Discworld

Theses are the show notes and errata for episode 27, “Leshp Miserablés“, featuring guest Craig Hilderbrand-Burke, discussing the 1997 Discworld novel Jingo.

• The O.C. is 1990s teen drama we’ve previously mentioned in episode 23, “The Music of the Nitt“. It starred the other Ben McKenzie.
• “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” – meaning there’s not a hidden meaning in everything, no matter how obvious the phallic imagery may be – is a phrase often attributed to German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. It’s almost certain he never said it, though.
• Cthulhu is the ancient, god-like being created by H. P. Lovecraft, giving the name “Cthulhu Mythos” to the universe of linked cosmic horror stories written by Lovecraft and others. They feature Cylcopean architecture with non-Euclidean angles, civilisations of horrific beings that pre-dated humans on Earth, and other elements of cosmic horror. We previously talked about Cthulhu in episode 10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick“, as Moving Pictures also features Cthulhu-like horrors. (Bel-Shahamroth, featured in The Colour of Magic, also clearly draws inspiration from the works of Lovecraft.)
• The tradition of a “Speaker’s Corner“, where anyone can stand on a soapbox and give their opinion, originates in Hyde Park London and dates back to at least the 19th century. The original Speaker’s Corner in Melbourne was at Birrarung Marr, on the banks of the Yarra River; it’s now held on the lawns outside the State Library and known as the Speaker’s Forum. Sydney’s Speaker’s Corner is at the Domain.
• Blackadder Goes Forth was the fourth and final season of satirical historical comedy Blackadder created by Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis, though the later seasons were written by Curtis with Ben Elton. They star Atkinson as various members of the Blackadder family throughout history, always accompanied by his dogsbody Baldrick (Toby Robinson). In Goes Forth, Edmund Blackadder is a Captain in the British Army on the Western Front of World War I. General Melchett (Stephen Fry) is their blustering Commanding Officer, who has no idea of their hardships and frequently orders them into danger from far behind the front.
• You can find out more about the Mary Rose at the official web site.
• The L-Space web was the primary web site hosting documents created on the newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett, including the Annotated Pratchett File (or APF). It still exists, though new annotations and notes now appear on the L-Space Wiki.
• Pratchett spoke about “white knowledge” in several interviews, especially those given while publicising The Folklore of Discworld. He meant the phrase as an analogue to “white noise”, and defined it as knowledge you acquire without knowing how or where from.
• Go Back to Where You Came From is an SBS reality television series which took groups of six Australians with “differing views” on asylum seekers and had them take the hazardous journey undertaken by refugees in reverse – sailing on small, seemingly fragile boats from Australia to nearby countries, and visiting refugee camps and other locations.
• Tax avoidance is the (usually) legal avoidance of paying taxes, employed most successfully by the largest companies, who are allowed to offset profits with losses from previous years, depreciation of major assets (like the fleets of airlines or electrical infrastructure), or income shifting (assigning income disproportionately to subsidiaries in countries with the lowest tax rates).
• While the militarisation of police in the US is well-documented – many forces there have military-style assault rifles, some have tanks, and quite a few have been trained by ex-military forces personnel – it’s a more recent phenomenon here in Australia. After a year or so of discussion, Victoria Police announced in December 2019 it was buying 300 AR-15 assault rifles for use in “active armed offender” situations, though they have promised the guns will not be carried in public.
• Terry Pratchett was awarded no fewer than ten honorary doctorates. They come mostly from universities in the United Kingdom, the first being from the University of Warwick in 1999. He also had one from Dublin University in 2008, and his last – awarded in May 2014, less than a year before his death – was from the University of South Australia. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the Universities of Dublin and South Australia, which more-or-less just meant he occasionally gave a guest lecture.
• Andy Serkis is an English actor who rose to fame through his motion capture performance as Gollum in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. He has since established himself as a influential voice in motion capture, both as an actor and director.
