Brontitall

Brontitall is a fictional planet from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It is populated by a highly evolved bird people who live in the right ear of a 15-mile high marble statue of Arthur Dent. Originally the bird people were ground dwellers, but gradually the planet was taken over by the shoe shops of the Dolman-Saxlil Shoe Corporation, thanks to the shoe-shop intensifier ray they deployed. In order to keep the populace buying more and more shoes, they were badly made and ill-fitting. Eventually the shoe event horizon is reached, whereby all of the shops on the planet are shoe shops, but none of the shoes actually fit. The result is economic collapse, ruin and famine - the survivors evolve into birds and never walk on the ground again.

On the ground, an archaeologist called Lintilla[?] discovers the strata of shoes thus revealing the planet's history.

Nearby, a derelict spaceport contains a number of crumbling old spaceships, but one of which is still on power, "delayed" for millenia due to the non-arrival of its complement of lemon-soaped paper napkins.

It has been suggested, possibly by Adams himself, that much of the inspiration for the events on Brontitall arose from his own dissatisfaction with service received in Oxford Street shoe-shops, and on long-haul flights, which he reportedly loathed. These episodes were his revenge!