I think a lot of the point of the "B Ark" joke is lost if you forget what comes next: the rest of the Golgafrincham people were wiped out shortly after the depa

I think a lot of the point of the "B Ark" joke is lost if you forget what comes next: the rest of the Golgafrincham people were wiped out shortly after the departure of the B Ark by a virulent disease contracted from an unsanitized telephone. (The first B-Arker you meet in the story is a telephone sanitizer.)