• In the 2006 television adaptation of Hogfather, Nobby was played by Nicholas Tennant, who also played the Head Librarian in part one of the adaptation of The Colour of Magic.
• The honorific “effendi” began life as a title in the Ottoman Empire, roughly equivalent to “sir”; it was derived from the Ancient Greek word authentēs, which means “lord”. It is still in use as an honorific in Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, though it’s not quite used the way it is presented in most Western fiction.
• The attempt on Prince Khufurah’s life has many parallels with the assassination of JFK: he is in a procession along a route lined by onlookers; the shooter was in a tall building thought to be empty; there is a second shooter elsewhere (in our world behind a grassy knoll, rather than a gnoll); and the idea that the first gunman could have shot JFK in the manner that killed him is sometimes mocked by conspiracy theorists claiming that it would require “a magic bullet”. The initial investigation determined that Lee Harvey Oswald – himself murdered while in police custody – was working alone; a later investigation determined that there was indeed a second shooter, though it agreed that Oswald’s bullet was the one that killed the President.
• The “Zapruder film” is the most famous footage of the assassination of President Kennedy. It was filmed by local clothing manufacturer Abraham Zapruder on a home-movie camera; he developed three copies of his film and gave two to the US Secret Service, and it was used in both major investigations of the assassination.
• Leonardo Da Vinci secured the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, in around 1482, and was commissioned to build a huge bronze statue of a horse. A full-size clay model was made and exhibited to much acclaim, but the 80 tons of bronze intended for the statue was instead used to build cannons in war against the French, and the statue was never completed. After the seizure of Milan by Louis XII, the clay model was used for target practice by French troops and destroyed. Some accounts say the Duke was impressed with Leonardo’s ingenuity and hired him to design weaponry, which may explain why his notebooks include many things that are definitely weapons, including a huge crossbow, guns with multiple barrels and armoured vehicles (including one with scythes to cut down enemy troops, illustrated complete with victims of the blades).
• Hachikō was an Akita dog whose master, Hidesaburō Ueno, was a professor at the University of Tokyo. Ueno lived in Shibuya and Hachikō would come to Shibuya train station every day to meet him on his way home. Uneo died while at work in May 1925, but Hachikō continued visiting the station hoping to meet his master every day until his own death nearly ten years later. Hachikō became famous in 1932 when a newspaper wrote an article about him, and a statue was erected in his honour in 1934. The original statue was recycled during World War II, but a new statue by the original sculptor’s son was erected outside Shibuya Station in 1948. It’s still there, and the nearest entrance is now named after Hachikō. There are similar statues in Hachikō’s hometown Ōdate at the train station and the Akita Museum. In 2015, 80 years after his death, a new statue of Ueno meeting an excited Hachikō was unveiled at the University of Tokyo.
• The film Lawrence of Arabia follows the exploits of real-life British officer T. E. Lawrence, who during World War I was sent to find out if Syrian Prince Faisal had any chance of aiding in the war against Turkey. The film has been a source of controversy over its perceived historical inaccuracies, though it won many awards and propelled its star, Peter O’Toole, to great fame.
• Embassies – the permanent homes of major “diplomatic missions” to other states – are not generally considered “foreign soil”, or “extra-territorial”, but fall under the jurisdiction of local governments. But they do get a bunch of privileges under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations established in 1961 which includes exemption from many local laws. And it turns out to be true that citizens and authorities of the local country cannot enter without permission – even to put out a fire!
• Heartbeat was a British police drama which ran for 18 years between 1992 and 2010, based on the “Constable” novels by Nicholas Rhea (a pseudonym for ex-cop Peter N Walker). It was set in mid to late 1960s in fictional Yorkshire village of Aidensfield. It originally centred around PC Nick Rowan (Nick Berry) and his wife, Dr Kate Rowan (Niamh Cusack), but after a few years both left the program and characters took the limelight. The only characters to remain throughout were Yes Minister’s Derek Fowlds as Nick’s Sergeant, Blaketon, who later retires and takes over the local pub, and older fellow PC Alf Ventriss (William Simons), who was a commando in World War II and whose wife was mentioned frequently but never appeared on screen. We never even find out her first name!
