by L. WAYNE HICKS

Simon Jones' role in the big-screen version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is sparse. His screen time amounts to maybe 30 seconds, a brief part to be sure. But it wouldn't be - and couldn't be - "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" without Jones.

First Jones' voice and then his face became legendary in Douglas Adams' hugely popular story, which began as a BBC radio drama in 1978. Adapted first for print and then for a BBC television series that found a home in America on PBS, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the story of Arthur Dent (played by Jones), the last Earthman left after his planet was destroyed.

He finds himself hitchhiking around the universe with a strange pair of mates, including the two-headed, three-armed Zaphod Beeblebrox, who's the president of the galaxy, and Ford Prefect, a researcher for the all-knowing book "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Decades after the BBC first broadcast the radio series, Jones and the surviving cast returned to the studio last year to record a dramatized version of the subsequent books in the five-book series, including "Life, the Universe and Everything" and "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish." Timed to coincide with the release of the movie, the BBC will begin airing the "Fish" episodes in May and the television arm will rebroadcast the six episodes that comprised the original TV program.

Jones, now in his early 50s, was ideally cast in the role of Arthur Dent. The character was, to some degree, based on Jones, who met Adams at the University of Cambridge.

During an interview, Jones reflected on the various incarnations of "Hitchhiker's Guide," the life and times of Douglas Adams and his pursuit of a good cup of tea.

Q: What's your role in the new movie? The press kit identifies you as a "ghostly figure." Can you offer any more details?

A: My, my, I even have a name? I am on for about 30 seconds as the Magrathean answering machine, though I am in 3-D. The only bit of 3-D, apparently. I can't believe they'll give out glasses for 30 seconds.

Q: When did you first meet Douglas Adams? Was it in college?

A: Yeah. Yeah. He had always wanted to join the Footlights Review Club. The only way to join it was indeed to come and perform your own material, or at least somebody else's. That's how you got in.

Q: You were already a member?

A: I was already a member. I was in fact chairman of this particular one that he came on to audition for. We did smokers, as they were called. They were twice a term. Or at least once a term, anyway. Semester. And people would come along. I had a really grim morning. Various people would come along doing frightfully intellectual sketches, none of which would raise a titter from me. Douglas came on with two friends, proceeded to drain a glass of water and then while one of his friends cranked his arm he spat the contents into the face of the other. It was a sort of human water pump. Actually struck me as inordinately funny. The rest of the committee thought it was extremely silly and there wasn't any point in it at all. But I had my way. I said, "Of course he must join, this man is clearly a genius." No, I say that now. I said, "He's made me laugh. He's the only who has. For goodness sake, isn't this about making people laugh?" I overcame their opposition because after all I had the swaying vote and he got in and apparently he remembered that. Word got back to him that I had stood for him.

Q: Did he stay with Footlights for very long?

A: Yes, he did, while he was at Cambridge.

Q: Did his humor following similar physical form? Or was he doing more literary humor?

A: I think that was his least sophisticated piece, I suppose. I don't remember whether there was any dialogue. I doubt it, somehow. I don't actually remember whether he did any other material, either. All I remember is that particular piece. But clearly why he wanted to join Footlights is he wanted to follow in the footsteps of the Beyond the Fringe people and the Monty Pythons, some of whom had passed through it, those who hadn't been to Oxford instead. And he was clearly very influenced by the Pythons, as far as he went on to work with Graham Chapman. We did the pilot of a television program called Out of the Trees, which was a bit derivative of Python.

Q: That was the first time you worked together outside of Cambridge?

A: Yes, I think it was. I remember it was about five years later, I think, he called me up and said, "I've written this program, a science fiction show and the BBC's finally agreed to do it. I've been nagging them for a long time. And I'd like you to play the survivor of Earth. You're the only one I think could do it." Which was very nice. Of course, I said yes, thinking he'd written the part with me in mind. I have done ever since, until more recently when I've come to realize perhaps he was Arthur Dent rather, more than I.

Q: Why do you think he was Arthur Dent?

A: Many characteristics, I realize now, that he seemed to have. That both of us were always going on about not being able to get a decent cup of tea. It just cropped up, actually, in the aftermath of his death when people were talking about him. I began to think that he sounds more like Arthur than I do. He probably was.

Q: What did Douglas like best about the process of writing Hitchhiker's Guide? Was it having finished it? Was it just having the ideas?

