At the Memorial Service for his friend Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy, our great friend and sadly missed colleague Jonathan Brock QC,
late of these Chambers, gave a eulogy in which he recalled an incident from the early
1980s. Douglas had just invested in a mobile telephone – so called because it could be
transported with some difficulty in a large rucksack. Newly arrived from the USA, it
could neither transmit nor receive calls in London. The solution, Douglas decided, was
to go as far west as possible, in order better to be able to pick up mobile phone signals
from across the Atlantic. And so it was that Jonny accompanied Douglas in his MG
to the furthest tip of Pembrokeshire that they could find. The rucksack was placed
on the beach in an auspicious position; buttons were pressed; expectations were high.
And expectations were dashed. Jonny recounted how Douglas, all patience exhausted,
jumped up and down on the useless equipment. Then the two of them sat on a sand
dune and watched the incoming tide cover the remains, while the sun set.
We have come a long way in a third of a century. OFCOM calculates that, by 2014,
93 per cent of adults personally owned or used a mobile phone in the UK, while the
number of UK mobile subscriptions reached 88.4 million by the end of 2013. Life now
without access to electronic telecommunications would be regarded as highly unsatisfactory
by most of the population.