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

The show i went to was about 75% empty, and Spike wasn't going down too well. (This must have been before his re-birth on television)
I guess you either got him.......or you had no sense of humour.

His humour was always underpinned by a certain logic. I always loved the imagery of a dying man crawling through the desert calling out for sand.

The first visit to rehearsals, he hardly said a word, just sat and stared. The second time he started the same way, then it was like somebody threw a switch in his head and he launched into a whirlwind of anecdotes, critiques, suggestions etc. Unfortunately, many of the suggestions were missed as we were literally in tears of laughter. I can honestly say that no-one has made me laugh so much since, not even Billy Connolly or Corky & the Juice Pigs.

Useless Fact: He was actually a very talented trumpet player.

Was he bipolar, did I hear?

(Thought: IS one bipolar, or does one HAVE bipolar? )

who is nicholas parsons and why is he living in a park?

He is a celebrity leaf from the 1970's.

the name of one of spike's first bands was the broadcasters.

Nicholas 'bloody' Parsons is a legend.

curly haired blonde actor/singer? is her really sleeping rough?

my fave spike line, actually something he claimed his father said, was to stop masturbating or else he'd end up with skinny children.

No reflection on Kate Moss's dad.

I sat with Nicholas Parsons in a recording studio at Wembley as the first pictures of Gulf War I came in. He was in tears. He was remembering being a young shipyard worker in 1940. When Dunkirk happened, forget all that cr@p about stiff upper lips, he said.People were genuinely terrified. He tried to get to Liverpool to get on a ship to Canada, but there were troops at the docks shooting people trying to board. The pictures from Iraq brought it all back.

http://www.nicholasparsons.co.uk/

The medical term for a unibrow, or monobrow, is "synophrys."

Starbucks Coffee was named after the first mate in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."

Research shows that, statistically speaking, you are more likely to have an accident on a motorway if you fall asleep at the wheel.

Ulysses S. Grant's boyhood nickname was "Useless."

An adult bedbug can survive up to a year without eating

Ok... here's something I noticed the other day here at work.


Guess what is in Bldg. 42 at the Johnson Space Center.


I saw building "42" and was curious and then a few days later, I saw the doors were open and got my answer.















Lawn Equipment. I figured that little tidbit should fall under the term "useless".

The first word spoken on the moon was "okay".


The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Had a spate of that in a job interview this morning where I was fighting to remember the word "consensus" but could I hell... the nearest I could get was "conciliatory"

About Spike Milligan's famous bipolar disorder. This was with him for most of his adult life, maybe latent until being hit by a mortar round in Italy triggered it off(OK, this on top of 72 hours without sleep, back-to-back shifts as a radio operator listening to what was largely white noise, and the relentless discomfort of piles. Bring all these things together and mabny people might manifest a mental illness)

His manager and friend Norma Farnes perhaps knew him best... she hints at the possibility that during the last ten or fifteen or twenty years of his life, where he made some truly mad business decisions, the bipolar disorder was augmented by good old Alzheimers - elderly dementia. And because he already had one mental illness on the go, nobody thought to look for a second creeping up as he got older...

Elaborate on that "first word spoken on the moon".

From what I can find, the first words were "Contact light" spoken by Buzz Aldrin.

I may be wrong, but if I am correct, "Contact Light" were the first words spoken as the lunar lander touched down, but "Okay" was the first word spoken by Neil Armstrong as he set foot on the moon - he quickly followed with his "One small step..." bit, but the history books wouldn't be so interesting if "Ok" was reported.

"OK" says man on moon!

(reminds me of the "OK" series of Honda adverts)

According to the log I'm reading (and also my memory) he didn't say "okay" before he said "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

This "Okay" thing might go back to that touchdown. Aldrin said "Contact Light. Okay, engine stop". Maybe some are considering it from the point of all lander pads on the surface.


Note that the all important "A" is back in Armstrong's quote. They found it again using some audio analysis. http://www.space.com/news/ap_060930_armstrong_quote.html

the 'a' is still a debated point. the australian inventor thingy person seems sure of his findings; others not so.

it's a bit like reconstructive photo restoration. you can inferentially argue a probability that what is being 'reconstructed' is accurate but you will never be certain.

personally i don't think the 'a' makes any difference anyway.

Apparently the most widely understood word in the whole world is also "Okay".
I was told that the second most widely understood word in the whole world is "Coca Cola"...


C.L.