RIP Geoffrey Perkins of Hitchhikers' Guide and Father Ted

Graham Linehan sez, "Geoffrey Perkins died yesterday. Terrible loss, but I think of interest to Boing Boing readers because of his importance in the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' story...he produced the radio series, and after working with him on 'Father Ted', I feel confident in saying that he was probably one of the reasons it became such a huge success. He was an incredibly influential figure in British television comedy--something his skeletal Wikipedia entry doesn't quite communicate--and I just thought people should know that we lost someone very important yesterday."

Geoffrey was the man who found our early ‘Ted’ script, (at that time, written as a mock-documentary) and suggested we turn it into a sitcom. He was the man who chose the house that became our iconic central location (poring over a pile of location photographs, stabbing it with his finger and saying “That’s the one”). He also persuaded us to use Neil Hannon’s ‘Songs of Love’ as our theme music.
This last one was a sticking point for a while. Arthur and I preferred a song by Neil that would later become ‘A Woman of the World’ off the ‘Casanova’ album. That song was jaunty and silly and to us perfect in that it seemed to be subtly making fun of the form we were working in.

Geoffrey Perkins (Thanks, Graham!)