A: I think having finished it was an enormous relief to him. Sometimes he had the ideas and sometimes they took a while to come. I do remember when we were recording the first series and he had no idea how it was going to end. It was only by dint of the fact that we were in the recording studio and had nothing to say and the story is coming to an end and this is it that he actually got to the end of it.

Q: Was there any kind of sense of desperation at that point, that maybe it was going to stop and not end?

A: No, actually. We knew it was going to end somehow. He was passing these sheets out to us with bits of script written on them. We knew they'd put it all together in the sound booth later. That was always something of a mystery of recording Hitchhiker's Guide anyway because we did it all in bits. We had no live audience. We hardly ever met Peter Jones, who played the voice of the book, because he came in later, in his own soundproof booth. Sometimes we forgot out people who were in the soundproof booth. The man who played Marvin the robot, I think he'd been in there an hour or so and finally he said can I come out now? They'd completely forgotten he was in there. We only had a day to record each episode. Basically only Douglas or Geoffrey Perkins knew precisely what was going on in the story.

Q: Perkins was the producer?

A: Yeah.

Q: That was the first incarnation of Hitchhiker's Guide.

A: The radio version, yes.

Q: Did you have any idea it would become this worldwide phenomenon?

A: Not really because the BBC had, first of all, been very reluctant to put it on because there hadn't been, they said, since Journey Into Space, any science fiction on the radio. It seems hard to believe now because it's so obviously the right medium for it. Then they said, I can only repeat what they said, but now they say of course it was the way they create a cult, it was intentional marketing. So confident were they in this particular program that they put it out at 10:30 at night on a Tuesday evening. To me that sounds like the next thing to putting the cat out, really. And it was indeed when people were putting the cat out or making their goodnight cocoa or whatever it was. People did get to hear it. And for the first time in the history of the BBC there was such a clamor for people to hear the episodes they missed - because it doesn't make much sense if you're coming halfway through - they were forced to repeat it immediately. Of course they say that was entirely in the plan, now. But if they'd been that clever, they also would have secured the rights to the books, which they did not because they didn't think they would sell many. They only sold 15 million, I think, worldwide.

Q: You didn't get to read the radio script from beginning to end. You mentioned it wasn't finished. But you agreed to do it based on what he said or what you read up to that point?

A: I hadn't read anything. I said why not? He was a struggling writer. I was a struggling actor. It seemed like the sensible thing to do. No, no, I wouldn't insist on reading the script.

Q: When did you realize Hitchhiker's Guide was a success?

A: I think it was at the end of the broadcasting of the show when we suddenly began to get this feedback. Because pressure suddenly came on Douglas quite obviously to write the books, the first two anyway, which were fairly straightforward and I think he approached them with a certain amount of ease because he had already written the scripts so there was only the question of novelizing them. Of course he couldn't leave that alone so the plot is therefore different.

Q: That's the surprising thing about the various incarnations.

A: Yes, it is.

Q: The story does change.

A: I think he got easily bored.

Q: Do you have a favorite version of the story?

A: I think the radio.

Q: Why the radio version?

A: The scenery's better. It's as simple as that. The TV series is very firmly grounded in its period. If you look at it now, it's almost embarrassing. That was the BBC at the peak of its special effects, at that time. They spent vast quantities of their budget on this particular project. And yet the very first thing I heard when I came over to America was from an interviewer who said, "What I really liked was the deliberate tacky nature of the effects." And I said, "Yes, yes, absolutely. Well it was intentional, of course." Realizing that of course we were post-Star Wars and it did look cheesy. In a way that's part of its charm now.

Q: It seemed as the BBC spent a lot of money on Zaphod's second head, which didn't quite work.

A: No. Mark Wing-Davey resented that strongly, especially because if it cost eight times his own salary. It's odd because in real life it actually looked quite good. We were sort of impressed when it was demonstrated to us. Its eyes opened and shut and its mouth moved. Somehow, once it was there on the screen, it looked like an unanimated piece of putty. It didn't seem to do anything, did it? Well, it didn't have anything to do, either. It was almost as though they were embarrassed by it so it didn't get any jokes.

Q: The good lines went to Š

A: The talking head. Which makes sense.

Q: Were you the obvious choice to recreate the role Arthur Dent, on television?

A: Oh, yeah. Apparently there was never any question. Never any question, actually. There was a problem with Ford because we had a different one. Geoff [Geoffrey McGiven] was doing a play and couldn't get out of it and I think the BBC became impatient and moved on, which is not very nice, I thought at the time. I liked David Dixon very much, but he wasn't Jeff, you know, the original.

