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Episode 9 – Upscalator to Heaven

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For our ninth episode we leave the Discworld again as author Amie Kaufman joins us to discuss Truckers. One of four novels Pratchett published in 1989, it introduces the Nomes – Pratchett’s second group of tiny folk living at the edges of the human-sized world.

Masklin is the young hunter in a group of Nomes: four-inch tall fast-living people struggling to survive on rats and the scraps they can scavenge from the human world. After two Nomes are killed by a fox, Masklin convinces the group to hitch a ride on one of the humans’ enormous vehicles, and they find themselves in the Store: Arnold Bros (set 1905), a wondrous place filled with food, warmth – and more Nomes than they have ever seen. As they try to adjust to the peculiar ways of life in the Store, its electricity revives “The Thing”, an ancient Nome artefact handed down for generations. It reveals to Masklin that Nomes were stranded on Earth millennia ago, but there’s hardly time to understand what that means before The Thing warns of immediate danger: the Store will be demolished in just fourteen days… 

Truckers is a middle grade book – it has chapters and no footnotes! – which is nonetheless charming for “adults of all ages”, as Sir Terry liked to inscribe copies. In Masklin, Grimma, Granny Morkie and the other Nomes are echoes of Pratchett characters we love, and it’s perhaps surprisingly sophisticated in its satire, social commentary and love of wordplay. It forms the first part of “the Bromeliad” trilogy (a name explained by the sequels), but is also a complete and wonderful story all on its own. We’d love to hear what you thought of Truckers: use the hashtag #Pratchat9 on social media to join the conversation. But do try to use small words…

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We’ll head back to the Disc next time when we grab a bag of banged grains and take in a few clicks in Moving Pictures! We haven’t currently confirmed our guest, but we’ll be sure to tell you who they are when we can lock in a date! You can still ask questions to be answered on the podcast by sending them in via social media; use the hashtag #Pratchat10 so we can find them!

Show Notes and Errata:

