A few days ago I was listening to the Radcliffe and Maconie show on BBC 6 Music when over the airwaves came the theme tune from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Stuart Maconie was doing the show solo that day and the track was part of The Chain – “officially the longest running listener-generated thematically-linked sequence of musically-based items on the radio”. Explaining the links, Stuart told his listeners that this particular tune was a track by the Eagles called Journey of the Sorcerer, which surprised me. How could I have not known that?

I quite like the Eagles, especially their Hotel California single, but they stray perilously close to country music at times and that’s where I part company with them. The combination of mandolin and violins on Journey of the Sorcerer has a faint whiff of country but it’s forgivable in this instrumental piece with its infectious motif, an orchestral background and subtle electronic effects. It’s hard to imagine a more suitable choice for a film theme. And in this case even the title fits: The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is all about travelling through the universe and the infinite probability drive propulsion system has to be some kind of sorcery.