Q: I think you're the only actor to do an entire TV series in a bathrobe.

A: I think probably, yes. It was nice not having to get dressed for it. It's a pity I didn't wear a beard for most of it, too, I then would not have had to shave, either. I still have the bathrobe.

Q: Did you costume yourself or was that a BBC issue?

A: It was a BBC-issue bathrobe and it's very hard to reproduce. It seemed to me to be a very standard, very ordinary bathrobe and in fact that was the intention. But when the fans started looking around for others, they could never find one. So it turned out to be quite unique. The thing about my particular dressing gown is it has "AD" embroidered on the pocket so we know it's the original and genuine. Otherwise you would never know from any other except, as I say, it's certainly become a hard one to find.

Q: Do you wear that as your own dressing gown?

A: I did. Not now. I keep it in a mothproof bag in the closet and wheel it out on the occasions when I need it.

Q: Are you a fan of science fiction?

A: Yes. I wouldn't say I was an addict. I was more into gothic horror stories myself. Genteel ghost stories, like those of M.R. James. Because Hitchhiker's is rather more than just science fiction. Not that "just science fiction" is a rather nice way of describing science fiction. But there's more to it than creating a fantasy world in which one can lose oneself because he's actually saying a lot about the nature of the way we live, the irritations of everyday life.

Q: Do you think adding humor to science fiction makes it more palatable to a larger audience?

A: I think it may. I think that may well be it. It's sending up its own genre, actually. I think that's true. I think yes, science fiction with a sense of humor is terrific. Science without a sense of humor is desperate.

Q: Someone was telling me they thought it was ironic that Douglas Adams, who started Hitchhiker's with the world being destroyed, spent so much time trying to save the planet's species.

A: Very much so, yes. In fact in the original plan he had, before the shape of the story really came together, he wanted to demolish the earth in every episode. But people pointed out the futility of that, I think, simply because it wouldn't be there after you'd done it the first time. Certainly there's a great irony that he then dedicated himself to saving the species. I think it was a very important trip that he went with Mark Carwardine on the trip [for the book] Last Chance to See. He loved travel. Once he got to these really exotic places with Mark he really became fascinated in that and in Diane Fosse's gorillas. I think also suddenly having the wealth that he never expected, he wanted to do something with it, something useful. And he certainly did. One of the reasons I think Douglas found writing so difficult, it's been suggested by some of his contemporary writers, is that success came so quickly. I mean immediately. He said it was like getting to Mount Everest without climbing the foothills. Or like having an orgasm without having the foreplay. There he was suddenly, and he probably didn't quite know how he got there. Whereas many novelists sort of battle away at it until they finally break through, write every day and all that sort of thing, and he was not in that habit. I think that's probably why it was so hard for him.

Q: He was more a last-minute, miss-deadlines kind of writer?

A: Yeah. I understand Stephen Sondheim is like that with a musical. It doesn't affect the quality of the work in the end, it just does terrible things to a psyche. I have to have a deadline. Well, a lot of people do.

Q: What did you enjoy about being Arthur Dent?

A: In a way I didn't have to act, I suppose. Which is quite often the hardest thing to do. It was also a very easy thing to do. I didn't have to put on anything complicated. I was very sympathetic to Mark Wing-Davey having to be Zaphod with the extra head because it weighed something as well. Or poor Sandra [Dickinson] having to squeeze into that plastic outfit. All I had to do was slip on a bathrobe. It was fairly easy. What did I like about it particularly? I don't know. I can't give you a complicated intellectual answer, I don't think. Because it was wonderful to be a cult figure - at that stage when I still believed that I was indeed Arthur Dent - I felt a little bit like Alice Lideel, the original Alice, or Alexander Selkirk, the original Robinson Crusoe. Or Christopher Robin Milne, indeed. Heavens, I thought, I'm a prototype for a work of art. Isn't that fun. They'll probably mention that in my obituary, I thought.

Q: Was the radio show more fun to do? You just had to stand there reading the script.

A: Yes, you did. You just stood there. The most important thing was not to make the pages rattle as you turned them over. Oh yes, it's a very clinical, untheatrical experience doing it that way. Especially not even having an audience. You didn't have to give a performance. Well, you had to give a performance but not an immediate one.

Q: Which version was more interesting for you to do?

