television series, and obviously you've written the books and the computer games and so on, but but do you still think it works best on radio?

Douglas Adams7:06

Yeah.

Douglas Adams7:10

And there's a bit of me that certainly thinks that, yes.

Presenter7:12

But

Presenter7:13

But on the other hand, you wouldn't have got the big bucks. I mean, when the television sold in series sold in America, that was

Douglas Adams7:19

Yes, it was I mean the television series I to be honest I don't think it was as good as the tele as the radio series, but nevertheless what I owe to it is the fact that that it was that that that launched Hitchhiker in America. I mean before a television series it hitchhiker was a very was a minor, minor, minor cult in America. And as a result of the television series it became a minor minor cult, which is a a substantial jump up.

Presenter7:43

But how surprised were you that it became any kind of cult?

Douglas Adams7:46

Well, at the time

Douglas Adams7:49

It it it it became such a roller coaster one didn't really have time to reflect on it because you just had to get the next bit done.

Douglas Adams7:56

And now looking back I realize that was an astonishing thing to have happened, because very, very little from England actually makes it to America. So I I really can't explain how or why it happened, but I'm just very grateful that it did.

Presenter8:03

Yeah.

Presenter8:08

And in that sense it changed your life, I'm sadly.

Douglas Adams8:09

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:11

Record number two.

Douglas Adams8:12

One of the

Douglas Adams8:14

Things that had a profound effect on me was the the movie of 2001. There's some very strange stuff on the soundtrack that was very, very hypnotic and very strange and affected me a great deal. And I was astonished to discover later on that it was actually composed rather than just sort of random noises. On one of my hitchhiking trips around Europe, I tried to find the record of it's Legetti's Requiem and didn't manage to find it anywhere. And I even subsequently met the composer who is a fascinating man. But anyway, it's the oooooooo bit from Legetti's Requiem.

Presenter9:23

Georges Ligetti's Requiem from the film two thousand and one.

Douglas Adams9:26

I can imagine lying lying at night on the desert island watching the stars and listening to that.

Presenter9:31

Scaring yourself to death, I

Douglas Adams9:31

You're soaked to death, actually.

Presenter9:33

I said in the introduction that you were a remote child, so remote that apparently you didn't speak until you were four.

Douglas Adams9:38

Um, apparently, yes. I mean, I think I'd uh to be honest, I didn't have a particularly happy childhood. My parents divorced when I was five and uh I don't think it was uh one of the world's great marriages. And so I think I had um y yes, I mean, I I was fairly lonely and sort of slightly odd as a kid, I think.

Presenter9:54

But do you remember not speaking? Do you remember thinking I'm not going to speak?

Douglas Adams9:57

No, I in fact I remember I I hardly remember anything before the age of five, to be honest. I think it was actually there's probably stuff in there that I've got to unlock at some point, I haven't seen it.

Presenter10:05

At some point.

Douglas Adams10:11

Yes, I mean it was thought that I was re no, that I was really a a a bad problem child. And then uh I I remember when I went to my prep school at seven and at the end of my first term I came top of the class, which astonished the whole world, mostly myself. Of course I never managed that again in the entire rest of my school career.

Presenter10:28

But it was a turning point for you to see.

Douglas Adams10:29

Yes. I mean the people finally realised there was actually something going on in there.

Presenter10:33

So when that happened to you and and your confidence began to build, what did you what did you think you were going to do? Did you have any um

Douglas Adams10:40

There was a long time when I wanted to be a nuclear physicist. Even though I had no idea what a nuclear physicist was or what a nuclear physicist did. You like the sound of the word. Yes, exactly.

Presenter10:47

You like the sound of the words?

Presenter10:49

But did you want to make people laugh? I mean, did you make people laugh, or were you too shy that you No, I did.

Douglas Adams10:55

I had I but I had a peculiar idea about what was funny. Put it this way, the things that made me laugh were the things that had the most effect on me. I mean I was absolutely so typical of the kid who sort of listened to Beyond Our Ken and so on under the bedclothes at night and I just loved all those early radio programmes. I mean I thought that there was something tremendously important about being being funny. Uh but I I wasn't really funny for a while and I gradually learnt in a in a in a sense.