  • Amie is on social media, but if you really want to keep up with what she’s up to, we recommend hitting her web site, amiekaufman.com. Her novels include the The Illuminae Files YA sci-fi trilogy, co-authored with Jay Kristoff, and for younger readers Ice Wolves, the first in a new middle grade fantasy series.
  • Ents are the tree-people of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books. They are the oldest living things in Middle-Earth, and live long slow lives, considering a three-day deliberation over a question to be “hasty”.
  • The stop-motion animated television series of Truckers was made for ITV in 1992 by Cosgrove Hall, a UK animation studio whose huge canon of work includes Danger Mouse, Wind in the Willows and – five years after Truckers – two traditionally animated Discworld adaptations: Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music. Truckers was split into thirteen 10-minute episodes, and mixed stop-motion with live-action footage of the humans with whom the Nomes interacted. The cast includes many well-known voices: 
    • Edward Kelsey as The Thing (who is also the narrator). Kelsey was a long-time star of radio serial The Archers, and played the Danger Mouse characters Baron Silas Greenback and Colonel K.
    • Joe McGann as Masklin. As well as starring in 90s TV comedy The Upper Hand, Joe is also the brother of Eighth Doctor Paul McGann.
    • Debra J Gillett as Grimma. Gillett later played Susan Sto Helit in Cosgrove Hall’s Soul Music.
    • Rosalie Williams as Granny Morkie. Williams’ best-known role was as Mrs Hudson in the long-running The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes television series starring Jeremy Brett.
    • Brian Trueman as Dorcas Del Icatessan. Trueman is a long-time Cosgrove Hall writer who adapted Truckers for television; his most notable acting roles on other animated shows include Stilletto in Danger Mouse and Nanny in Count Duckula.
    • Sir Michael Hordern as the Abbott. Amongst his long and distinguished career, Hordern is beloved by children for playing the gruff Badger in Cosgrove Hall’s The Wind in the Willows.
    • Jimmy Hibbert as Vinto Pimmie (amongst others). Another regular Cosgrove Hall writer and actor, Hibbert later played the late King Verence I in Wyrd Sisters.
  • Amie’s nerdy joke references “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs”, a psychological theory proposed by Abraham Maslow in a 1943 and his 1953 book Motivation and Personality. The hierarchy presents human needs as a pyramid, with the most fundamental at the bottom; a person needs the lowest needs met before they can consider the higher ones, progressing up the pyramid. In order from bottom to top, the categories of needs are Physiological (basic physical survival), Safety (a feeling of security), Belonging (social connections), Esteem (respect and status), Self-actualisation (fulfilling one’s potential) and – as a later addition – Self-transcendence (altruism and spirituality). While it has become popular as part of broader culture, the theory has been frequently criticised by psychologists, in particular for presenting what many see as a very Western set of values as universal.
  • For our international (and non-drinking) listeners, Bintang is an Indonesian beer produced by the Heineken company, availably comparatively cheaply in Australia. To “smash” a beer in Australian slang is to drink it quickly.
  • Amie refers to The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, a 2017 Amazon period comedy set in 1958. The title character turns to stand-up comedy after her husband leaves her, and gets a day job in a B. Altman department store as a cosmetic sales clerk.
  • Au Bonheur des Dames (The Ladies’ Paradise or The Ladies’ Delight) is an 1883 novel by Émile Zola, the eleventh in his “Rougon-Macquart” series about the lives of two related families living in the Second French Empire during the latter half of the 19th century. The store in the book is modelled after the 1852 version of Le Bon Marché (“The Good Deal”), often regarded as the first modern department store. (It originally opened with four departments in 1838.)
  • Are You Being Served? was a British sit-com about the staff in the clothing department of fictional department store Grace Brothers. It originally ran from 1972 to 1985, and was famous for it’s high-camp, innuendo-laden style, not dissimilar to the Carry On films. It had a large cast, but the five characters who lasted the entire ten season run were exceedingly camp menswear salesman Mr Humphries (John Inman), officious floorwalker (supervisor) and supposedly ex-military man “Captain” Peacock (Frank Thornton), head of department Cuthbert Rumbold (Nicholas Smith), Womenswear assistant Shirley Brahms (Wendy Richard) and head of Womenswear Mrs Slocombe (Mollie Sugden), who frequently told stories about her “pussy”. (We’re not making this up.) The show was so popular it spawned a stage play, a film, a 1990s sequel – Grace & Favour, in which the five main characters run an inn – and a reunion special in 2016. There were also three remakes for other countries: the US one didn’t get past a pilot, the Singaporean version dropped the filthy jokes, and the Australian one featured Mr Humphries moving to Australian store Bone Brothers. The store’s name was changed because there’s a real Australian store named Grace Bros, which is probably why Ben couldn’t remember the name…
  • The Smurfs are small (“three apples high”) magical blue-skinned creatures who live in a secret village of toadstool houses in a medieval wood, invented by Belgian artist Peyo in 1958 for a comic strip. They have expanded in worldwide popularity with cartoons, toys and most recently a CGI/live-action film franchise. Each smurf has a name describing their personality or profession: Handy Smurf is a builder and handyman, Brainy Smurf an arrogant know-it-all, Hefty Smurf a strong gym junkie and so on. The Smurfs are led by Papa Smurf, a wise older smurf with a beard, and there were originally 99 male smurfs and just one female smurf, Smurfette. She was created by Gargamel, the smurfs main enemy; he is an evil but incompetent wizard who needs a smurf as the final ingredient in an alchemical formula to transform lead into gold. Over the years many other smurfs have been added, notably Baby Smurf, Nanny Smurf, Grandpa Smurf and the “smurflings”, a group of teenage smurfs.
  • Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat is a stage musical by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, based loosely on the story of Joseph and his “coat of many colours” from the Bible’s Book of Genesis. Joseph is a dreamer and the favourite of his father’s dozen sons; his jealous brothers sell him into slavery and tell their father he is dead, but eventually his skill at interpreting dreams sees him triumph and reunite with his family.
  • Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson was a famous and successful commander of British naval forces during the American War of Independence and the subsequent Wars of the First, Second and Third Coalition with France. During the last of these, his ship Victory was engaged with three French vessels at the Battle of Trafalgar when a sniper in the rigging of the French ship Redoubtable spotted him and shot him through the shoulder, fatally wounding him. It’s said his officers asked him to change his dress, or at least cover up the numerous stars and other honours which were sewn into his coat, to make him less identifiable to the enemy. His coat is displayed in the National Maritime Museum in London, and this blog discusses it in detail.
  • “The Ancient Mystic Society of No Homers” features in Homer the Great, the twelfth episode of the sixth season of The Simpsons. Homer joins the secretive Stonecutters (a parody of the Freemasons), but annoys the other members when he first destroys a sacred relic, then is made their leader when it’s discovered during his punishment that he bears a prophesied birthmark. His efforts to help the community at Lisa’s request are the final straw, and the other members all quit and form the “No Homers” club, leaving Homer to go back to his family.
  • Some of the Departments in Arnold Bros have old-fashioned names:
    • Delicatessen – traditionally sells imported or unusual prepared foods, typically meats, cheeses and foreign fruits and vegetables. Still used in supermarkets, though usually abbreviated to “Deli”.
    • Haberdashery – small items used in sewing, like needles, thread, buttons, ribbons and zippers.
    • Ironmongery – originally meant any items made of iron, but expanded to mean similar objects (e.g. utensils, pots, doorknobs etc.) made of other metals and also plastic.
  • See the note in our previous episode about Liz and Ben’s differing feelings about Lord of the Flies, but for quick reference: in William Golding’s novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island, protagonists Piggy and Ralph find a large conch shell on the beach and blow it like a horn to summon the other boys for a meeting. From then on when they meet, someone must be holding the conch to be allowed to speak.
  • Catweazle was a London Weekend Television children’s series about a ragged 11th century wizard, the titular Catweazle played wonderfully by Geoffrey Bayldon, who accidentally travels forward in time, initially to the year 1969, then again in the second season to the 1970s. He interprets all modern technology as magic, most famously describing electricity as “elec-trickery” and a telephone as “the telling bone”. In the first season, the young boy who befriends and hides Catweazle on his farm is nicknamed Carrot!
  • The first working escalator was built in 1896 on Coney Island, though patents for various designs go back as far as 1859! The first one built in Europe was for the Harrods department store in Knightsbridge in 1898 – so it’s possible, if unlikely, that the escalators were installed when Arnold Bros (est 1905) was first constructed. (The television series shows a clearly more modern escalator, though a sign next to it also clearly says it goes up to the second floor, rather than the fourth or fifth floor described in the book.)
  • Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a 1966 absurdist play, probably the best known work by Tom Stoppard. It follows two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, giving their perspective of events in the original story, as they are first tasked to discover why their old school friend Hamlet has apparently gone mad, and then to accompany him to England, bearing a letter for the English King commanding Hamlet’s death. Hamlet alters it and they are killed instead. The pair have many interactions with the Tragedians from Hamlet who present the play-within-a-play The Murder of Gonzago, and there are many musings about fate, language and existence. Stoppard adapted and directed a film version in 1990 which features a stellar cast.
  • The plan to build windowless aeroplanes that display video of the outside view on screens was announced by the airline Emirates in early June 2018. Their newest planes have already removed windows in their first class suites.
  • Rick and Morty is an animated sci-fi comedy series created by Justin Roiland (who also voices both title characters) and Dan Harmon. It began life as a parody of the Back to the Future characters Doc and Marty, and follows Rick, an alcoholic, amoral genius scientist who drags his grandson Morty into dangerous adventures across time, space and multiple alternate realities. The episode Liz refers to is The Ricks Must Be Crazy from the second season, in which it is revealed Rick’s flying car is powered by an entire mini universe contained within its battery – and a scientist there has built his own mini universe.
  • The scene in which our universe is shown to exist within a locker in an alien train station occurs at the end of Men In Black II, and parallels the ending of the first Men in Black film in which the Milky Way is contained inside a marble (though it’s not actually the same “galaxy” jewel being sought during the rest of the film).
  • While it’s not technically true that you can’t fold paper more than seven times, it does become increasingly harder to fold as the strength of the paper increases with it’s thickness – which increases exponentially with each fold. Most people can’t fold an average-sized piece of paper more than five or six times. In 2002, Californian Britney Gallivan folded a 1.2km long piece of toilet paper in half twelve times, and derived an equation which could determine how long a piece would need to be to allow a given number of folds. So what about Masklin? Being much smaller than the piece of paper might make it easier for him to get leverage, and even if he only managed to fold the A4 letter six times, it’d end up about 1.5 x 2 inches – large, but cartable for a Nome.
  • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a “Star Wars Anthology” film, set immediately before the events of the original Star Wars (aka Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). It tells the previously untold story of the group of rebels who steal the plans revealing the fatal flaw in the Death Star – plans that are handed to Princess Leia at the end of the movie, and are the ones she passes on to R2-D2 at the beginning of Star Wars.
  • Angels & Demons is the novel by (in)famous Catholic mystery thriller author Dan Brown which focuses on the election of a new pope. It also introduces Robert Langdon, a university professor who specialises in religious iconography and “symbology” and is an “expert on the Illuminati”. Langdon goes on to appear in four more of Brown’s novels, including the international bestseller The Da Vinci Code, and is played by Tom Hanks in the film adaptations. (Incidentally, Tony Robinson – who we also mentioned in this episode – produced The Real Da Vinci Code for Channel 4 in 2005, in which he debunked many of the supposed historical facts mentioned in the book.)
  • The 1726 novel Gulliver’s Travels was conceived by Jonathan Swift as a biting, broad satire on many aspects of Irish and British society. The first part is the most famous: English sailor Lemuel Gulliver is shipwrecked on the island Lilliput, home to six-inch-tall people (the same size as Nomes!), and becomes embroiled in their quasi-religious war with nearby Blefuscu over egg etiquette. In the other three parts he visits many other lands, encountering giants, scientists, sorcerers, brutish deformed humans and intelligent (if ethically questionable) horses. Generally only the first and sometimes second (giant) parts are included in the many children’s retellings.
  • Lieutenant commander Montgomery “Scotty” Scott was the head engineer and second officer aboard the starship Enterprise in the original 1966 Star Trek television series. Often described as a “miracle worker”, he was often able to effect emergency repairs or modifications in short time, though when he later appeared in sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation he admitted to overestimating the amount of time required to complete a given task.
  • For non-Australian listeners: “smoko” is common Australian slang for a break from work to smoke a cigarette. It was recently immortalised in the song “Smoko” by Queensland band The Chats.
  • You can watch Mr Bean (played by Rowan Atkinson) jury-rig a driving mechanism for his car out of a mop, a broom, a bucket of paint and some ropes at the start of this compilation of some of his finest travelling moments. The sequence Ben remembered involves him running late for a dentist appointment and getting changed during the drive.
  • Enid Blyton (1897-1968) was a beloved children’s author who wrote both fantasy – including Noddy, The Magic Faraway Tree and Adventures of the Wishing Chair – and adventure books, most famously the Famous Five and Secret Seven books. Criticism of the books isn’t new; they have been critiqued since the 1950s. You can can still read Liz’s 2012 article “Is it okay: To read Enid Blyton books?” at Lip Magazine.
  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is the original 1971 film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Charlie Bucket and four other children win the chance to tour reclusive sweet maker Willy Wonka’s fantastic factory. At the beginning of the film, Charlie’s four grandparents have been “bedridden for twenty years”, but Grandpa Joe is able to get up to accompany Charlie to the factory without too much trouble as soon as he finds his golden ticket…
  • A Current Affair (ACA) is a long-running Australian current affairs television program. It is generally regarded as “sensationalist journalism”, and a stereotypical story exposes “dole cheats” (people fraudulently claiming social benefit payments). The format and content of ACA and similar programs like Today Tonight were thoroughly satirised in the 1990s by the ABC sit-com Frontline.
  • “Potted shrimp” is a traditional English delicacy in which small shrimp are boiled, shelled and then mixed into spiced clarified butter.
  • Graham crackers are a semi-sweet American biscuit made from “graham flour”, a type of coarse-ground, unsifted whole wheat flour. The flour is named after Sylvester Graham, an 19th century Presbyterian minister who criticised the changes in the American diet resulting from the industrial revolution. There’s no real equivalent in Australia, though English-style digestive biscuits can be used in baking. “S’mores” are traditional American treats made while camping by sandwiching a roasted marshmallow and some chocolate between two graham crackers.
  • Animal crackers are another kind of sweet biscuit, originally from England but still popular in the United States. In the two-part second season Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “What’s My Line?”, Oz and Willow flirt while discussing animal crackers, in particular the fact that usually the monkey is the only animal depicted wearing pants. The line “I mock you with my monkey pants”, delivered in a French accent by Oz, was supposedly taken from a dream experienced by Willow actor Alyson Hannigan.
  • We found a version of Kristy Kruger’s story about believing unicorns were real in Act 1 of Episode 293: A Little Bit of Knowledge of long-running NPR podcast This American Life, along with other folk with weird bits of childhood belief that survived into adulthood.

Episode 7A – The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch

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In this, the next episode after our seventh one, writer, performer and librarian Aimee Nichols talks with us about the ninth-but-one Discworld novel: Guards! Guards! Published in 1989, it kicks off the longest-running and arguably most popular Discworld sequence: the adventures of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

The Night Watch has seen better days: the Thieves’ Guild has made them all but obsolete, and with the recent death of Herbert Gaskin, their company has dwindled to just three: career Sergeant Fred Colon, former street urchin Corporal Nobbs, and perpetually drunk Captain Samuel Vimes. They’re shaken up by new recruit Carrot – a human raised (as far as possible) by dwarfs – who not only volunteered to join, but actually tries to uphold the law. But they’ll need all the help they can get as a secret cabal of resentful men are manipulated by a charismatic leader for an incredible purpose: to bring a dragon to Ankh-Morpork…

Vimes, Colon, Nobby and Carrot all make their debuts here, as do Lady Sybil Ramkin (in her biggest role), Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Detritus the troll and the concept of L-Space, and both the Librarian and the Patrician feature prominently. It’s also the first Discworld novel set entirely in Ankh-Morpork, though after appearances in all of the previous novels it already feels like home. Even nearly 30 years later, Guards! Guards! feels incredibly relevant and funny, but it’s also weird to go back to Sam Vimes’ beginning when he still has so much evolution and redemption ahead of him. (If you’d like to head straight to the next book, just go back in time to episode one of Pratchat when we read Men at Arms with Cal Wilson.) We’d love to hear what you thought of Guards! Guards! – use the hashtag #Pratchat7A on social media to join the conversation! (If you use the…er…other number we’ll probably find you too.)

