Douglas Adams had contributed comedy sketches for BBC radio programmes produced by Simon Brett (including "The Burkiss Way" and "Week Ending"), and was asked to pitch a radio sitcom in February 1977. Adams initially pitched a "bedsit comedy" because that "seemed to be what most situation comedies tended to be about." Adams said in an interview that when Brett proposed a radio science fiction comedy series, he "fell off his chair...because it was what I'd been fighting for all these years". Adams wrote his first outlines in February 1977.