Presenter11:18

And then one day some years later, I would have thought, Monty Python came along, and most particularly John Cleese.

Douglas Adams11:21

This one

Douglas Adams11:24

That's right.

Presenter11:25

Did he symbolise everything you had?

Douglas Adams11:28

I'd first heard John Cleeson. I'm sorry, I'll read that again, which I loved. And then the first time I actually saw him, I guess, would have been on the Frost Report, I think, doing the class war. I'm upper class, he's middle class, and he's lower class. And.

Presenter11:38

Yes, Ronnie Cord.

Speaker 211:39

Uh

Douglas Adams11:43

The first time I saw him, I thought, Ah, that's it. I could do that. I'm as tall as he is And uh so I um I swapped from wanting to be a nuclear physicist to being wanting to be John Cleese. Uh unfortunately the job was already taken.

Presenter11:55

And in the meantime, the Beatles had reassured you that you weren't completely mad.

Douglas Adams11:58

Absolutely.

Douglas Adams11:59

Well, it's funny because both The Beatles and Python both were kind of messages out of the void saying there are people out there, you know, who know what it's like to be you, you know. And The Beatles really had a very huge effect on me. From the early days, when Can't Buy Me Love came out, I broke out of school to go and buy the record, broke back into school, broke into Matron's study'cause she had a record player there, and just sat there playing it very, very quietly with my ear up against the speaker until I was caught.

Douglas Adams12:31

And then when Hey Jude came out, I remember being um

Douglas Adams12:35

in the queue outside the gym, and we discovered that somebody in the queue had heard Hey Jude, and so we we we basically sort of held him against the wall and made him hum it to us.

Presenter12:47

But you're only taking one of them to your desert diamond.

Douglas Adams12:48

Yes, I know, it's very difficult that. Uh the one I want to take is one of the the most original and the busiest. There's lots and lots going on in it and I want sort of value for money for my measly eight records. So this is Drive My Car.

Speaker 413:04

Baby, you can drive my car.

Speaker 413:08

Yes, I'm gonna be a star

Speaker 413:12

Maybe you can drive my car And maybe I love you

Presenter13:21

Beatles and drive my car. So you went up to Cambridge, Douglas Adams. Uh presumably not least'cause John Cleese had been there.

Douglas Adams13:28

Well, I specifically wanted to go to Cambridge, specifically to join Footlights, because I knew I would meet other people of like mind there.

Presenter13:35

But you were disappointed in them.

Douglas Adams13:37

I suppose having been so influenced by Python at that point, then finding that footlights are still kind of locked into a lot of sort of song and dance kind of stuff, and dancing was one of my negative skills. So myself and another couple of guys who I got to meet who had the same sort of frustration, the names are Martin Smith and Will Adams, and we together formed a sort of little gorilla review group and did our own shows, largely because we were disappointed with what footlights are doing.

Presenter14:05

But as you came towards the end of your university career and you were reading English, aren't you?

Douglas Adams14:08

Okay.

Presenter14:08

What did you think you were going to do? How did you think you're going to make a living?

Douglas Adams14:11

Well, I think as largely as a result of doing these these shows with the other two guys, I was quite clear that I wanted to be a writer performer. And kind of

Douglas Adams14:22

had the rather nonsensical notion that the world was about to beat its path to my door at the moment I left Cambridge, which of course it absolutely failed to do. And um so I spent uh I spent a little while sort of struggling along, but I was determined that I was going to be a writer performer, but I only actually managed half of that.

Presenter14:37

Let's pause there for your next record, which is from a man who's as important to you as the Beatles.

Douglas Adams14:42

Oh, at least. Now, and in fact, I've got, I think I've got three box in my list. When I was at school,

Presenter14:42

Excellent.