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It’s time to step out of the Discworld again when we return from L-Space next month, when author Amie Kaufman will join us to talk about the first book of the Nomes: Truckers. As usual, if you want us to answer your questions on the podcast, get them in as soon as you can! Ask them via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat9.

Show Notes and Errata:

  • You can follow Aimee (and by proxy, her dog Winston) on Twitter at @wordsandsequins, or check our her web site at aimee-nichols.com.
  • You can read Aimee’s wonderful piece about the passing of Sir Terry on Medium.
  • Get Smart was a sitcom created by Mel Brooks in 1965, starring Don Adams as Maxwell Smart, Agent 86 for the spy organisation CONTROL which worked to thwart various ridiculous villains, especially members of rival agency KAOS. Despite being highly trained in espionage and combat, Max frequently exasperated his professional and romantic partner Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon) and their boss the Chief of CONTROL (Edward Platt). One of the classic sitcoms of the ’60s, it contributed many famous catchphrases to popular culture in its original run of five seasons. It’s since been repeated many times, and spawned two film sequels, a short-lived revival/sequel series, and a surprisingly good film remake in 2008 starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway.
  • Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch is…well, if you haven’t seen it, you should just watch it.
  • “Incels” are so-called “involuntary celibates”, an online community of men who believe they have been unfairly denied sex by women. Jia Tolentino’s piece “The Rage of the Incels” for The New Yorker is a good introduction, but go gently – it’s unpleasant territory.
  • “Thatcherism” is descriptive of the politics of the Conservative party of the United Kingdom, particularly under party leader and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from 1975 to 1990. They were a marked change from the period of the “post-War consensus”, in which the two major parties broadly agreed on things like state regulation and ownership of industries. Thatcher changed all that; she and her allies believed in much more economically-motivated conservatism, Victorian-style “family values” and British nationalism, and their beliefs under her Prime Ministership have left a huge mark on politics in the UK and around the world (not least in Australia).
  • In case you’re one of the sixteen people who didn’t see James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster Avatar, the Na’vi are 10-foot tall blue cat people who share a long tendril-like organ connected into their brain with many other species on their planet, including the dragon-like Banshees. They are able to connect these to other creatures to form a neural bond which…well, it’s not really explained what it does exactly, but it seems like mind control: the animals have to be forced to do it the first time, after which they become compliant, which is gross. Also, just going to leave this fact here – connecting braids is a significant part of how the Na’vi conduct, erm, the kind of thing that happens at Mrs Palm’s, so make of that what you will.
  • Anne McCaffrey’s beloved book series, Dragonriders of Pern, is another alien-dragons-with-riders story, but on Pern the riders form a psychic bond with their dragons at the time of hatching, and the bond goes both ways. The first of the 23 novels in the series – some written or co-written by McCaffrey’s son Tom – is Dragonflight.
  • Lord of the Flies is William Golding’s 1954 novel about a group of schoolboys who must fend for themselves on a remote island after a plane crash. They initially form a functional society but eventually fall into tribalism and a violent struggle for power, and “Piggy”, the nerd of the book – whose glasses were the boys’ primary means of lighting fires – is murdered by one of the other boys, crushed to death under a large stone. It’s considered a classic, but Ben hated it so much in high school that he wrote a limerick about it. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was such a fan that she read it multiple times and started the (now-dormant) group “I studied Lord of the Flies In High School – and loved every minute” in the heady early days of Facebook.
  • Whizzer and Chips was one of the many anthology comics popular in the UK until the 1990s – they were full of one or two page strips featuring a variety of recurring characters. Whizzer and Chips‘ gimmick was that it was two comics published together; the characters (mostly kids) in each of comic formed a gang, and there was a rivalry between the two. (Ben considered himself a Whizz-Kid, but liked most of the strips in both.) Big Comic was a similar comic magazine that reprinted strips from other smaller comics.
  • “The Trio” were the major antagonists in the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, comprising long-time supporting character Jonathan, Warren who had appeared in the previous season, and new character Andrew (though actor Tom Lenk had appeared earlier in a separate role as a background vampire henchman). Each was a geek with a different area of expertise in magic or technology; they decided to join forces and take over Sunnydale. Warren was the properly evil one Liz mentions, who dominated and manipulated the other two.
  • In the Channel 4 sit-com Black Books, Dylan Moran played misanthropic drunkard Bernard Black, owner of the eponymous bookshop. In the first episode, Bernard offers the optimistic but anxious accountant Manny (Bill Bailey) a job and a place to live above the shop, but he has forgotten this by the next morning. Thankfully for comedy audiences everywhere, Bernard’s friend Fran (Tamsin Grieg) forces him to let Manny stay, giving us one of the great odd couples of modern television.
  • “To Protect and Serve” was originally the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department. Its popularity from appearing in Hollywood productions has led it to be adopted by many other police departments around the world.
  • Nobby doesn’t actually appear in the Going Postal telemovie – Aimee and Ben are remembering Nicholas Tennant, who played him in Hogfather, where Constables Nobbs and Visit appear in the toy shop where Death is playing Hogfather. He really does look perfect! (It’s not easy to find screen grabs, but we found a good one in this Czech film review.) Nicholas Tennant went on to appear in The Colour of Magic as the Librarian (both pre- and post-transformation).
  • The Dungeons & Dragons image Ben is thinking of is the cover of the original 1978 Players Handbook (they left the apostrophe out on purpose), illustrated by David A. Trampier, who passed away in 2014. This article at The Dice Are A Lie talks about his life and the illustration in question.
  • Rowan Atkinson played the mostly-silent, oddly childlike weirdo Mr Bean on television and in films for many years. Mr Bean’s adventures in renovation can be seen in the “Painting His House” clip on the official Mr Bean YouTube channel.
  • Guards! Guards! is indeed the first appearance of Ankh-Morpork’s finest Arthur Daley-esque dodgy entrepreneur, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, referred to by Vimes as just “Throat”.
  • “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” is the main refrain from the song “Maria”, one of many well-known songs from the hit stage and screen musical The Sound of Music. It’s sung by a convent of Austrian nuns about the protagonist Maria, a younger wannabe nun whose frivolous ways lead them to send her away to be a governess, giving her time to decide if the convent is really where she wants to be. (Spoiler alert: it’s not.) The whole thing is based on the memoir of the real-life Maria von Trapp, The Story of the von Trapp Family Singers.
  • The origin and debunking of the “bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly” story are explained well by Australian science writer Dr Karl Kruszelnicki in this “Greatest Moments in Science” piece.
  • The Golden State Killer is a serial killer, rapist and burglar who committed the bulk of his crimes in the ’70s and ’80s. In the wake of Michelle McNamara’s true crime book I’ll Be Gone In The Dark, the case received renewed interest. The killer was finally apprehended when police used a free public ancestry website to compare an old DNA sample to the site’s catalogue, narrowing down the pool of suspects to a single lineage.
  • Aimee is correct: this is also Detritus the troll’s first appearance. Lots of good first-time cameos in this book!
  • Vimes’s “Dirty Harry moment” mirrors the monologue from the original 1971 film in which Inspector Harry Callahan tells a bank robber he’s lost track of how many bullets he’s fired, and claims his .44 Magnum is “the most powerful handgun in the world, and could blow your head clean off”. The full dialogue is on the Wikipedia page for the film. As noted in the APF, the dragon’s name, Lord Mountjoy Quickfang Winterforth IV, ends with two “fours”, echoing the gun Callahan has in the movie. He’s a clever one that Pratchett. (“Go ahead, make my day, punk” is from Sudden Impact, the third Dirty Harry sequel after Magnum Force and The Enforcer.)
  • The reference to 1942’s Casablanca – a classic war-time romance, whatever Liz might say – comes about 30 pages earlier, when Vimes thinks “Of all the cities in all the world it could have flown into … it’s flown into mine…”. This echoes the words of Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, who runs an American-style cafe in Casablanca, Morocco, just before the United States entered World War II. After his ex-girlfriend Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) appears in his cafe with her husband, a Czech resistance leader wanted by the Nazis, Rick says: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
  • Liz’s suggestion for a new Sunshine Sanctuary references the 2001 comedy film Zoolander, in which “really, really good looking” but not very smart supermodel Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) wants to create the “Derek Zoolander Centre for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Wanna Learn to Do Other Stuff Good Too”. He’s later shown a model of the proposed school, which he rejects; you can watch that scene here.
  • Best in Show (2001) was the second of Christopher Guest’s largely improvised mockumentary films, following Waiting for Guffman. It features Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Jennifer Coolidge, Jane Lynch and many of Guest’s other frequent collaborators as the administrators and competitors in a dog show in Philadelphia.
  • Danny the Pekingese – or more formally, “Yakee A Dangerous Liaison” – was the “Best in Show” winner at the 2003 Crufts, the most prestigious dog show in the UK. He was also featured in the BBC documentary Pedigree Dogs Exposed, produced by Passionate Productions, which investigated the health and care issues faces by pedigree animals, and highlighted the possibility of him overheating as one of many issues faces by his breed.
  • Pugs are believed to have been bred in China, and first introduced into Europe in the 16th century. Thanks to a few famous personages of the day having their portraits painted with their pugs you can indeed see how different they looked back then; a good example is the self-portrait of artist William Hogarth and his pug, Trump. (Trump appears in many of Hogarth’s paintings, and has his own Wikipedia article.)
  • Sorry Ben, but a “slug horn” is not a real thing. While Professor Horace Slughorn is the replacement Potions Master coaxed out of retirement and back to Hogwarts by Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when he refers to a “slug horn” Pratchett is referencing Robert Browning’s poem Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, which features the lines “I saw them and I knew them all. And yet / Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set”.
  • Aliens from the same species as E.T., the alien protagonist of the Spielberg film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, appear in the galactic senate in George Lucas’ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. This was to fulfil a promise Lucas made to Spielberg after Star Wars toys, including a child wearing a Halloween Yoda mask, were featured in E.T.
  • Torchwood: Children of Earth was a special five-day television event in which the members of the alien-hunting Torchwood Institute – an adult and previously very camp spin-off from Doctor Who – were plunged into a serious battle with factions of their own government over the response to alien invaders. It’s by far the best season of the show and completely different in tone, so you could probably get away with watching it in isolation if you’re prepared to do a little googling about the main characters’ backstories.
  • Sergeant Colon’s chant echoes the classic unionist refrain “The workers, united, will never be defeated”, which may have been inspired by “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!”, a piano composition by American composer Frederic Rzewski, which itself was based on songs sung by the people of Chile in the early days of their struggle against the oppressive regime of Augusto Pinochet.
  • In Luc Besson’s film The Fifth Element, Leeloo is a newly-created adult human, made by aliens as an “ultimate weapon” in the fight against ultimate evil – but she has no knowledge of humanity, and learning of their history of violence nearly causes her to give in in despair. (She’s also a prominent example of the “born sexy yesterday” stereotype.)
  • Rape Culture is a term that has been around since the ’70s to describe the normalisation of behaviours that both blame victims and downplay the severity of sexual assault. It’s impossible to explain succinctly, and many good articles have been written on the topic, including this one on the Huffington Post and this from Vox. It is worth mentioning, especially given the context of us including this in the show notes, many of the articles we went through while looking for resources specifically frame it in the context of women in relationship to men – e.g. “A Primer For Fathers”. Well intentioned, yes, but still a shame that a personal connection is seen as necessary in order to start viewing women as people.
  • We were going to explain Liz’s Orient Express reference, but it gives away the ending to a murder mystery, so we’re going to go without spoilers. You can read or watch Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express to find out!
  • Kanban is a scheduling system originally designed for manufacturing, invented for Toyota in Japan in the 1940s. Today it’s mostly used for “agile” or “just-in-time” development of software – terms we hope you never need to understand, so we won’t attempt to describe them. Kanban isn’t generally used for plotting novels, but if you look it up and try, let us know how you go!
  • Scrivener is writing software for complex long works, sometimes used by screenwriters and often by PhD candidates. Ben’s limited experience with it has taught him an important lesson he wishes to pass on: do not use it in conjunction with Dropbox, because the two do not play well together.
  • Anoia, “Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers”, is a deity mentioned in the later Discworld novels Going Postal, Making Money and Wintersmith, as well as The Compleat Ankh-Morpork.
  • Maid Marian and Her Merry Men is, as you might guess from the title, a non-traditional retelling of the legend of Robin Hood created by Tony Robinson in which Marian is the real hero. Robin is a cowardly tailor from Kensington who accidentally ends up the public face of Marian’s “vicious band of freedom fighters”, which also features Barrington the Rasta (played by Red Dwarf’s Danny John-Jules), the not-at-all-ironically named Little Ron, and enormous dimwit Rabies. It ran for four series between 1989 and 1994.
  • Tony Robinson’s storytelling series were Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden and its sequel Fat Tulip Too, Odysseus: The Greatest Hero of Them All (which covered The Iliad and The Odyssey) and Blood and Honey (covering a variety of stories from the Old Testament). His Pratchett audio books – which include every Discworld novel, as well as the Bromeliad trilogy, the Johnny Maxwell books, The Carpet People, Dodger and, well, most of them – are all abridged versions.
  • The unabridged Discworld audiobooks were originally read by Nigel Planer (of The Young Ones fame) until long-time Pratchett collaborator Stephen Briggs took over from The Fifth Elephant. Briggs also read Eric (which hadn’t been part of Planer’s earlier series), while the unabridged Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters are read by actor Celia Imrie, best known for her comedy work with Victoria Wood and for roles in Bridget Jones’ Diary, Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Unabridged versions of non-Discworld Pratchetts are often read by Briggs, but some have had other narrators, like the Johnny Maxwell series read by Richard Mitchley, and The Long Earth books read by Michael Fenton Stevens.

