Richard Vernon

Radio Times review

The comedy and science fiction worlds were robbed of a prodigious talent in 2001 when Douglas Adams died of a heart attack, aged just 49. His contributions to Doctor Who, literature, ecology and the internet are unique and impressive. But for me, his finest offering remains The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and specifically this radio version, first broadcast in 1978.

Where the Radio 4 series scored over subsequent outings on television and film was in its sublime cast (from Simon Jones's permanently bamboozled everyman, Arthur Dent, to Stephen Moore's lugubrious Marvin the Paranoid Android), and in allowing listeners to picture Adams's genuinely extraordinary ideas in their own minds.

In 1978 the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was already very much a known quantity, thanks to its sonic tailoring of the Time Lord's adventures on BBC One. Here, however, its engineers excelled themselves, weaving seductive and amusing soundscapes around the fantastical action.

Any comedy that begins with the end of the world is an instant attention-grabber, and Peter Jones's avuncular narration (as "The Book") is the perfect counterpoint to the ensuing craziness. Adams had a knack for wonderful character names, but stick with the series for Slartibartfast (one of veteran actor Richard Vernon's finest hours).

If you've never heard this before, I envy you. Hyperspace bypasses, Pangalactic Gargle Blasters and Shoe Event Horizons all jostle for attention in a planetary pot-pourri.

It's full of the kind of skewed, surreal humour and conceptual genius that would become Adams's calling card. And when Marvin laments, "Here I am, brain the size of a planet...", I often think of Adams's intellect in similar terms.

So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the fish.

Mark Braxton, Radio Times, 8th March 2014

Nothing will quite satisfy the real, nitpicking Wodehouse aficionados, but this came as near as possible the flavour of the original and made a merry small play in its own right. The casting of the main character was especially apt, Richard Vernon plays Lord Ensworth with meticulous control; a lesser actor and producer would have turned this elderly eccentric aristocrat into a comic blusterer.

Val Arnold-Forster, The Guardian, 8th February 1985

I suspect the problem [is] the production. Producer Geoffrey Perkins, whose Hitch-Hiker's Guide did for radio what the slicer has done for bread, obviously knows about comedy. But this production of Patterson seemed to deaden what may well have been a promising script. The delivery of nearly all the actors (always excepting Richard Vernon) was wildly over-emphatic.

Val Arnold-Forster, The Guardian, 13th March 1981