Knightmare Actor's and Hitchhiker's.
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I've recently been researching more into Michael Cule & David Learner's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" appearances. As you know, David and Mike made appearances in the 1981 TV version. But their association with Hitchhiker's didn't start or end with the series.
Mike has been associated with Hitchhiker's on and off for the past 30+ years. He made his debut (opposite David) in the doomed Rainbow Theatre production (1980), playing no less than 12 character's. Including Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Deep Thought and he was the first actor to play the Amiglion Major Cow in the famous "Talking Dish of the Day" sequence.
He and David were the only 2 actor's from the Rainbow production, to graduate to the TV series. This time he played just the one character which was the Vogon Guard ("Resistance is Useless"). Almost 10 years after this in 1993, he appeared in "The Making Of....", reprising his Vogon role and also voicing the animated Babel Fish.
Mike's been a regular at Hitchcon's and various other conventions many times over the years. His most recent H2G2 appearance was in audio adventure's "The Quandary Phase" & "The Quintessential Phase" in 2005 playing a Vogon Helmsman and a Vogon Clerk.
David first played "Marvin the Paranoid Android" on stage at the Clwyd Theatr Cymru in 1980, he then went on to the Rainbow Theatre. When Alan JW Bell (producer/director of the series) went to see it, he made special note of David and Mike's peformances. Which led to his turn inside the Marvin costume in 1981, even though his voice was never heard in the finished product. During filming and rehearsal's he spoke the lines exactly as written and in the same accent he used for his stage peformances. Some snippets of raw footage featuring David's voice can be seen on the DVD release of the TV series.
He too appeared in "The Making Of...." being interviewed in the (now famous) liquorice allsort jumper and like Mike he's still pop's up now and again at various conventions.
A special mention also goes to Rayner Bourton, who appeared in 2 episodes of the TV series as a Newscaster. Below is one of the sites I looked at on the Hitchhiker's stage shows. There's some very good pictures and some downloadable pdf's of the Theatre programmes.
http://www.douglasadams.eu/index.php?p=en_h2g2_hitchhiker-on-stage
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In March 2020, Michael Cule (Mike Cule) and David Learner were together for a panel discussion at the British Library about those early Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy stage productions which they appeared in. It was put on YouTube a year ago and is available to watch here.
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David Learner recently uncovered the clipping of a newspaper article about his time on the Hitch Hiker stageplay, from some months prior to making the TV series. That's him in the odd robot/spacesuit costume on the right of the picture, dressed up as Marvin the Paranoid Android. Didn't he look different with the shell haircut at the start of the 1980s?
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Very different!
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