Episode 7 – All the Fingle Ladies

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In episode seven, comic book creator and illustrator Georgina Chadderton, aka George Rex, joins us to discuss the ninth Discworld novel: Faust Eric! Published in 1990 – alongside four other novels, making it one of Pterry’s most prolific years – it’s a shorter novel, originally published in a large format with lavish illustrations by Discworld cover artist Josh Kirby. (Also, fair warning to the pun-averse: Elizabeth really goes to town in this one…)

Eric Thurslow is surprised to find that he has summoned a demon who looks suspiciously like a wizard – but not as surprised as Rincewind the inept wizard is to have been summoned. Freed from the Dungeon Dimensions, he now finds himself compelled to grant wishes to an adolescent demonologist – and to his even greater surprise, it seems he’s able to do so! Meanwhile, following along behind across space, time and dimensions, Rincewind’s faithful Luggage is catching up to its master – and just as well, because the Prince of Hell isn’t too pleased that his plans for Eric have gone awry…  

Eric is the fourth book to feature Rincewind – last seen in Sourcery – and like his previous appearances it’s a romp across the Discworld to places (and in this case times) previously unseen. Sometimes regarded as a bit of an addendum to the main Discworld series because of its short length, Eric wears its parody – and its classical allusions – proudly on its sleeve. Did you like Eric? Did you read an edition with the illustrations? We’d love to hear from you! Use the hashtag #Pratchat7 on social media to join the conversation.

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We skipped ahead to make sure we could chat with Georgina while she was in Melbourne, so we’re going back a step for our June episode, where librarian Aimee Nichols will join us to talk about the very first City Watch book: Guards! Guards! We’ll be recording it soon, so if you’d like us to respond to you on the podcast, get in quick! Ask your questions via social media using the hashtag #Pratchat7A. (What, you expected us to actually use the forbidden number?)

Show Notes and Errata:

