Zaphod is an idol in the cult sci fi fraternity! and this Sad Geezers role model.  He is played marvellously by Mark Wing-Davey. 

The man is the epitome of all that is cool!  He is, for instance, the inventor of the famous Pan Galactic GargleBlaster!  and was also famous for uttering the remarkable phrase, "Never drink more than two Pan Galactic GargleBalasters unless you are a Thirty Tonne Mega Elephant with Bronchial Pneumonia". See what I mean?  The geezer is a genius! 

This fine character is played (rather too convincingly for his own good) by Simon Jones.

Arthur is by no means cool, in fact he's a bit of a plonker! If you were to meet Arthur in a pub, he would be quietly (and quite happily) sat on his own at the bar oblivious to the fact that the girl he was due to meet was never going to show up. The only reason she agreed to meet him in the first place, was to divert him from bugging her with his inane chatter.

We never actually learn what he did for a living, but I would guess that he was a civil servant.

The Mice are a particularly clever race of pan dimensional beings.

Trillian is played beautifully by the lovely Sandra Dickinson.

She is a girl from Earth.  Not just any girl I might add - a drop dead gorgeous girl with a degree in mathematics and another one in Astro Physics. If you were to meet Trillian in a pub, you'd try to get her drunk while she bored you to death rambling on about Higgs Boozer or Bozen or whatever.....

A world inhabited by humanoids that produced custom built planets.

Some early inhabitants of the planet (they look a little bit like my next door neighbours).

The Golgafrinchams are a cool bunch with a hoopy history of which most of the important characters are those of the Great Circling Poets of Arium.

These poets came up with the idea of a whopping planet eating Goat.

Green men - Big, ugly, nasty green men.

The Babel Fish is small, yellow, leechlike and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brainwave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and the excreting telepathically a matrix from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centers of the brain.

This means that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language!!

Waddabout people who suffer bad earwax problems? or does more earwax give better adhesion?

How long can it live in your ear? - all your life!? 

Deep Thought (no relation to Deep Throat although the very reverend Douglas Adams no doubt intended us to contemplate such an idea) was constructed by a race of pan dimentional mega beings (the Mice!) for a very special purpose.

It was so intelligent that even before its databanks were connected up; it had deduced such complex concepts as ‘I think therefore I am’.  

Once it had been programmed with all the knowledge in the Universe, it was left to two men, specially selected to ask the great question.

The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is responsible for the development of the most popular range of domestic and industrial robots. The marketing division defines a robot as "Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with!"

The (late) Robotics Correspondent of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as;
"a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes".

This is the latest way of travelling through space without out the need for all that tedious jumping in and out of hyperspace.  The principal of generating finite amounts of improbability are so bloody obvious that I wont go into them here.

Marvin is the most quoted character of the series. This is a testament to the skills of the actor who played the voice, Stephen Moore.

Marvin is a manically depressed robot and the prototype product of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.   He has a 'brain the size of a planet' and a personality that makes you want to kill it!    If you were to meet Marvin in a pub, you would think it the worst slot machine you had ever played!

Ford Prefect is played perfectly by David Dixon.

If you were to meet him in a pub, he'd be telling  some story about the Triple Breasted Whore of Erotogon Six!  You would of course, remind him that drug taking was against the law (or possibly ask for the name of his supplier).

Ford is one of Arthur's closest friends.  He is not of the Earth (that was) but is, in fact, from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

This man is a Magrathean crinkly coastline designer.
Slartibartfast is played handsomely by the heavyweight actor, Richard Vernon.

This cool Magrathean was asleep for around 5,000,000 years with the rest of the Magratheans before being awoken to complete a special 'job' for the Mice.

He is a nice old geezer who may try to show signs of irritability or anger, but will fail miserably!