Douglas Adams14:50

As well as the Beatles, I also sang in the school choir, which I absolutely loved. One of the great advantages of being male is if you're a singer in a choir, you get to sing treble, then alto, then tenor, then bass. And in my school, because the music director was a great Bachman, singing all those four parts in pieces of Bach is absolutely wonderful. I mean, you empirically learn a huge amount about music. One of the pieces I have the fondest memories of singing was the B minor Mass. So I actually sang in it before I ever got to hear it. And I can remember one particular rehearsal.

Douglas Adams15:25

when the musical director had said, Well, if you sing this page right, if you can get this page right, you'll have a treat at the end of the rehearsal. So he managed to sing the page right. And then and then he said, Okay, turn to page, whatever it is, and sing this. And it was the Sanctus from the B minor Mass.

Presenter16:42

The Sanctus from Bach's B minor Mass with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter16:48

So the big idea, the hitchhiker, made you a millionaire several times over?

Douglas Adams16:53

Um I would have to go and shape my figures.

Presenter16:55

Happen country.

Presenter16:59

But but you enjoy it and Yes. You use it, you wear it well, Rolex, pause.

Presenter17:04

A big house in London, all those thi I mean do you mean

Douglas Adams17:06

I mean you enjoy it. Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Presenter17:08

But then, about eight years ago, you got an unusual commission. You were sent in search of the I I.

Douglas Adams17:13

That's right.

Presenter17:14

Project

Douglas Adams17:14

The II is the rarest of the lemurs, and the lemurs are a form of primate that's only found on Madagascar.

Presenter17:14

Is it

Douglas Adams17:22

But what?

Presenter17:22

But why were you sentenced?

Douglas Adams17:23

Well, this is a question that I don't actually know the answer to. I think the Observer magazine was doing a series of articles in which they were sending writers to different parts of the world they didn't know anything about. I think they thought, well, here's somebody who doesn't know anything about zoology, anything about ecology, anything about Madagascar, let's send him. So I went to look for this animal that I hadn't heard of. And it turned out to be one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. It was an absolute revelation. I didn't know anything about the way the natural world worked.

Presenter17:23

We'll discuss.

Douglas Adams17:56

Because I didn't know anything about it, I had been sent out with a sort of guide and mentor from the World Wildlife Fund, whose name was Mark Carwardine. So after this experience, I got in touch with him and said, you know, I'd really like to do a whole project like this. Are you interested in doing this with me? We'd go around the world and look for various rare and endangered species of animals and write a book about it. And he said, well, it's what I do for a living, so sure.

Presenter18:16

So you you then went in search of six more animals threatened with extinction, basically.

Douglas Adams18:19

Yes.

Douglas Adams18:21

Yes, there was the Komodo dragon, the Kakapo, which is uh a flightless parrot in New Zealand, the mountain gorillas in Zaire.

Presenter18:30

The deaf dolphin summer.

Douglas Adams18:32

Um yes. Uh known as a a a blind dolphin.

Presenter18:35

A blind dog from the

Presenter18:37

And did you actually get n find all of these things?

Douglas Adams18:39

Uh most of them. Uh the ones we didn't find were the Amazonian manatee, which was a shame, and uh no, everything else we managed to find other than that.

Presenter18:48

And then you had to come back, you had to sit down and write about them, which is when the problems set in.

Douglas Adams18:50

Which is

Douglas Adams18:52

I loved writing that book and I I loved doing it. It's actually it inevitably it's the least well known of my books because I'm known in a completely different field, but it's by far my favorite of the

Presenter19:07

Is it is it the most satisfying?

Douglas Adams19:08

It is. Oddly enough, I had a very nice remark that was made to me the other day. I went to a lecture in the zoology department at Oxford and was chatting to some zoologists afterwards. And one of them said to me, you know, that book, Last Chance to Sea, is wonderful for us because if anybody says to a zoologist, why do you do it? we give them this book.

Speaker 419:30

Yeah.

Presenter19:30

Hmm.

Douglas Adams19:31

And I I really felt very, very pleased about that.

Presenter19:34

So Douglas Adams, the English graduate, had become the amateur scientist? In a way, yes.

Douglas Adams19:36

Yeah.

