Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy: Cultures: Golgafrinchams

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.

The descendants of these poets were sick of the ‘middle men’ you know, all the management consultant types, the hairdressers, the telephone sanitisers etc. Apparently they represented a third of the population and the other two thirds decided to do away with them once and for all by fabricating a ripping yarn about the large mutant Star Goat that was about to descend on their solar system and devour Golgafrincham.

It was decided that three large Arcs were to be built which would carry the whole population across the galaxy to find a new planet for them to colonise. In the ‘A Arc’ would go all the leaders, the brilliant scientists, the great thinkers and clever politicians, in the ‘C Arc’ would go all the doers, the builders and fabricators, the people who made things. The ‘B Arc’ would therefore carry all the middlemen such as telephone sanitisers and management consultants.

This brilliant plan, actually it’s bloody stupid! Completely flawed and implausible, I mean, no one in their right mind would bundle all these important people in only one spaceship. What if something happened to the B Arc! What if the Goat made a detour for instance and ate the ship instead of the planet. All the most important people of Golgafrincham would be devoured in one foul swoop!

The Wheel is discovered by a Marketing consultant.

 As a management consultant myself and after careful consideration, I should like to point out that the cryogenic chambers should have wallpaper and they were also the wrong colour scheme.

Anyway, the plan involved the building of the B Arc first. All the ‘middle’ people were rounded up and sent off to find a new home, oblivious to the fact that the A and C Arcs would never be built.

It’s ironic that the planet Golgafrincham suffered a virulent and ultimately fatal virus a few years later. It was transmitted by dirty telephones. The only living Golgafrinchams were therefore found on the B Arc.

Eventually they managed to find Earth. In fact they crash-landed on Prehistoric Earth.