  • You can find Georgina and her delightful autobiographical comics online at georgerexcomics.com, and also on Instagtram as @GirlRexDoor. She was in town on a residency with 100 Story Building, where Ben works facilitating creative writing workshops for young people. George’s Etsy shop is full of cool comics, postcards, badges and prints.
  • In case you’ve somehow been hiding under a pop culture rock, 2 Faust 2 Furious is a reference to the sequel to car/heist/action film The Fast and the Furious, which was titled 2 Fast 2 Furious. There are now eight films in this franchise which features Vin Diesel (in every film except 2 Fast 2 Furious), Michelle Rodriguez, Dwayne Johnson, Kurt Russell and Jason Statham. The only other one with a punny name is the eighth, titled The Fate of the Furious.
  • George’s 24-hour comics are produced as part of 24-Hour Comics Day, an annual event in which comic creators are challenged to create a 24-page comic in a single day. 24-Hour Comics Day has run in some form every year since 2004, when it was originally organised by publisher Nat Gertler, and one of its most famous proponents (and long-time participants) is Scott McCloud, the creator of Understanding Comics.
  • “Time is a flat circle”, now the subject of many memes, is derived from a scene in the first season of True Detective. It refers to the theory of “eternal return”, which states that existence repeats itself over and over in very similar ways. Ben’s favourite iteration of this from fiction is the Time Prophet, a character from the weird Canadian-German sci-fi series Lexx, who could see into past cycles of time (“not very clearly mind you”) to predict the future of the current cycle.
  • You can see George’s image of Angua and Gaspode (inspired by our Men At Arms episode) on her Instagram, and her version of Tiffany Aching is on the Fan Art page of her web site.
  • “Colony collapse disorder” (CCD) is when a majority of a worker bee population abandon their hive, leading to the collapse of the rest of the colony. It has become a serious problem over the last decade, especially in the United States, though the causes are not well-identified; everything from pesticides to climate change and modern commercial beekeeping practices have been suggested. Bees are an essential part of the pollination cycle for a great many food crops.
  • The two previous times Rincewind found himself suddenly able to wield magic were in Sourcery! (see episode three) and The Light Fantastic.
  • The character of Faust or Faustus was based on real-life 16th century German astrologer and alchemist Johann Georg Faust, who had many misadventures and was the subject of many rumours regarding his supposed magical powers. He died (possibly in an alchemical explosion) leaving a mutilated corpse – evidence, according to his enemies, that the Devil had come to collect him personally. The tale of his “deal with the devil” – selling his soul via the demon Mephistopheles, in exchange for almost unlimited magical power, mostly because he was bored – became a popular German legend, with the two most famous adaptations being for the theatre: Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus in 1604, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s more snappily titled Faust in 1808. In both versions Faust interacts with Helen of Troy.
  • The Tenth Doctor is prevented from regenerating and prematurely aged about 1,000 years by the Master in the episode Last of the Time Lords, causing him to shrink and lose all his hair. Many fans compared the tiny CGI Doctor (who even had a tiny version of the Tenth Doctor’s brown suit) to Dobby the house-elf, as seen in the Harry Potter films.
  • Adrian Mole is the protagonist in a series of comedy novels by Sue Townsend. The first two – The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ and The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole – were written largely for teenagers, depicting the trials of an adolescent during the Thatcher years in Britain. They have been adapted for radio, stage and most famously television, and even as a stage musical! Several later books, less well-known outside of the UK, followed Adrian into adulthood and middle age.
  • The Road to El Dorado (2000) is a DreamWorks animated film about two 16th century Spanish con artists who head to the New World with Cortés and find El Dorado, the mythical City of Gold, where they pretend to be gods. It stars the voices of Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Rosie Perez, Armande Assante and Edward James Olmos.
  • In the 1975 comedy film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of King Arthur’s knights, Sir Robin (played by Eric Idle), is accompanied by minstrels (led by Neil Innes) whose songs about Robin’s bravery include grisly details of things that supposedly don’t scare him. He abruptly tells them to stop singing before things get too awful.
  • “Goetia” is a form of ritual magic involving the conjuration of demons, most famously drawn from the 17th-century grimoire (or book of magic) The Lesser Key of Solomon, which lists 72 demons that may be summoned in a section titled “Ars Goetia“. These entities – supposedly summoned by King Solomon himself – are often referred to as “goetic demons”, and their names have been frequently used in pop culture for all manner of demonic and evil entities. As well as prompting the name of Vassenago in this book, Vassago – the third demon, and a Prince of Hell – has also been referenced in comic books, videogames and novels.
  • Gachnar, the Dark Lord of Nightmares and the Bringer of Terror (according to him), appears in the fourth season Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Fear, Itself. (Ben’s synopsis is mostly correct.)
  • The scene Liz refers to is from Ace Ventura: When Nature calls, when Ace forces his way out of the rear end of a rubbery mechanical rhino after the fan and hatch both malfunction. In the first Police Academy film, officious Lieutenant Harris crashes a motorcycle and flies into the back of an open horse float, where it is implied (but not shown) that he gets his head…er…stuck. 1995 and 1984 sure were different times for film, huh.
  • Miffy is the English name of Nijntje, the young female rabbit protagonist of a series of books created in 1955 by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. There are 26 books in the series, most published since 1990, though Bruna retired in 2014 and died in 2017. The stories are hugely popular and have been adapted into two television series and a feature film, and heavily merchandised. Miffy and the other rabbit characters are drawn with an “X” to represent her nose, and no mouth; given Liz’s childhood terror, we’d like to suggest listener discretion when viewing the official Miffy web site.
  • Target’s Doctor Who novelisations – short books adapting the television stories into prose – are famous both for helping many Who fans get into reading, and also for being the only way fans could revisit earlier stories before they were released on video (and later DVD) – or indeed at all, in the case of the stories which have been lost. Sadly the site “On Target” which was devoted to these books has also been lost.
  • South Australians are notable for sounding significantly more English than folks from other Australian states. This is largely due to their use of a small number of significant alternate vowel sounds and is usually attributed to the fact that the colony of South Australia was established mostly by free settlers, rather than convicts, or that there were far fewer Irish settlers there. Not everyone agrees with that theory.
  • The time travel episode of Stargate SG-1 to which Ben refers is the penultimate episode of season two, titled 1969.
  • Be Kind Rewind is a 2008 Michel Gondry comedy in which Mos Def plays a video store clerk whose friend (Jack Black) accidentally erases all the tapes in the store. In desperation they make their own extremely low-budget, inadvertently hilarious recreations of popular films like Ghostbusters and Driving Miss Daisy, which become very popular.
  • “Bricky” and “sparky” are Australian slang for, respectively, bricklayers and electricians. (“Chippie” is slang for a carpenter.)
  • The Seinfeld episode where Elaine has an argument about exclamation points is The Sniffing Accountant, from season five.
  • The cartoon George refers to near the end is The Baskervilles, a kind of “reverse Munsters” in which the very normal and nice Baskerville family try to fit into the Hellish cityscape of “Underworld: The Theme Park”. The Baskervilles’ neighbours include the Lucifers, the Frankensteins and the Draculas, plus the park’s boss, “The Boss” (who may or may not be the actual Devil), and his right-hand man, a skeleton with an Australian accent named Kevin. A British, French and Canadian co-production, The Baskervilles ran for one season in 2000 and included Rob Brydon of The Trip fame in the cast! You can find at least the first episode on YouTube.
  • Ben couldn’t find the cartoon that features the Prince of Heck (he certainly wasn’t thinking of Dilbert, which is what the Internet turns up), but “HIM” (not “that guy”) is the flamboyant prince of darkness who cannot be named from the original ’98-’05 run of The Powerpuff Girls. HIM appears as a traditional devil figure, but in drag with lobster claws for hands, and is extremely powerful; he is the Girls’ second greatest foe and the one they fear the most.
  • The Tenacious D song Liz refers to is “Tribute”, the D’s first and biggest hit; you can find the music video here.
  • You can find fellow Discworld podcast Radio Morpork at radiomorpork.wordpress.com. They’ve recently released their twenty-second episode, bringing them up to The Last Continent.
  • Odysseus does many things which by today’s standards are horrendous, including slaughtering the suitors who wanted to marry his wife during his absence as well as the servants who had waited on them, but there are few if any writings about his life afterwards (or his death).
  • Ben’s bank heist game, which ran from early 2016 to early 2017, was Small Time Criminals.

Episode 6 – A Load of Old Tosh

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In episode six, word nerd and crypto-cruciverbalist David “DA” Astle joins us to discuss our first non-Discworld novel: Dodger! Published in 2012, it’s set in Victorian London and is heavily inspired by the work and style of Charles Dickens, and also that of Punch magazine co-founder Henry Mayhew, author of London Labour and the London Poor – both of whom appear as characters!

In the first quarter of Queen Victoria’s reign, a young woman falls from a carriage during a London storm – followed by two threatening men. Out of a nearby sewer grate springs Dodger, street orphan and accomplished “tosher” (sewer scavenger), who fights them off before Charles Dickens and Henry Mayhew happen by and take the woman to safety. Dickens enlists Dodger’s aid in investigating their mysterious charge, who is clearly on the run but refuses to speak of herself or those coming after her. Dodger will need to be sharp as a razor and to have all the luck the Lady of the Sewers can give him in this adventure – but will he be the same Dodger when it’s over?

In a spot of time travel, we leap forward to one of Pratchett’s last books. More serious than many of his other works, though still light in tone and written in a very Dickensian style – including chapters! – Dodger is quite a departure for Pratchett in many ways while still remaining essentially Pratchetty. (Pratchettesque?) What do you think of Dodger? Let us know! Use the hashtag #Pratchat6 on social media to join the conversation.

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We return to the Discworld for our May 8th episode, though we are going slightly out of order to read Eric, the first illustrated Discworld book! And who better to discuss it than an illustrator? So we’ll be joined by Adelaide-based artist and comic book creator, Georgina Chadderton (aka George Rex)! This one is recorded hot on the heels of our April episode, so by the time you read this we may have already asked for your questions, but even if you missed that callout you can still join in on social media with the hashtag #Pratchat7.

Show Notes and Errata:

