The son of a theology teacher/management consultant and a nurse, Douglas Adams attended Cambridge University, studying English literature. While at school, he spent much of his time writing sketches for Cambridge Footlights, a theatrical club which provided early training for comedians such as John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Graham Chapman. "It's not so much that being a member of Footlights gives you a guaranteed entree into show business, which a lot of people kind of assume simply because so many people have come out of it. The reason why so many people of that type have come out of it is because they've gone into it. Certainly in my experience, when I was deciding on what kind of university career I was going to have, I wanted to go to Cambridge because I wanted to do Footlights--mainly because I knew I had a reasonable opportunity to meet...