Geoffrey Perkins

Geoffrey Howard Perkins (22 February 1953 – 29 August 2008) was a British comedy producer, writer and performer. Best known as the BBC head of comedy (1995–2001), he produced the first two radio series of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' and is one of the people credited with creating the bizarre panel game Mornington Crescent for ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue''. In December 2008 he posthumously received an Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award.

Early life

Perkins attended the Harrow County Grammar School, alongside Nigel Sheinwald, Michael Portillo and Clive Anderson, with whom he ran the debating society. Taking an early interest in drama, in 1970 he worked with Clive Anderson to write a charity revue called ''Happy Poison''.

Perkins read English at Lincoln College, Oxford and while there wrote for and directed The Oxford Revues of 1974 and 1975. After his time at Oxford, Perkins joined the Ocean Transport and Trading Company, where he was put to work studying waste timber in Liverpool. He did not last long in the field of commercial shipping. In 1977, drawing on his work for the Oxford Revue, Perkins joined BBC Radio's light entertainment department alongside Cambridge graduates John Lloyd and Griff Rhys Jones.

In 1986, Perkins married Lisa Braun, who was BBC studio manager on ''Hitchhiker's Guide''.

Radio career

Tasked by department head David Hatch, Perkins helped to revitalise the comedy panel show ''I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue'' (launched five years earlier), introducing the incomprehensible Mornington Crescent game which would become an enduring success.

''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''

Perkins produced the first series of Douglas Adams' ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' in 1977 for BBC Radio 4, taking over from pilot-producer Simon Brett. Perkins assisted the notoriously slow writer in finishing the scripts, before John Lloyd was drafted in to write large sections of the later episodes. Perkins also drew on the resources of the Radiophonic Workshop to help create the groundbreaking audio effects for the series.

''Radio Active''

In 1980, Perkins co-wrote and featured in the radio sketch show ''Radio Active'', revised and adapted from the early Oxford Revue shows, and initially based around the comedy parody group The Hee Bee Gee Bees, consisting of Philip Pope, Angus Deayton and Michael Fenton Stevens. Fenton Stevens' web site Prior to its leap from the revue to the radio, the production toured and appeared at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, after which it was picked up by BBC Radio 4 for a pilot called ''The Oxford Revue Presents Radio Active''. '' Radio Active'', "which poked fun at the amateurishness of some local radio broadcasting," went on to run for seven series, and won a Sony Award. Perkins featured as a character called Mike Flex, a young cocky disc jockey.

Perkins, with Deayton, wrote much of the series and later saw it transferred to BBC2 television as the Grand Prix and Silver Rose of Montreux-winner '' KYTV''.

Later radio work

Perkins, with ''Radio Active'' colleague and co-writer Deayton, later produced ''The Uncyclopaedia of Rock'' for Capital Radio, winning the Monaco Radio Award for the show, and penning a 1987 tie-in book with Deayton and Jeremy Pascall.

In 2005 he cameoed in the fourth radio series of ''Hitchhiker's'' ( The Quandary Phase), as the producer of the radio show Arthur Dent worked on. Essentially playing a fictional version of himself from the first series with a fictional version of writer Douglas Adams.

Television career

Hat Trick

Perkins left the BBC in 1988, to become a director of Hat Trick Productions, an independent television and radio production company. Hat Trick's produced comedy programmes for the BBC
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