  • You can find David Astle online at davidastle.com, itself a haven of word puzzles and anagrams, and he’s on Twitter as @DontAttempt (a joking translation of his cryptic crossword-maker initials, DA, which some see as proof of difficulty!). His latest work is David Astle’s Gargantuan Book of Words, which is available now through publishers Allen & Unwin, but watch out for Rewording the Brain and 101 Weird Words and Three Fakes, appearing in 2018. You can also catch him on the wireless on ABC Melbourne.
  • The “interrobang” is the combination of a question and exclamation mark (‽, or more often ?! or !?), used to indicate a question asked with excitement or otherwise strong emotion. [Square brackets] (or just “brackets”, since round brackets are parentheses and curly brackets are braces) are most often used in journalism, where they indicate something that’s been left out or changed inside a quotation to improve clarity. David describes the pilcrow (or “paragraph mark”) in the podcast, but in case you’re wondering, it looks like this: ¶
  • The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are…well, they’re teen-aged mutant anthropomorphic turtles, trained as ninjas by a mutant anthropomorphic rat, who live in the sewers of New York and fight for justice. They originally appeared in 1984 in a gritty, black-and-white comic book parody written and drawn by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. They were quickly picked up by a licensing company and became a toy line and a very popular cartoon, followed later by a less popular series of live-action films. They were recently re-imagined in big-screen CGI form by Michael Bay – seemingly the fate of everything liked by children in the 1980s.
  • Terry dressed up as William Brown, the protagonist of Just William and its sequels by Richmal Crompton (like Terry, an incredibly prolific author), for the “26 Characters” exhibition at the Story Museum in Oxford. The photos aren’t available on the museum’s web site – the point was to visit to see them, after all! – but versions of many (including Terry’s) are featured in this BBC interview with photographer Cambridge Jones about the exhibition. The museum’ site has audio interviews with all the featured authors recorded during the photo shoots in 2014, including Terry talking about his own school days. Listeners of this podcast might also particularly enjoy the interviews with Neil Gaiman (who chose Badger from Wind in the Willows), Philip Pullman (Long John Silver from Treasure Island) and Terry Jones (Rupert the Bear), but they’re all great.
    • It’s worth clarifying that Just William takes place when it was written, in 1922 – considerably after the time of Dodger. Tom Brown’s School Days, on the other hand, was written in 1857 and is set in the 1830s – so around the time of Dodger. There’s a stark contrast between Dodger’s life and that of Tom Brown…
  • A “flâneur” (via French for “stroller” or “loafer”, from the Old Norse verb flana “to wander with no purpose”) was a “gentleman stroller of the streets”: a person of leisure who would walk through a city just observing what went on around them. It’s uncertain if Dickens would have described himself as one; the word dates back a century or two earlier in France, but wasn’t popularly used in a positive sense until Walter Benjamin used it in discussions of modernity in the early twentieth century. (Oscar Wilde described himself as “a flâneur, a dandy” in De Profundis, but only when lamenting how he had wasted his life.)
  • Nicholson Baker is an American writer who loves newspapers as much as footnotes. He’s best known for his non-fiction, including the award-winning 2001 book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper in which he investigated the loss or destruction of thousands of books and newspapers during the “microfilm boom” of the 1980s.
  • The small, dog-like creature from The Dark Crystal is Fizgig.
  • Laphroaig whiskey is distilled in Port Ellen, on the southern coast of the Isle of Islay in Argyll, Scotland, near the bay that gives the whiskey its name, Loch Laphroaig. It is now owned by Japanese whiskey giant Suntory.
  • The Wombles are a group of vaguely mole-like intelligent creatures who live under Wimbledon Common, invented by Elisabeth Beresford for her children’s novels, first appearing in 1968. They are very familiar to Australians of a certain age because of the BBC-commissioned stop-motion animated television series, whose theme song emphasised the Womble’s forward-thinking policy of reuse and recycling: “Making good use of the things that they find, things that the everyday folk leave behind.” Less familiar to Australian listeners will be the novelty pop group formed by Mike Batt, or the related live-action Womble film Wombling Free, featuring short-statured actors – including Kenny Baker and Jack Purvis! – in Womble costumes, with voices provided by the likes of David Jason and Jon Pertwee! Aside from “making use of bad rubbish”, one of their most endearing features is that Wombles choose their name by throwing a dart at a map of the world; hence they have names like Great Uncle Bulgaria, Tomsk, Orinoco and Adelaide.
  • For those not familiar with Oliver Twist, Fagin is the criminal mastermind who sends the Artful Dodger and other children out to steal things for him in return for minimal food and shelter. He is a deeply unsympathetic character, essentially keeping the children enslaved. Even in Dickens’ day, Fagin – who was constantly referred to as “the Jew” in the novel – was seen as anti-Semitic. Dickens protested that he had no hatred of Jewish people, but he was being realistic, because “that class of criminal was invariably a Jew”, but towards the end of his life Dickens came to realise the harm he was doing in perpetuating such a stereotype. He not only revised the last 15 chapters of the book, but removed all racist signifiers from his performance of the character in his public readings.
  • The Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia (and the Russian empire, which at the time included much of Eastern Europe) were at their worst in the 1880s, after the period in which Dodger is set, but there were sadly many earlier examples as well. Solomon Cohen never says exactly where (or indeed what) he fled from, but it may have been the Odessa Pogrom of 1859.
  • Onan is a minor figure in the Bible best known as the source of the term “onanism”, a euphemism for masturbation – though that’s not entirely true to the source material. In the Book of Genesis, Onan’s brother Er is slain by God for generic wickedness and had no children, so their father Judah orders Onan to marry Er’s widow Tamar and give her children. Onan does marry her but during sex, knowing that any children will be heirs to Er and usurp his own inheritance, he chooses to “spill his seed upon the ground” – a crime for which he too was slain by God. It was really rough being in the Bible before Jesus came along.
  • PTSD is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a relatively common psychological disorder affecting people who have experienced trauma – usually violence, and especially interpersonal violence – without the time or opportunity to heal psychologically. It was poorly understood prior to the 1970s, but pretty clearly fits the symptoms ascribed to soldiers returning from war throughout history.
  • The pilot episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and by this we mean the aired pilot, not the unaired pilot) was actually relatively true to the rest of the series; with the big exception being Buffy’s powers. While she kept her super strength and highly tuned intuition, somewhere between episodes 1 and 2 she apparently lost the power to jump (fly?) over a fence about three times her height.
  • The classic “Penny Dreadfuls” were cheap mass-produced serial fiction magazines of the Victorian era, usually of the ‘orrible murder or supernatural thriller variety; they filled a niche later occupied by comic books, and cost a penny (hence the name). Hugely popular in Dodger’s time, many were rewrites or outwrite plagiarism, but they nevertheless made household names of popular historical and fictional characters including Dick Turpin, Varney the Vampire, and Sweeney Todd, who first appeared in The String of Pearls: A Romance in 1846.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill is a hugely rich comic book series spanning multiple volumes in which characters from a huge number of works of Victorian fiction are brought together. The titular league features Mina Harker (from Dracula), Alan Quartermain (from King Solomon’s Mines), Dr Jekyll, the Invisible Man and Captain Nemo, amongst others, as they deal with a war between criminal elements and then an invasion of Martians (drawn from The War of the Worlds). The series is so dense with references both big and small that companion volumes have been compiled uncovering them all.
  • Stephen Sondheim’s 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has become probably the most popular version of the Todd story (not least thanks to Tim Burton’s 2007 film adaptation), and is based heavily on Christopher Bond’s 1973 play of the same name, which gave him a backstory – including being transported to Australia – and made the character a little more sympathetic, transforming his story into a modern revenge tragedy. The original London cast of the musical included Angela Lansbury as Mrs Lovett, Sweeney’s accomplice and encouragement. (In the podcast, Ben confuses her with Mrs Miggins, the proprietor of a similarly suspicious pie shop in classic historical sit-com Blackadder the Third.)
  • Penny Dreadful the television series was a gory sexy gothic horror co-produced by Showtime and Sky, weaving a new narrative around characters taken from Frankenstein, Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide and predominantly British and Irish folklore. It ran for three seasons with an all-star cast including Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper and Josh Hartnett. Ben loved it more than he probably should have.
  • Asterix is the protagonist of the long-running Asterix & Obelix series of comic albums created by French cartoonists René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Set during the Roman Empire’s occupation of Gaul – a region of Western Europe bigger than France, populated by Celtic peoples of the La Tène culture – it imagined a single small village which held out against the invaders through judicious use of a magic potion, brewed by their Druid, which gave them super strength. The main character, Asterix, was very small but a shrewd warrior, assisted by his enormous, dim-witted but big-hearted friend Obelix, who was permanently super-strong due to drinking an entire cauldron of the potion as a baby. A key feature of the books are the names which pun on common cultural suffixes of the era, which have been translated into many languages.
  • “Bedlam” was a nickname for Bethlem Royal Hospital, a psychiatric hospital whose name became synonymous with the barbaric ways in which the mentally ill were treated in the Victorian era.
  • “Nits” is the common name for headlice in Australia and New Zealand, thankfully rarely encountered these days except in primary schools.
  • Augusta Ada King-Noel(née Byron), Countess of Lovelace, aka Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer. She was also a poet, but she is most remembered as the first computer programmer: she was a friend of Charles Babbage, and while translating a French transcript of a speech Babbage gave about his Analytical Engine, annotated it with notes which included an algorithm of her own design to make the machine calculate Bernoulli numbers. Sadly Babbage’s Analytical Engine was never completed, but just as it is now recognised as perhaps the first computer, her algorithm is now recognised as the first computer program.
  • The Tenniel in the book is indeed Sir John Tenniel, the primary political cartoonist for Punch (and therefore well known to Mayhew and Dickens), and most famously the illustrator for Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. The eye injury referred to was accidentally inflicted by Tenniel’s father when they were fencing, when Tenniel was 20. Tenniel gradually lost his sight in that eye, but not wanting to make his father distraught, never revealed how serious the injury was.
  • A “growler” was a second-hand “clarence”, a four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage named after Prince William, Duke of Clarence, and introduced into London around 1840. Once sold by aristocrat owners, clarences were often used as cabs, and were known as “growlers” because of the sound they made on London cobblestoned streets.
  • Pratchett did indeed have plans for a Dodger sequel, saying at New York Comic Con and in an interview with the AV Club in 2012 that he’d love to write one “if he was spared”… The final scene of the book, in which Dodger is working with Serendipity as a spy in Paris, is a good indicator of the direction that book may have taken, but any notes for it would have been lost as per Terry’s instructions, when his hard drives where destroyed by a steam roller after his death.
  • Some later editions of Dodger – including Ben’s – include a “Bonus Scene” in which Dodger visits Sweeney Todd in Bedlam. (We cut our short discussion of the scene for time, and because David and Liz hadn’t read it.)
  • Cloacina was indeed a real Roman goddess, and like many was assimilated from another culture – in this case, Etruscan mythology. She was specifically the goddess of the Cloaca Maxima (“Greatest Drain”), the main sewer channel in Rome, construction of which was said to have been started and finished by two Estruscan Kings of Rome. Sometimes also seen as “a protector of sexual intercourse in marriage”, she was later known as “Venus of the Sewer”.

Episode 5 – Ten Points to Viper House

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In episode five, comedian Richard McKenzie joins us to discuss that rare beast, a Discworld tale that stars no wizards, witches, watches or Death, and isn’t part of any of the ongoing storylines: Pyramids! The seventh Discworld novel, published in 1989, it’s chock-full of jokes, footnotes, gods and characters – but we’ll see almost none of them ever again…

Pteppicymon XXVIII – Teppic for short – is heir to the throne of the ancient river kingdom of Djelibeybi. But the kingdom is broke, having spent its money on pyramids, and in order to give him a profession, Teppic is sent to the best school on the Disc: the Assassin’s Guild in Ankh-Morpork. Seven years later he’s just taken his final exam when his father dies. Teppic is now King (and God) of Djelibeybi earlier than planned – and after so long away, he finds the ancient traditions of his homeland stifling. Can even the King challenge the authority of the kingdom’s high priest, Dios?

