I was just on Wiki's Neil Gaiman page to look up something someone said to me in a blog comment about Hitchhiker's (did Neil write some sort of reference book as a guide to the Hitchhiker's Guide by Adams?).
I was quickly scanning through the wiki entry for certain word combinations when I noticed what I think is an error on the page.
"Gaiman also writes songs, poems, short stories, and novels, and wrote the 1996 BBC dark fantasy television series Neverwhere, which he later adapted into a novel."
I was under the impression he wrote the novel first. The way I remember reading it, someone had approached him about writing a TV show for the BBC so he wrote the novel as a basis for the TV show. I had read this, about the TV show to be released in the UK in a magazine but the book was already on the shelves here in the US around the time I read the article.
I mean, it's a nit picky thing but I'd still like to know.

hi onion_girl

nope, i'm afraid the tv show really was first.

tv show 1996

book, also 1996, but on BBC books (who did the show)

if i remember correctly, he wrote the book whilst on the production set of the show being made - so the script for the show had already been writeen.

In response to your Hitchhikers query, one of Neil's first books is a very good biography of Adams and the Hitchhikers phenomena. It's titled "Don't Panic" of course