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

...is, indeed, always Larkin'.

He lives in Somerset, and presents the Saturday morning breakfast show for BBC Somerset 95.5FM, which is a brilliantly irreverent joy to the ear. Moreover, as someone who occasionally stood in for his producer and on-air sidekick for a year and half (Summer 2006-Winter 2008) I can report that he is an ego-free zone and an absolute joy to work with.

So far as I know he no longer presents for Five Live, but in possibly the most ironic development related to anybody mentioned in this song, he has actually BECOME a weatherman and forecasts for ITV Thames Valley.

I hope he is going to be OK, given that ITV Local are about to (or maybe already have) got rid of a whole bunch of staff.

Meanwhile, my own career has taken me back to TV Centre where I once - a few weeks after joining BBC News 24 Sport back in 2001 - tipped a takeaway dinner carton full of gravy down my jumper because Michael Fish was behind my mate Dan in the queue in the canteen and at that stage I still wasn't used to seeing people who'd been on the telly since I was a kid around the place.

Also, many's the time that I have been heading off to the tea bar to find myself walking down the corridor behind your actual John Kettley - and once or twice I've had to dive down a side exit because I felt completely unable to refrain from bursting into the above song.

He strikes me as the kind of bloke who'd have a sense of humour about the whole thing, though.

Ah, hello stranger.

Any recordings of you and Parkin in action so I can verify this for myself?

B

Well, they exist in the BBC Somerset vault. But the only archive I've got of my time there is commentating on various Yeovil Town games...