Though it features none of his most beloved characters, Pyramids is nonetheless a favourite among Discworld fans – not least because the first quarter of the book takes us into the classrooms of Ankh-Morpork’s most famous guild. What do you think of this tale of tradition, family and mathematics gone wrong? Let us know! Use the hashtag #Pratchat5 on social media.

Our next book, for our April 8th episode, takes us outside the Discworld – and indeed the fantasy genre – for 2012’s tale of Victorian London: Dodger! Joining us to talk about toshers, geezers and peelers is a man who’s no stranger to fancy words, and better known by his initials: crypto-cruciverbalist and former Letters & Numbers dictionary master, David Astle! We’ll be recording on March 24th, so get your questions in before then if you’d like us to answer them on the podcast. You can use the hashtag #Pratchat6 to ask them via social media. (And check out the Episodes page if you want to see a bit further into our future schedule!)

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Show Notes and Errata:

  • Richard hosts trivia twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays, at the Cornish Arms on Sydney Road in Brunswick, Melbourne. Make sure to use a Pratchett pun in your team name if you go!
  • Ben and Richard both have Corgi paperbacks of Pyramids with the same Josh Kirby cover and ISBN – but Richard’s is a later (not older, as Ben says) printing which unusually has more pages. Ben’s is a 1992 printing with 285 pages, while Richard’s is from 1997 and has 380! …we realise this is probably not interesting to anyone except extreme bibliophiles, but it caused Ben some trouble when trying to track his reading progress on Goodreads.
  • The four books within Pyramids start off referring to the famous ancient Egyptian text The Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and other information meant to help guide the dead through the afterlife. Its full title has been translated as both The Book of Going Forth by Day and The Book of Emerging Forth into the Light. Other ancient Egyptian funerary texts include the Book of Traversing Eternity, the Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld, The Contendings of Horus and Seth, and the Book of the Heavenly Cow.
  • The Assassin’s Creed games have been one of the most successful franchises of recent years; the assassins of the title are both elite killers for hire, and also engaged in an ancient war over the fate of the world against the Knights Templar, and each game takes place in a different location and era. The most recent one, Assassin’s Creed Origins, explores the founding of the assassin’s order – and is set around 50 BC in Egypt! Though as far as we know, you don’t get to kill any pyramids. (The game does, however, contain many easter eggs – including a monument shaped like the TARDIS – so if you play it, keep an eye out for Djelibeybi references!)
  • For a series of books intended for kids, an awful lot of people die in Harry Potter. According to one count, there are 76 individual deaths described across the seven books, but way more people die than that – there are at least fifty casualties in the Battle of Hogwarts alone!
  • In Game of Thrones, Dany’s full name and title is: “Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, Lady Regnant of the Seven Kingdoms, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Mhysa, Breaker of Chains, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons”. This is five words shorter than Teppic’s full title in Pyramids, which is written out in full eleven times.
  • Camel humps are deposits of fatty tissue; it can be metabolised back into water. Some camels can go without drinking water for as long as ten days.
  • The word “quantum”, which becomes a synonym in the Discworld for things which are too complicated or weird to make sense, is used in science to refer the smallest possible unit or portion of various things, for example “packets” of photons emitted in electromagnetic radiation.
  • In fan favourite sci-fi series Firefly and its sequel movie Serenity, one of the major characters is Inara, a registered “Companion”, a role similar to a courtesan with very high social status. Their training includes languages, psychology, unarmed combat, archery and much more; they begin their training at the Companion’s Guild at the age of twelve, so they possibly have more in common with assassins than they do handmaidens!
  • The Grease Megamix is a mashup of three songs from the 1978 movie version of the 1971 musical Grease, set in the 1950s. It was released as a single in 1990 to promote the film being made available on video. The song was a number one hit in Australia in 1991, in part due to Olivia Newton-John’s prominent role. It’s a killer to dance and sing along to if you know the words.
  • The theory that computers could have become self-aware beings without us knowing has been around for a while; the aeon article “Consciousness creep” by George Musser is a good primer.
  • There are many rankings of Discworld books that put Pyramids near the top, including fellow Discworld podcast Radio Morpork, who currently have it at number four, and a Buzzfeed list from 2015 which placed it at number three (but we’re not linking to it, because the author discounted anything Pratchett wrote after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in 2007 as “unrecognisable”, a stance this podcast considers offensive and ridiculous).
  • There is no scientific evidence for “pyramid power“, which rose to prominence in the 1970s. Proponents claim pyramids can do anything from stirring sexual urges to sharpening razors to providing unlimited free energy. It’s still popular in some circles.
  • Autolycus was a demi-god whose father was Hermes; he taught Hercules to wrestle, and his grandchildren include Odysseus and Jason of the Argonauts. A version of him features prominently as a recurring character in the 1990s series Hercules: the Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess, portrayed by Bruce Campbell as a Robin Hood-like prince of thieves.
  • David Carradine starred in the 1970s TV series Kung Fu as Kwai Chang Caine, a half-Chinese Shaolin monk who “walked the Earth” in the American west looking for his brother and helping the downtrodden with his skills in martial arts. You probably know who Lassie is; The Littlest Hobo was a similarly talented dog, who also “walked the Earth” helping those he encountered on his travels.
  • Dave Greenslade is definitely not dead, and Ben and Liz would like to stress that they enjoyed his rendition of A Wizard’s Staff Has a Knob on the End. For The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered at All, check out the collection of fan-written lyrics at the L-Space web (though be aware that most of them are very…well, they’re the kind of thing Nanny Ogg would sing when she’s drunk).
  • According to the most prominent timeline, Pyramids is set a few years after the events of Sourcery, and about ten years before Guards! Guards!. This also places it during the fifteen years Lancre skips over in Wyrd Sisters. Feel free to let us know if you have a different theory!
  • Occam’s Razor is a philosophical principle usually applied in scientific thought, which basically says that an explanation that doesn’t require the invention of new things is more likely to be true.
  • Richard’s list of Assassin’s Guild subjects was sourced from The Assassin’s Guild Yearbook and Diary released in 2000. Like the other Discworld-themed diaries it had only a single print run, and is one of the harder books to find.
  • Ben’s camel’s name is, of course, spelled “Ptypical”. (Thanks to listener Brendan for pointing this out.)
  • Thanks for reading the show notes! Do let us know if we’ve made any mistakes, or if you have questions.

Episode 4 – Enter Three Wytches

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In episode four, vaudevillian Elly Squires – aka Clara Cupcakes – joins us to discuss one of her first Discworld books, and the start of the witches series proper: Wyrd Sisters! The sixth Discworld novel, published in 1988, it’s the second book to feature Granny Weatherwax – but the first to introduce her fellow witches, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick.

Seasoned witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are adjusting to life in a coven with recently graduated apprentice Magrat Garlick when the king of their tiny country of Lancre is murdered, and his baby son escapes into their arms. The murderer, Duke Felmet, is crowned the new, much crueller king, but with the rightful heir off being raised by a troupe of travelling actors, Granny, Nanny and Magrat must contend with rumour, theatre and their own clashing personalities if they are to change their kingdom’s story…

The witches are one of Pratchett’s most beloved groups of characters, and pre-date both the City Watch and the modern faculty of Unseen University – so it’s surprising to see them spring so fully-formed from their first novel! We loved meeting them all over again. We’d love to hear what you think of Wyrd Sisters – if you’re joining this episode’s discussion on social media, please use the hashtag #Pratchat4 so we can all find each other’s thoughts! (Big thanks to listener Jodie for this brilliant idea.)

Our next book, discussed in our March 8th episode, will be 1989’s standalone Discworld novel, Pyramids – and joining us to talk about assassins, gods and a very different tiny kingdom will be comedian Richard McKenzie! We’ll be recording on February 19th, so get your questions in before then if you’d like us to answer them on the podcast! You can use the hashtag #Pratchat5 to ask them via social media.

