How About A Cup Of The Answer To Everything?

Reiner Schulz writes "Douglas Adams admittedly was a big fan of Earl Grey tea. Here's his enlightening entry in H2G2 on the subject (pretty much straight out of The Salmon of Doubt). And those familiar w/ the Hitchhiker's Guide will remember the drink dispenser from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe which, trying to figure out how to brew the perfect cuppa, grabs all available computing resources on board a certain starship. What a coincidence then that one of the finest blends of Earl Grey on the planet in general and in the UK in particular is Harrods' Earl Grey, Blend No. ... 42 . It's a plausible theory as to the origin of the answer to everything, isn't it? Earl Grey addicts like myself will certainly agree (even though Douglas liked his w/ milk; I prefer lemon). So, what would be the question? Perhaps, how about a nice cup of tea?"

Comments

Re:42 == Divinely chosen number?

[squiggleslash]

This would of course require that Adams was purchasing Harrod's Earl Grey at the time, which is highly unlikely. Adams was a struggling author at the time of HG2TG, and BBC Radio was not exactly the way to make a fortune.

The idea, therefore, that he was regularly shopping at Harrods, a purveyor of exceedingly expensive goods, to get tea, strikes me as totally absurd. It's not as if you can't/couldn't get Earl Grey at the local Sainsbury (even back then in the late seventies, my dad drank it.)

This is an utterly bizarre theory. I don't believe it for a second.