Douglas Adams19:39

The old CP Snow thing about the two cultures, I feel I accidentally fell down on the wrong side. You know, at the age of fifteen or whatever, you have to make this once and forever decision, are you going to be an artist or a scientist? I think'cause I just had a disappointing result in chemistry, I went off and did arts.

Douglas Adams19:54

And it's not so much that I regret that decision, but I regret having to make that decision in that way at that time.

Presenter19:58

And that one

Presenter20:00

Record number five.

Douglas Adams20:01

Well this is another bach. Whenever I'm writing I there will tend to be some piece of music that I will play over and over again in the background, almost like a sort of mantra. It'll drive anybody else in the house absolutely mad so I usually have to go away to write. When I was writing Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency this was the piece of music that I was playing incessantly in the background and in fact it worked its way into the plot of the book though I never actually said what the music was.

Douglas Adams20:28

And it's the uh Shubler Chorale number five.

Presenter21:21

One of Bach's Schubler chorales, number five, played by Daniel Chorzemper. Let's talk about computers. How many have you got?

Douglas Adams21:29

I haven't counted them recently, I'm afraid. An awful lot. A lot, yes.

Presenter21:33

What do you imagine that the computer? I mean, I know you lecture about this. What do you imagine the computer is going to do for us in the 21st century? How much more?

Douglas Adams21:39

21st century. How much more?

Douglas Adams21:42

I think one of the major effects it's had is changing the whole way in which you do science. Ever since Newton, we've done science by taking things apart to see how they work. What the computer enables us to do is to put things together to see how they work. We can now synthesize rather than analyze. From my point of view, I find one of the most enthralling aspects of computers is limitless communication. I mean, I now use a great deal the Internet. Twenty million different computers in the world are all connected together via this thing called the Internet. And it means you can exchange ideas, letters, programs, music, anything you like, just from your computer keyboard. I mean, the level of sheer contact I can now draw upon to do anything that I want to do is it's kind of hard to explain. You need to experience it yourself.

Presenter22:32

But one can understand it on as a means of communication, I accept that. But when you begin to talk about the machine, as it were, almost replacing the human brain, then one begins to think, well, is the human brain so outdated? Is that what you're saying?

Douglas Adams22:45

Is that what you're saying? Our brain last evolved. We last physically evolved. We're not certain exactly when, but it was a long time ago, uh of the order of a million years or so.

Douglas Adams22:55

So, we essentially have a perceptual system and a set of instincts and a set of pre-programmed responses to the world and ways of perceiving it and understanding it that were appropriate to us as cavemen. Now, one of the things we have in our brain is the ability to create tools, the ability to change our environment to suit ourselves. As a result of that, we have created a world that has outstripped our ability to comprehend it.

Douglas Adams23:22

This phrase virtual reality needs to be explained because in fact we all live in virtual reality. We think that the world is a sort of solid, vivid place full of sort of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on. But we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever. It's very very raw data and we have wonderful pattern matching systems inside our head which we use to synthesize the world which we then move and walk through. But there are all sorts of things we don't see, we don't hear, patterns we fail to respond to, things that get filtered out because they were not appropriate to cavemen. What the computer in virtual reality enables us to do is kind of recalibrate ourselves so we can start seeing those pieces of information that are invisible to us but have become important for us to understand.

Presenter24:18

But uh in that sense then we would never need to go anywhere. We simply kind of put on a helmet and enter this virtu we can walk through the Alps or

Douglas Adams24:24

Walk through the

Presenter24:26

You know go go and have a look at the San Francisco earthquake.

Douglas Adams24:26

You know, go go and

Douglas Adams24:30

Well, it's funny. I I remember thinking when I was in Bali doing Last Chance to See.

Douglas Adams24:34

Because somebody had been talking to me about virtual reality at the time and saying, yeah, this is going to be a terrible idea because people will um you know, go on holiday in their machines rather than uh you know going to lovely places like Bali. And I went to Bali and I thought, well,

Douglas Adams24:47

Bali is or rather was a wonderful place, and it was a wonderful place before people all started crowding into Bali, trying to make it more and more like the place they'd just come from, you know, filling it with T shirt shops and and uh hamburger shops and bars and so on. And I began to realize that we were we were actually making an artificial world out of out of Bali.

