The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

The next year the radio series became the basis for a BBC television mini-series broadcast in six parts. When he died in 2001 in California he had been trying again to get the movie project started with Disney which had bought the rights in 1998. The screenplay finally got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick and the resulting movie was released in 2005.

". Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983) Last Chance to See (1990) and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. He was a staunch atheist famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well must have been made to have me in it!" to demonstrate his view that the fine-tuned Universe argument for God was a fallacy.