Meeting the deadline

The blurb of this biography carries a chilling phrase. "The author is acknowledged as the world's leading authority on the life and career of Douglas Adams." Uh-oh, you might think, a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy geek. But MJ Simpson has written an engaging and unbiased study of his subject who emerges as a shy and frequently distressed genius.

Adams's great difficulty was that he hated writing. He was incapable of finishing a script unless a publisher or producer physically trapped him in a house and refused to let him out until it was done.

The first series of Hitchhiker was broadcast on Radio 4 in 1978. It became an instant hit and Adams spent the rest of his life both luxuriating in the wealth and acclaim it brought him and trying to escape from its shadow. He was under constant pressure to produce further material. "I love deadlines," he said. "I love the whooshing sound they make as they whizz past."

In 1986 publisher William Heinemann gave him half a million pounds for a new novel. Simon and Schuster added $2.27 million for the US rights. "I'm starting it right now," said Adams as he signed the contracts.

A year later he had written one line. "High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse." It was a very good sentence, notes Simpson, but perhaps not worth two million pounds.

Adams found his fans a nuisance. One of his publicists suggests that the crowds who attended his booksignings were "incredibly ugly". He was invited to conventions all over the world but hardly ever summoned the courage to attend. "I just feel very odd about it," he said. "I'd become so aware of people's eyes on me I'd forget how to walk." In later years, he sometimes failed even to send a message of goodwill.

Though he professed not to understand women, he had a winning, romantic streak. He would leave notes lying around the house for his partner. "I think I love you more now than I did at quarter past three."

In the mid-1990s he moved to Los Angeles and spent many years trying to turn his great creation into a Hollywood movie. His efforts came to nothing and in May 2001 he suffered a heart attack on an exercise bike. He was 49. The arch procrastinator met his final deadline early.