I did a little digging, and it turns out that Douglas Adams was a self-consciously tall young man who went on to study at Cambridge — just like John Cleese, whose autobiography, So, Anyway…, I very much enjoyed, especially as an audiobook, with Cleese himself narrating.
Adams went on to be discovered by Graham Chapman — tall, Cambridge grad — and co-wrote a Monty Python sketch with him:
Adams is one of only two people other than the original Python members to get a writing credit (the other being Neil Innes).
Adams had two brief appearances in the fourth series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. At the beginning of episode 42, “The Light Entertainment War”, Adams is in a surgeon’s mask (as Dr. Emile Koning, according to on-screen captions), pulling on gloves, while Michael Palin narrates a sketch that introduces one person after another but never gets started. At the beginning of episode 44, “Mr. Neutron”, Adams is dressed in a pepper-pot outfit and loads a missile onto a cart driven by Terry Jones, who is calling for scrap metal (“Any old iron…”). The two episodes were broadcast in November 1974.
Anyway, I found Adams’ style very, very English, and thus Stephen Fry‘s narration fit it very, very well. What’s that? Why, yes, Stephen Fry is conspicuously tall, isn’t he? I wonder where he went to… Oh! Cambridge! Fancy that.