Presenter25:06

So better to sit at home in Neasden and put your helmet on.

Douglas Adams25:09

And and leave leave Bali to be uh what it was. Yes, I think so.

Presenter25:13

Next record.

Douglas Adams25:14

Ah, this is Paul Simon.

Douglas Adams25:17

I learnt to play the guitar. I was taught by Paul Simon. He doesn't know this. But when I was a kid I would sit and play the same record over and over and over again, dropping the needle in the groove, then bringing it back in the same groove over and over again. Until I'd worked out every single note and every finger position and so on. Now this particular song is actually a much more recent one.

Douglas Adams25:40

And uh the reason I've chosen it I mean out of dozens it could have been is because I was thinking of it recently and I've been I spent a lot of last year in New Mexico, in Santa Fe, which I absolutely adore. And I've been working on a screenplay of Hitchhiker there. And this song just has to do with that, so that's why I've chosen it, and it's Hearts and Bones.

Speaker 425:58

On the last leg of the journey they started a long time ago.

Speaker 426:05

The Arc of a Love Affair

Speaker 426:10

Rainbows in the high and desert air

Speaker 426:15

Mountain passes slipping into snow

Speaker 426:22

Hearts and bones

Presenter26:26

Or ten boys.

Speaker 426:28

Yeah.

Presenter26:30

Poor Simon and Hearts and Bones. So you can play like that, Douglas. Can you sing like that?

Douglas Adams26:34

No, I'm afraid I can't. I've recently actually started performing for the first time for many, many, many years. I've formed an act with Ken Follett. There's a sort of movement amongst writers at the moment. We've discovered most writers are actually frustrated rock stars. And so Ken Follett and I have formed this band called The Hard Covers. And we're an international band because we've the two dates we've played so far have been in London and Miami. And we are wonderfully not very good.

Presenter27:03

But available for booking.

Douglas Adams27:05

Okay, just

Presenter27:05

Tell me about the desert island of your imagination. What are you going to do there, and what is it like?

Douglas Adams27:10

But I should be very, very sort of lonely and miserable to begin with, until I find something there to get interested in. And as soon as I find something to get interested in, I'll become obsessed with that. Now, the place I I kind of imagine is

Douglas Adams27:24

A place that I've actually seen, which is called the Ile de Coco, I think, which is near Mauritius. And it's one of these islands that when you sort of see it ahead in front of you, it looks completely impossible. A very, very dark blue sea, just sort of a ring of white sand, a long sort of thin island with this kind of Mohican haircut of green trees along the top. It was more like a sort of you know punk haircut set in Azure Sea. And it was just one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. It was full of astoundingly beautiful birds, the fairy terns. And so if the desert island is a little bit like that, I think I shall actually quite soon get used to it.

Presenter28:04

But you're obviously a man who needs at least ten projects on the go at once. I mean, will you find enough to do?

Douglas Adams28:09

I think so, because if you look at an island ecology, then there's actually so much going on. And I know that I will actually become very, very interested in seeing seeing how everything fits together and how everything works together.

Presenter28:21

Record number seven.

Presenter28:23

Uh

Douglas Adams28:23

Well this goes back

Douglas Adams28:25

All the way to school again. And I did O-level music at one point, and one of the pieces of music I studied was Bach's Italian concerto. The master who was teaching it sat down and played it to us. And the first time I heard it, I was absolutely terrified because it just seemed like a meaningless jumble and jangle of notes. And I couldn't discover any form or pattern or shape in it anywhere. And gradually got to know it. And one tune after another spills out. And as I was saying earlier, I do want value for money for my records. So I think with Bach, you get more tunes per square inch buried within each other and on top of each other than anywhere else.

Presenter30:00

George Malcolm playing part of Bach's Italian concerto at an incredible speed.

Speaker 430:04

It's very fast.

Presenter30:04

It's very fast, isn't it? So we've established without any doubt that you're a man of many projects, quite a boffin for an English graduate. Where do you get that from, d that energy and that that uh

Douglas Adams30:10

Yeah.

