Hitchhikers Guide Live Tour

Simon (Arthur Dent) Jones reveals that The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy could be coming to a city near you soon

We had the radio show, the TV show, the film, the books, the LPs, the (impossible) text adventure game, and the one-off live show. So, are you ready for The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy live tour? Looks like it could be happening next year.

Speaking to Simon (Arthur Dent) Jones about his involvement in the mysterious new online version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (for which Jones has provided his voice and is scheduled to launch in August), he revealed that the one-off Hitchhiker’s live event that took place on London’s South Bank last was so successful, the team is planning repeat the experience… well, repeatedly.

“One thing that I discovered when we did HitchCon in 2009 at the Royal Festival Hall,” he tells us, “is that you do have to say the lines pretty well as you said them however many years ago – in my case it could be 30 years, because that’s what people want to hear. A fresh inflection is not want people to know. That’s why it had the atmosphere of a rock concert the 2009 thing. When Stephen Moore came on and said, ‘I want you all to know I’m feeling very depressed,’ the crowd went mad. Which is why we intend to do a live tour next summer. We’ve decided this was too ridiculous for words. 2,000 people came from all over Europe to the Royal Festival Hall to something that wasn’t that well publicized and, we thought, ‘Why don’t we just do a tour of English cities live?’ Last chance to see.* We’re not getting any younger.”

“We’ve put together a really good script that takes elements from all the series, and coherently makes sense, and we’d have a live band, and live sound effects, and I’d wear the dressing gown – and pretty much that’s it. Of course we’ll need a book and a new Slarti, and off we go in the Heart Of Gold, to Glasgow, Edinburgh... This sort of thing. We’ve got a designer, we’ve got a production company and we hope to do it before the Olympics, because otherwise I think we’ll get drowned.”

Cross your fingers they get all the details worked out. This could be amazing.

(* We sincerely hope that’s a deliberate Douglas Adams reference.)

Richard is a freelancer journalist and editor, and was once a physicist. Rich is the former editor of SFX Magazine, but has since gone freelance, writing for websites and publications including 12DOVE, SFX, Total Film, and more. He also co-hosts the podcast, Robby the Robot's Waiting, which is focused on sci-fi and fantasy.