I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say "Hang the sense of it" and just keep yourself occupied.

- Slartibartfast, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

Left to right: Douglas Adams, producer Geoffrey Perkins and cast members David Tate, Geoffrey McGivern, Mark Wing-Davey, Simon Jones and Alan Ford at the original 1979 recordings

A lot of writers don’t actually enjoy writing. The creative process can be a particularly bumpy road, ideas appearing at random or not appearing at all, but often all that stress and pressure is needed to get to the end result. Douglas Adams was most definitely that kind of writer.

Although Adams produced a considerable amount of scripts and novels in his ridiculously brief life, it was never easy. He was prone to writing notes about how irritated he was with the whole process, occasionally jotting down things like, "Today I am monumentally fed up with the idea of writing."

Yet nothing great comes easy, and there’s no question that Adams was a great writer. How else to explain the fact that a comedy sci-fi about a man in a dressing gown, a depressed robot and a meandering search for the meaning of life is still as popular as it ever was 40 years later?

The very first episode of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 8 March 1978. It was initially intended as a quite different series entitled The Ends Of The Earth, in which all six episodes would end with the destruction of the Earth, an idea that eventually morphed into a series beginning with the end of the world and going from there.

The story of a normal bloke named Arthur Dent thrust into a surreal space adventure involving awful poetry and hyper-intelligent mice that begins when the Earth is blown up to make way for an intergalactic highway, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the perfect blend of out-of-this-world adventure and deadpan British humour. It was also the first BBC radio comedy series to be broadcast in stereo, each programme featuring extensive sound work by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Like many great pieces of comedic writing, Hitchhiker’s Guide baffled as many as it thrilled, one Radio Times reader describing it as "the most fatuous, inane, childish, pointless, codswalloping drivel". Which, to those in tune with the inherent silliness of the Hitchhiker’s universe, sounds like a compliment.