In the history of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, John Lloyd has a very special place. A friend of Douglas Adams for many years, he co-wrote two of the episodes of the first series, was associate producer on the TV series, and for the new Hexagonal Phase, marking 40 years since the first broadcast, he is playing the voice of the Book. The new series, written by Dirk Maggs based on Eoin Colfer’s novel And Another Thing, makes use of some material written by Adams that has never been broadcast before, found by Kevin Davies during research through Adams’ papers at St John’s College, Cambridge. To set the scene for the Hexagonal Phase, Lloyd presented a documentary, Don’t Panic! – It’s the Douglas Adams Papers, for Radio 4, and chatted with Paul Simpson about life, the universe and everything…

What stood out for you most from the Douglas Adams papers?

Of the bits that I saw, the thing that really is so poignant is the pain. Everything with Douglas was so close to the edge of disaster that he’d rant on, “I hate Ford, he doesn’t interest me. I hate Arthur, he doesn’t interest me.” All these lists beating himself up, and then this little note saying, “You’ve got to do this – it’s going to be great”, pulling himself together all the time.

I still find writing difficult; I don’t think I ever found things quite as hellish as Douglas. That’s the thing about writing – it’s hard to do well. J K Rowling tweeted the other day about how hard it is to write, to spend a whole day on something and you don’t think it’s any good. You don’t think that this superwoman would have that – but it’s not like that. She finds it very difficult; she keeps it more to herself, I guess.

I’ve got this peculiar idea – I don’t think it is that peculiar idea, actually – that the universe is perfectly balanced, everything from gravity to karma, for an equal and opposite effect. Douglas’ extreme agony writing and doing stuff are perfectly balanced by the pleasure he’s given to tens of millions of people – hundreds of millions probably – all over the world.

And now there’s this extraordinary thing with Elon Musk’s car: apparently there’s a copy of the original Hitchhiker book in the glove compartment. I can’t think of a piece of enduring fame bigger than that. There’s some technology in the car as well: they’ve got a digital version of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, and that is designed to last for 14 billion years. Elon Musk’s idea is that eventually somebody will find the car, decipher the book and listen to Asimov on CD, or whatever the technology is, and that could be as long as 14 billion years in the future. Douglas would have absolutely loved that!

And you can see the complaints department at Megadodo Publications noting that because of a time warp, the guarantee is invalid and 14 billion years and one have elapsed! When I spoke with Stephen Fry about the movie back in 2004, he was saying how much Douglas would have loved seeing all the new technology.

Things have changed astonishingly quickly.

There are some comments in the new documentary that perhaps go against established Hitchhiker history.

This sort of came up when I was talking to Lisa Perkins about it. We went to see Star Wars with Douglas but she remembers going with Geoffrey and he definitely wasn’t there. It was me, Douglas, Lisa and another girl – the four of us going and being completely blown away by this thing, after years of me and Douglas being told there was no market for science fiction.

But as we know: four people witnessing a robbery, they’ll all get the colour of the people’s hair wrong and what the make of car was. This is forty years ago: people’s memories are faulty. I don’t think the core things are any different but the detail is fuzzy.

You’ve been involved for 40 years on and off – what’s the overriding emotion you have of Hitchhiker’s?

Everything’s a paradox. When I think back to any of the peak great experiences of my life – Blackadder or Spitting Image – it’s very tangled. Spitting Image was hell on wheels a lot of the time and also amazingly joyous. Similarly, Blackadder was full of grumpy people arguing whether courgettes are funnier than cucumber, but also you’d be literally lying on the floor helpless with laughter.

The Douglas thing is very similar to that – there’s a lot of pain for him and a lot of just unbelievable joy and fun. It’s bittersweet, and because it’s such a long time, this [Hexagonal Phase] is a wonderful closure. There’s that great quote from Julian of Norwich, the 14th century mystic: ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well’.

I’ve got some pretty strange views on the survival of consciousness after death as well. I’ve always felt Douglas is up there in some great armchair in the sky and thinking, “This is fascinating. I see the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle now, and see how it fits together.”

Douglas is one of that small category of people who in life was larger than life and also in after life. For somebody like me who knew him incredibly well, he’s there in the background of my life all the time as if he’s present.