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Show Notes and Errata:

  • Elly can be found on Twitter as her alter-ego @claracupcakes. She’s touring her hit 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival show, The Worst, to various festivals around Australia and the world, including Fringe World in Perth and the Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland. Keep an eye out for her tour dates on Facebook or (if you’re not afraid of Russian hackers) at claracupcakes.com.
  • Footrot Flats is as much remembered for the 1986 animated movie Footrot Flats: The Dog’s Tail Tale, which was a box office smash in New Zealand and Australia and gave the world Dave Dobbyn’s number one hit single “Slice of Heaven”.
  • Alice in The Vicar of Dibley was portrayed by Emma Chambers, also known for her role as Honey in Notting Hill. Sadly, Emma died at the age of 53 only a couple of weeks after this episode was released, on February 21st 2018.
  • Maggie Smith famously played Hogwarts professor Minerva McGonagall in all eight Harry Potter films, while Tilda Swinton was the villainous White Witch in three films based on C S Lewis’ Narnia books. Anjelica Huston played the Grand High Witch in 1990’s film version of Roald Dahl’s The Witches. Miriam Margoyles is also a Hogwarts alumnus, playing Professor Pomona Sprout in two of the Potter films.
  • Willow meets the disappointingly non-magical “Daughters of Gaea” in the season four Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “Hush” – previously mentioned in our second episode!
  • While we couldn’t confirm the existence of a town named Fuck, there are places in the UK named Marsh Gibbon, Lickfold, Great Snoring, Crapstone and Shitterton. There’s a town named Fucking in Lower Austria; their street signs were stolen so often by English-speaking tourists they had to start bolting them down.
  • “The Hedgehog Can Never Be Buggered At All”, usually referred to as “The Hedgehog Song”, is the infamous folk song sung by Nanny Ogg whenever she’s had a few. Wyrd Sisters is the first time it is mentioned.
  • For those playing at home, the name of the demon summoned in Nanny Ogg’s wash basin is WxrtHltl-jwlpklz. The Superman character Ben mentions is Mister Mxyzptlk, an “imp from the fifth dimension”. Ben did not pronounce his name correctly either.
  • The woman who gives Poirot his pin in the television series is Mme. Vergine Mesnard, who appears in only one Poirot case, set at a very early point in his career, when he was still a policeman in Belgium. She does not give him a pin in the original short story.
  • If you’re interested in the story behind Dutton’s remarks about African gangs, here’s a good article from The Big Smoke Australia. (“The Big Smoke” is Australian slang for city.)
  • Our musings about the Librarian disagree with fan consensus, which is that his status as a member of the Unseen University faculty means he must be a wizard (and, quite possibly, the Wizard Formerly Known As Horace Worblehat). We’re sticking with our assessment for now, but we may revisit this in future episodes.
  • You can hear examples of the “real Shakespearean accent”, known as the Original Pronunciation (OP), in this video from the Open University featuring father and son duo David and Ben Crystal.
  • History records that Rasputin survived being poisoned and shot, but was then shot again before his body was dumped in the river. He didn’t get out. (Anastasia trumps history, of course.)

Episode 3 – You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind

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In episode three, comedian Cal Wilson is back to discuss the book that started her passion for Terry Pratchett – Sourcery! The fifth Discworld novel, published in 1989, it features the return of the inept wizard Rincewind.

Rincewind is very happy to have left his adventuring days behind him, working as assistant librarian at Unseen University in Ankh-Morpork, the Disc’s premiere college for wizards. But just as a new archchancellor is about to be named, the young boy Coin arrives. He is the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son – a Sourcerer, a source of raw magic, something not seen on the Disc since the ancient time of the Mage Wars. As he takes over the university and wizards across the world awaken power they’ve never known, the end of the world draws nigh…and Rincewind just can’t seem to avoid getting involved.

Rincewind was Pratchett’s first protagonist, and this novel exemplifies all the things that make us love him: genre-awareness, unrepentant cowardice, reluctant heroism, lack of any skill at wizardry and fierce self-identification as a wizard. It also sees the return of the Luggage, a living chest which follows Rincewind wherever he goes. It was a delight for us all to see these characters again, and we have grand plans to go back to their beginnings in the very first Discworld novels… In the meantime, when you’ve finished listening to this episode, get ready for the next one by reading Wyrd Sisters! We’ll be recording on January 14th, so get your questions in ASAP if you’d like us to answer them on the podcast.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32:03 — 91.8MB)

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Show Notes and Errata:

  • Cal is still on Twitter at @calbo. Her new live stand-up show, Hindsight, will be playing in multiple cities at festivals throughout 2018: this page at comedy.com.au lists a bunch of them. (You can also see the poster she mentions; it really is good!)
  • Freddie Mercury was a first son of a son of undetermined order, so his magical powers clearly came from somewhere else.
  • Ben talks a lot about Dungeons & Dragons this episode; if you’ve no idea what it’s all about, his article “What Even Is Dungeons & Dragons?” will get you up to speed.
  • The Age interview with Terry featuring his thoughts on J K Rowling is still online here: “Mystery lord of the Discworld“, Peter Fray, November 6, 2004.
  • A person who doesn’t realise they’re no good at what they do might have a form of cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, named for a 1999 psychological study.
  • Hook turns might not be widely used by cars outside of Melbourne, but they’re a common way for bicycles to turn across traffic at cross intersections in many parts of the world.
  • The Annotated Pratchett File (APF for short) is a brilliant source of information on the various references in the novels. We also recommend the Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki, also hosted by the L-Space Web.

Episode 2 – Murdering a Curry

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In our second episode, writer and deputy culture editor for Guardian Australia Stephanie Convery joins us as we discuss the runner-up in our poll for which book to read first – Mort! Published 30 years ago, it’s the fourth Discworld novel, and the first to put Death in a starring role.

Mort (short for Mortimer), a daydreaming farmer’s son, is offered an apprenticeship by Death himself. Travelling outside of space and time to Death’s home, he finds things aren’t what he expects: Death has an elderly manservant, an adopted daughter, and an unusual interest in fly fishing. Mort, left to do the job alone, tries to defy fate in a very human (and teenage) moment  – but can he possibly succeed? And why does an immortal anthropomorphic personification need an apprentice, anyway?

Mort is often cited (including by us) as the first book in the series that feels like the Discworld we know and love, so if you’re joining us for the first time this episode, this is a great place to start. (And don’t worry: we will go back and read the first three books at some point!)

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Show Notes and Errata:

  • You can follow Stephanie on Twitter at @gingerandhoney, and find her work at Guardian Australia here.
  • Sir Terry’s thoughts on where to start reading the Discworld are most clearly outlined in the essay “Straight from the Heart, Via the Groin”, which is most easily found in the collection A Slip of the Keyboard.
  • “Mort” does mean death, but it’s not Latin – it’s French (or in Discworld terms, Quirmian).
  • A “squib” in the world of Harry Potter is the rare child of a magical person who is not magical themselves.
  • The lead Gentleman in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Hush was played by Doug Jones, now famous for playing Abe Sapien in the Hellboy films, the Faun and the Pale Man in Pan’s Labyrinth, and Saru in Star Trek Discovery. He plays Count Orlok, the titular vampire, in the upcoming remake of Nosferatu. And he’d make a great Death.
  • Christopher Lee was the voice of Death in both Cosgrove Hall animated adaptations (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music), and The Mob’s live-action adaptation of The Colour of Magic, following Ian Richardson’s death. And his Death. (Richardson played Death in The Mob’s first Discworld adaptation, Hogfather.) The body of Death was played by Marnix Van Den Broeke, who also played the golem Mr Pump in Going Postal.
  • The horse that plays Bucephalus in Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is, unfairly, not named in the credits of the film.

Episode 1 – Boots Theory

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In our first (more than) full-length episode, Elizabeth and Ben are joined by comedian Cal Wilson to discuss the winner of our poll – Men at Arms (1993)! The fifteenth Discworld novel, Men at Arms is the second to focus on the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, following Guards! Guards! (1989).

Captain of the Night Watch Samuel Vimes is only a week away from retirement – so of course “ethnic tensions” between dwarves and trolls are at boiling point, something explodes in the Assassin’s Guild, and there’s a murderer on the loose. Luckily the Watch has expanded, with three unorthodox new recruits…

It’s a real smorgasbord of Discworld stuff and a great introduction to the world, especially the quintessential Discworld city of Ankh-Morpork.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:27:12 — 85.5MB)

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Show Notes and Errata:

  • You can follow Cal on Twitter at @calbo, and we promise to let you know the title of her book when she knows what it is! (Watch out for it in July.
  • Clowns in our world can and do copyright their face makeup, and the egg gallery is based on the “Clown and Character Registry”, where many clowns actually did register to have their makeup painted on a goose egg and displayed, though we were unable to discover whether the UK or US registries still exist. We’re sorry again, clowns. (Ben uses commedia dell’arte more-or-less correctly.)
  • 99% Invisible is a podcast all about design, hosted by Roman Mars. The episode Ben mentions while discussing the Alchemist’s Guild is The Post-Billiards Age from May 2015.
  • There are indeed ghosts on the Discworld, appearing in several of the novels. We’ll be meeting some of them fairly soon…
  • The final Discworld book is actually The Shepherd’s Crown; I Shall Wear Midnight is the fourth-last, and the second-last to feature young witch Tiffany Aching. (We’ll keep our spreadsheet handy for future episodes.)
  • “Shoot” is used for arrows, as the term predates guns by many centuries.
  • CMOT Dibbler is pervasive once he arrives, but is not in The Colour of Magic. In fact he first shows up when the Watch does, in Guards! Guards!
  • Not only are Lord Vetinari’s plans for the future unknown, but it has also never been revealed how he ascended to the position of Patrician in the first place.
  • We are aware that despite being asked “which Guild would you join”, we decided we would be wizards, witches or members of the Watch, none of which have an official guild (at least at the time of Men at Arms).

Episode 0 – And the Winner is…

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Welcome to Pratchat! In this special 10-minute introductory episode, Liz and Ben talk about their first Pratchett experiences, introduce the Discworld, and put forward their cases for which book they should read first, Mort, or Men at Arms, before announcing the winner of the closely contested public poll. If you want to go in not knowing which one it will be, then don’t look below!

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Okay, I think all the spoiler-concerned have looked away now…

It was Men at Arms! So get yourself a copy and get reading, as we’ll be discussing it on the very first proper episode, which will be released on November 8th. We’ll probably even have art and a theme tune and everything by then! In the meantime, you can watch this site for more info about the book itself, and our plans – including some thoughts about our long-term reading order. But if you have thoughts on anything we mention in the intro, please leave a comment and let us know!