Monday 25th May 2020
The Internet
Stand Up for Towel Day took things online in 2020 due to the coronavirus lockdown with Stay In for Towel Day. For the first time we could be seen worldwide and technology (which we’re sure Douglas would have loved) allowed us to have our most ambitious line-up to date. There was a huge variety of things to enjoy aside from the usual comedy including a virtual tour of Douglas Adams’s old haunts, a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster mix-along, and a Hitchhiker’s quiz.
Along with some Stand Up for Towel Day regulars, we were also joined by special guests Arvind Ethan David and Mitch Benn.
Set List
Chaotic Adequate
In this special episode of the popular Dungeons and Dragons podcast, Stand Up for Towel Day host Rachel Wheeley tried to escape from a Hitchhiker’s Guide inspired ‘hell’.
You can listen to the whole adventure here:
Part One
Part Two
H2G2 Text Game Play-Through
Save the Rhino Event manager and Hitchhiker’s newbie, David had a crack at the notoriously hard Hitchhiker’s Guide text game with the help of fans.
Want to try your hand at the game? You can find it here.
The Rhino Who Climbed Kilimanjaro
Exclusive airing of the documentary following the journey of Save the Rhino founders Dave Stirling, Johnny Roberts, and Douglas Adams, which stated in Mombasa, Kenya and went to the summit of Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. The team took turns wearing a rhino costume all the way to the summit and stopped off at Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary with the famous Tony Fitzjon along the way.
David Haddock
David, the former president of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, is an amateur, but active Adamsologist who has written for the club magazine for nearly 20 years and on Towel Day is usually found taking fans around Cambridge or Islington. Under lockdown, however, David had to resort to taking us on a virtual tour instead, showing us around Islington and pointing out sites related to Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Dirk Gently.
Arvind Ethan David
Arvind Ethan David is a writer and producer of TV (Netflix and BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency), film (The Infidel), comics (Dirk Gently, Darkness Visible), and theatre (15 time Tony nominated Jagged Little Pill on Broadway). His career started when his favourite author, Douglas Adams, came to see his student production of Dirk Gently 25 years ago.
Arvind joined us live from Los Angeles to tell us about ‘The Book Changed His Life’ and bringing Douglas Adams’s excellent and slightly less well-known work to new audiences via both TV and comics.
The Quiz at the End of the Universe
Quiz obsessed Stand Up for Towel Day producer, Nell Thomas tested fans’ knowledge of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, and his other work in this live quiz written especially for Stay In for Towel Day. Rounds included a fiendish series of Answer Smash questions based on Richard Osman’s House of Games.
Prizes courtesy of Galactic Hitchhikers.
If you want to try the quiz, you can download the pdf here.
Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster Mix-along
Host Rachel Wheeley gave us a demonstration on how to prepare the drink that allows you to experience the effects of your brains being smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.
You can find the recipe here.
Steve Cross
Live from his shed, Steve was back proving that he has read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy closer than anyone else. This time he looked at just how useful towels really are and if they are “the most massively useful thing[s] an interstellar hitchhiker can have”, why are they hardly ever used in he books? And why does it seem that alcohol is, in fact, far more useful fo hitchhikers?
Angus Dunican
In the style of Peter Jones, Angus showed us what The Guide had to say on the topic of ‘Other People’.
The Story Beast & Katie Overstall
As part of their new Cultural Exchange Programme, Vogons Armitage Poltrune and Urkminder Shartz from The Galactic Arts Nobbling Council interrupted the Stay In for Towel Day broadcast to face off in a poetry showdown to see who could make humans gnaw their own limbs off first.
You can watch the whole thing below. Although we don’t recommend it.
Declan Kennedy & Jonathan Hearn
A transport mix-up sends Arthur to yet another Earth and Ford to a rubbish world
( everyone’s a critic ). Arthur gets respite, Ford gets refuse, neither gets satisfaction. For Ford, it’s the sudden challenge of forced sobriety. For Arthur, it’s the enigma of why
everyone else is in a dressing gown and housebound. Can galactic lockdown stop the
spread of the Improbability Virus? Can Ford stay two metres away from a drink? Ultimately, what was Arthur’s role in the computational matrix of the Earth? And when is bin collection day?
Mitch Benn
Stand up comedian, musician, writer, and actor Mitch Benn is widely acknowledged as one of the best writer/performers of comedy songs in the UK. Perhaps best known as the resident comic songwriter on BBC Radio 4’s The Now Show from 1999 to 2016, to Hitchhiker’s fans he is Zaphod Beeblebrox, having taken over the role in the stage show tour of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in 2013.
He performed several songs to round off Stay In for Towel Day including Teleportation Blues from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Hexagonal Phase and fan favourite, Doctor Who Girl.
Production Team
MC
Rachel Wheeley
Producers
Rachel Wheeley
Nell Thomas
Adam Shaffer
David Hill
Logo / Artwork
Trystan Mitchell
With thanks to…
Dave Stirling and all at Save the Rhino
Stand Up for Towel Day 