A: I still prefer the radio. It's just more interesting as an intellectual exercise. There are too many scenes, with the TV series there's so much that's out of your control. It's true with films as well. You really have no say on what you're going to look like in the end. Indeed, why should you? But being aware of that, you do feel a little powerless. You can really only do what you're told. With the radio you can be a little more creative. You can still end up on the cutting room floor. All you have to do is say what's written on the page.

Q: Why do you think the Hitchhiker's Guide books and TV series and radio series still has an audience today?

A: Good question. I suppose it's because they are funny. There's more to them than just being funny. I think we share a lot of his frustrations I think the irritations that Arthur feels, he meets these strange people in these strange places is something that we in a diffracted society, also feel. Things are not familiar. Less and less things become familiar as our lives progress. Whereas in the old days people used to stay in one place pretty well for their entire lives. We're all traveling around trying to get use to the unfamiliar. And I think in a way Arthur Dent's experience is very similar to those that we have. The way he handles it is either a reflection of the way we do or a handbook in how not to.

Q: What brought you to America?

A: My wife, I think. She brought me over. She was the American manager of the Monty Pythons. She knew Douglas before I did, because she was the contact they set him onto when he first came over here himself, well before I did. They met then. In fact, we would have met at Douglas' 30th birthday party, which I organized, except that I then went off to San Francisco with my then-girlfiend, for a holiday. Douglas was always rather annoyed that he hadn't actually brought us together. It was up to John Cleese to do that. He and I had done a film together, Privates on Parade, and he asked me to do the extra lines in the Meaning of Life, the last film they did, and so I did. Sometimes they wrote scenes with seven people in it except for six. And they couldn't do all of them, even though they played everything including the women. So that was fun, and that's where I met Nancy. Douglas was delighted because he didn't know we were going to meet under those circumstances.

Q: What was the hardest part to get used to about living in the United States?

A: Hmm. I don't know. Let me think. Driving on the wrong side of the road doesn't bother me at all. I don't know. In fact, I have to say I found it surprisingly easy. I didn't find it a difficult adjustment at all. I think that's probably why I'm hesitating to answer. I don't think I found it at all difficult, as long as I could be sure to bring my own supply of tea bags because I'm sorry, Liptons just don't do it for me.

Q: What's your brand?

A: Marks & Spencer extra strong. My wife's become addicted as well.

Q: You're the world's most famous hitchhiker, but have you done much hitchhiking in your life?

A: Well, I used to. Of course, one doesn't now. Yes, I used to hitchhike around England. Not a great deal, but before I had a car. I had many an amusing adventure, I suppose, none of which I can remember now, but we got about. I don't know many people do it now. I think the risks are too great, sadly.

Q: What did we lose when we lost Douglas Adams?

A: I think we lost rather a lot, actually. We all lost a good friend, a wonderfully generous, loyal kind friend who'd pop into town and say, "Right! Let's go have dinner." And you'd pick up the conversation as if you just dropped it. He was with us on a number of occasions. He was the first to know that Nancy was expecting. Because he happened to be in Los Angeles. He always kept turning up, like some ubiquitous figure of fiction. When I decided to ask Nancy to marry me, we happened to be in a large Checker taxi at the time, we were actually our way to Windows on the World on the World Trade Center because Douglas had said that he'd always wanted to eat there. He was driving across from Los Angeles so could we book? We did. You had to book three weeks in advance, at least. And he'd never been here long enough to do that. So we did that and Terry Gilliam was flying down from Toronto. We were going to be in Windows in the World. It seemed like the best place to announce our engagement. When we arrived the matre'd was wringing his hands with gloom because somebody had set off the fire alarm and the entire kitchen was covered in green foam. We were sent away, but at least with a bottle of champagne. This rather impressive meeting of people from all directions was defused, so then we really had to announce our engagement just to make the evening even remotely memorable.

Q: Do you get recognized now as Arthur Dent?

A: It's funny you should say that. It is bizarre to me, the years having gone by, it's the voice that gives it away. I'm always recognized when I go to a sound studio that I haven't been to before because sound engineers were all sort of brought up on it, I think. This is a dead giveaway about the voice. It was the pits of my film career. I appeared as Rene Russo's accountant on the other end of a phone in The Thomas Crown Affair, the redo, because the casting director rang up and said look you don't even have to get dressed for this or learn the words. He obviously knew I liked to wander around in a dressing gown. I was on a microphone in another part of the building playing her accountant. But my voice was clearly heard on the phone. So clearly that I had an e-mail from a friend in South Africa who said was that you? I'm not even credited. But it was amazing how many people actually knew that was me.

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