Dancing Rhinos. No, really.

So the best girlfriend and myself went to see the tribute to Douglas Adams, the aptly called ‘Virtual 60th birthday party’. Aptly due to the fact that the celebrant in question passed away while working out in a gym in L.A. (two things he apparently hated) in 2001. To rekindle the interest in Adams’ favourite charity, a bunch of celebrities thought it might be a good idea to put a show together celebrating the great man’s life.

A sassy frood who expected more. Or maybe less.

Being an enormous Adams fan myself I had to go, even though I had my doubts about how to throw together a celebratory party for a dead bloke.

We were promised loads of celebrities, of whom some pitched (Culshaw, Anderson, Jones, Ince, Singh, Bhaskar, Deayton, Lloyd, Curtis) and some didn’t, even though promised (Cox, Mangan, Fry). There were some of Adams’ sketches for Monty Python (some of them worked, some of them didn’t), dancing rhinos, comedy, science (Ince and Singh outstanding) and liff (John Lloyd reading the best of ‘The meaning of Liff’) and shite (Culshaw, Bhaskar, Jones).

There were some video clips, some rock by seventies rock gurus (Gilmour) and some plugs for the new HHTTG roadshow.

I am still puzzled and underwhelmed. I have no idea what the producers thought when they looked at the material available. The show lasted 3 1/2 hour. The good stuff would have made a good 90 minutes. While they decided to expand this into 270 minute borefest is beyond me.

Douglas might have stayed in a gym.