Ultimately, it’s rather joyous that all that water has passed under the bridge over 40 years and here we all are, all joined up again. It’s a bit weird, but that’s how I think.

How did you come to voice the Book for the Hexagonal Phase?

Dirk [Maggs] asked me.

Two great fun things have happened in the last couple of years – they did the live tour of Hitchhiker’s and I got to do two guest slots, which was really good fun. (That’s where I came from, as did Douglas. When we first met in Cambridge I started as a stage comic and writer.)

As a result of that, Dirk very kindly said that me and Neil Gaiman were the two best voices. We then did Hitchhiker Live on Radio 4, which was live radio, marvellous with all its flaws and occasional stumbles and so on.

Dirk liked that and asked me originally if I would help him adapt [Eoin Colfer’s] book [And Another Thing]. I said I didn’t think I could do that – I don’t think Douglas would approve, having sacked me roundly the first time round. Me going through his pants drawer, as it were, wouldn’t be right. But I said I’d love to do the voice and I don’t think he would mind that.

I think [co-writing] would be cheeky. I’ve said often: I was very upset at the time when Douglas sacked me [after deciding to write the first Hitchhiker’s novel on his own] but I’ve never resented it since. I got over it in about 3 months, and we went off to write The Meaning of Liff together. If it hadn’t been for Douglas sacking me, I would never have done anything. I’d probably still be producing Just a Minute, which is what I was doing at the time. I don’t have any resentment but I think there are lines you shouldn’t cross.

Does it surprise you that the Hitchhiker’s phenomenon still is continuing, or did you expect it to die away?

I can’t answer that. Because I was there right from the beginning, I sometimes dip into the books, and think people must think it feels very Seventies, with the slightly hippie/ post-hippie thing, and the technology. I was down at Dirk’s house the other day and he has Marvin sitting in his sitting room and you think, that technology is almost Fifties, made out of old bits of radio studio. It’s funny where technology is now, and where Douglas guessed it was going, but it’s obviously gone much further than any of us guessed – as technology does. You never know where it’s going to go.

Friends of my kids have just come across Hitchhiker’s, and to them it comes up new, it’s completely fresh. It doesn’t date for somebody who wasn’t there at the time. It’s its own world with its own integrity, its own strangeness and its own truth – and in many ways, the satire hasn’t dated. Douglas would say it’s not really a science fiction book, it’s really satire; I don’t know – a bit of both.

Hitchhiker’s has been a book, radio series, film, tea towel etc. Do you think of it as a radio series or quite what?

It’s a world that has its rules and has its own technology and ideas and characters that can apply to anything. It’s a bit like what I do now: QI is known by most people as a television series, but it also does a very successful podcast called No Such Thing as a Fish, which is certainly hotter than QI and has done a nationwide tour. It’s going to Australia in May, filling out the Sydney Opera House. We’ve done 17 books, we do the sister radio show The Museum of Curiosity. In the jargon, we’re 360: we do every kind of media.

QI is an idea, which is that everything without exception can be made interesting if looked at long enough, closely enough, or from the right angle. What is distinguished about a really good idea is that at one level it’s very simple, but it’s also applicable. I often say QI is an app rather than a television programme or whatever.

Think of the world of Harry Potter or the world of Antony Horowitz – if Douglas had been even a little bit more worldly and not such an imaginative dreamer and one-off, he would have turned Hitchhiker into something like Disneyland. If Douglas had had any sense of business grip…

Even as a student, he was always very ambitious. He thought he was going to be famous at something, and was determined to be that, and he was. He used to say he would be a millionaire by the time he was 33⅓  – a good joke but ridiculous – but if he’d been more worldly, Hitchhiker could have been a much more successful phenomenon than it is. Even though it’s very successful, it’s still a bit secret – a cult, “our thing”.

But if it had, it would have been diluted…

I think so, and that generally is what happens. Not Harry Potter, but generally dilution is the likely thing.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: The Hexagonal Phase begins on Radio 4 on March 8 at 6.30 pm and will be available on iPlayer for 28 days.

Thanks to Chloe Kerslake-Smith for her assistance in setting up this interview.