Boris Johnson explained

Everybody knows the answers to the big questions are in the pages of The Godfather.

What should I do?- Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

What day is it?- Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday…

But when it comes to understanding our sometimes-perplexing Prime Minister, the go-to book has to be The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Kindle was offering it at 99p, and you can’t say no to that – not if you were on the planet in 1978 and hit the record button on the radio-cassette player five minutes into the first episode. Suddenly you knew nothing would ever be the same again. Here, at last, was the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

And indeed, it was 42.

Now it appears that the genius of author Douglas Adams included being able to slip through a freak wormhole in the space/time continuum to base his character Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the Galaxy and worst-dressed sentient being in the known universe on… well, it’s obvious now you come to think about it:

“His tousled fair hair stuck out in random directions; his blue eyes glinted with something completely unidentifiable. And: “Zaphod’s qualities of mind might include – dash, bravado, conceit – he was mechanically inept and could easily blow the ship up with an extravagant gesture.”

Yes, it’s all there – even this astute psychological insight from the beautiful astrophysicist and Islington party-girl Trillian: “One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so – but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act.”

But remember how the story ends? Over dinner at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? Clearly, there’s no hope for any of us.

So, don’t talk to me about life. When you’re being ruled by a man with an ego the size of a planet, there’s only one thing to do: Pour me another pan-galactic gargle-blaster and stick my head in a bucket of hyena offal.