h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Once you've cracked the theme, see how many you can identify without looking them up.

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1. Pulverize Clearer Jade
2. Nurse Negotiator
3. Hat Nut
4. Oak Inn Fan
5. Tiger Levy
6. Nab Kimono 
7. Lurk With Dame
8. Rough Suborbital Soot
9. Glad Shark Jam Mod

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Suborbitql soot suggests Kohl...

Now if you take Hat from 3 and add it to Suborbital soot from 8 you might get Helmut Kohl

What clue can we take from the subject line? Eager Seat-Recliners = keen loungers?

Helmut Kohl wasn’t an Eager Seat-Recliner, but you might want to take a look at Q7.

My naughty thoughts tend in the direction of Nab Kimono

Theoretically, of course.

I am totally stumped. Following on the desserts theme, I did wonder if we were looking at cocktails here, but that's not it.

3. Hat Nut. Could this be the Mad Hatter?

The Mad Hatter would be a very amusing answer if it were correct.

Helmut Kohl was once controversially connected with the answer to Q7.

I'm sure there's an alternative universe where it *is* correct. I don't know how to get to that universe, and I don't care much either way. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Amusing people is what I end up doing much of the time, and it's fine.

I just keep thinking of Barbara and Dave Senior in the Royle Family eagerly recling the new sofa “I never decline a recline, Barbera”.

{... I did wonder if we were looking at cocktails here }

Not as such, but you'll find all the answers at cocktail parties from time to time.

Is #5 Reg Levity, that well-known Essex comedian who often frequents cocktail parties?

No, but you're on the right lines.

In that case, Eager Seat-Recliners is an anagram of Secretaire General and 3 is U Thant, who was one.

6 is Ban Ki Moon

I don't know any other Secretaires General, so I'll leave this up to others more knowledgeable.

7 would be Kurt Waldheim, then

8 is Boutros Ghali, I think

9 is Dag Hammarsskjold