Douglas Adams30:15

I don't know. I mean it comes in spurts. I mean there I mean I think I'm probably uh a sort of minor manic depressive in that I either got huge amounts of energy and enthusiasm and then I sort of suddenly sort of drop into a complete sort of slump for weeks on end and thinking I can't think of anything, can't do anything but I do find the world consistently for extraordinarily surprising.

Presenter30:15

Uh

Speaker 230:31

Um

Douglas Adams30:36

I can never turn on a light switch without thinking there's something very strange happening here. I always connect it all the way back to the power station and ev I mean I'm exhausted. It is.

Presenter30:44

Have resource

Presenter30:47

But I said at the beginning you like nothing more than making a new discovery. What what do you want to discover next? I mean, or w can one ask that?

Douglas Adams30:50

Yeah.

Douglas Adams30:53

Um well, I'm very excited at the moment about the fact it looks as if we're finally making the movie of Hitchhiker. I mean, ten years ago it first sold the film rights. Then it sat on the shelf for all this time. And um now

Douglas Adams31:08

Because the project looks like it's it's it's suddenly um about to happen, I suddenly think that the ten years it's been on the shelf were exactly ten years, the right ten years for it to be on the shelf, because the level of technology that you can bring to bear on the cinema and also what people will read and understand from the screen has has developed to a most extraordinary extent.

Presenter31:26

But isn't that for you, who wants to do something new every day that comes really rather old hat?

Douglas Adams31:31

Um it it is in terms of the material, though in fact I've the screenplay I've written departs a very, very great deal from the original material. But getting involved in the film world is going to be very very exciting. The other major thing I still want to do is is to be a rock star. I've decided I want to be a rock star, but um I have one album in me which I'm determined to make. The only thing I'm worried about is whether I'm old enough to be a rock star. Look get around to it.

Presenter31:58

La

Douglas Adams31:58

Bust

Presenter31:58

Dracula

Douglas Adams31:59

This record actually has to do with my mother and stepfather. It's a record that I was astonished when I put it on my list to discover isn't even in the BBC record library. It's Ella Fitzgerald singing a song that's always absolutely associated with Billie Holiday, All of Me. And this recording was on a record that my stepfather had that was made for charity in the early 60s. He used to absolutely adore and love this song and I came to love it as a result. And he died three years ago and he was an extremely popular and well-loved man and the area of Dorset where they lived, the whole area sort of closed down for the day of his funeral. And the funeral was very

Douglas Adams32:48

you know, solemn affair and then at the end of it we played this song as everybody came out of the church and it was the most wonderful, magnificent noise that you've ever heard. Ella Fitzgerald and all of me.

Speaker 432:59

By who the booty did do be dood and doodin doodinooby doopy the booty

Speaker 433:07

Take, take on me.

Presenter33:28

Ella Fitzgerald, all of me. So which is your favorite of the eight, or which is most important to you, Douglas?

Douglas Adams33:34

Oh, it's very hard. I think I would probably take the B minor Mess, because I don't know what exactly what your rules are, but the B minor Mess is a lot longer than any of the other

Presenter33:45

And the book?

Douglas Adams33:47

The book I think I would probably take An Omnibus of all the P. G. Woodhouse golfing stories.

Douglas Adams33:54

I I've never played golf in my life uh and don't know anything about it, but um I actually think that PG Woodhouse is without doubt one of the greatest writers ever to use the English language.

Presenter34:04

Annual luxury.

Douglas Adams34:05

The luxury I want to take- I'm not sure if it actually exists.

Douglas Adams34:09

What I want is a Martin D twenty eight guitar, left-handed.

Douglas Adams34:16

That was built in the 1930s. Now that's why I'm not sure if one exists. Uh if there wasn't one, then I shall settle for any other old guitar. But uh that's the one I'd like.

Presenter34:26

Okay. Douglas Adams, thank you very much indeed for letting us see your desert island discs.

Douglas Adams34:30

Do you see?

Speaker 234:38

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.