• There are many examples of the “battle butler” in fiction. Aside from Willikins, there’s Alfred Pennyworth (Batman), Jarvis (The Avengers comics), Oddjob (Goldfinger), Cadbury (Richie Rich, especially in the film), Kato (The Green Hornet) and Mr Butler (Artemis Fowl).
• The “white saviour” narrative is a common trope, especially in film, where a white protagonist saves non-white people from disaster or war, usually by leading them or making them “more civilised”. Lawrence of Arabia is one of the earliest major examples, but there are many, many others.
• The Watchmen television series, which was first released in 2019, serves as a sequel to the 1987 comic book series Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. The comic is celebrated as a deconstruction of the superhero genre, and features a number of second-generation costumed vigilantes investigating a global conspiracy that seems to mean them harm. The television series, whose show runner is Damon Lindelof of Lost and The Leftovers fame, is set 34 years after the events of the original comics.
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an 1870 novel by French author Jules Verne. It follows marine biologist Pierre Arronax and his companions Conseil and Ned as they investigate a mysterious sea creature which is attacking and sinking ships. The creature turns out to be the Nautilus, a miraculous and hyper-advanced submarine invented and commanded by the mysterious Captain Nemo. The story is great, but Ben recommends you stick to adaptations as the book is “approximately 50% lists of fish Arronax sees out the window”.
• The only major appearances of the nation of Klatch are in Sourcery and Jingo, but other nations of the Klatchian continent make major appearances in Pyramids (Djelibeybi and Ephebe), Eric (Tsort and the Tezuman Empire) and Small Gods (Omnia and Ephebe). Various others, including Howondaland, crop up in references
• The Crown is a 2016 Netflix series chronicling the history of Queen Elizabeth II of England, beginning with her marriage to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Each season covers a different period of her reign, and so the main characters change and are re-cast over time. Elizabeth has so far been played by Claire Foy and Olivia Colman. The fourth season, coming in 2020, will bring the narrative through to the 1980s.
• The “trousers of time” were actually first mentioned in Guards! Guards!. Inspiration for the phrase seems to have come from the 1960s radio sketch comedy I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, which featured a parody of Doctor Who titled “Professor Prune and the Electric Time Trousers”. The band Bangers has a track named “Trousers of Time” on their album Bird, which it seems must be a Discworld reference, since the first line is “I feel like I woke up in the wrong leg / Of the trousers of time”. “Trousers of Time” are also an item available in the videogame The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; the wording may be a Pratchett reference, but it’s more directly based on a previous game in the series, Ocarina of Time.
• The dis-organiser is an astonishingly accurate prediction of modern smartphones’ “Intelligent Assistants“, which interpret spoken commands and automate tasks. One of those is “predictive appointments”, in which they suggest appointments for your calendar based on the content of your emails and other clues.
• “Shaddap You Face” was a single by Italian-American-Australian performer Joe Dolce. Released in 1980, the song is about a young Italian migrant living in Melbourne, and is based on the language used by Dolce’s Italian grandparents. The chorus is the character’s mother telling him to cheer up, It was a number one hit in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and several European countries – though not, it should be noted, in Italy.
• The Discworld Tacticus is probably based on several Roundworld people: his name comes from two Greek military writers, Aeneas Tacticus (4th century BCE) and Aelianus Tacitus (2nd century BCE), but also likely references Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian from around the second century CE whose work is used extensively to teach Latin in schools. Tacticus’ advice on war seems more inspired by Sun Tzu, Chinese author of The Art of War from around the 6th century BCE.
• For more on the names and genius of camels, see Pyramids.
• Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was famously assassinated in Sarajevo on the 28th of June, 1914. He was shot by Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year-old assassin armed by the Black Hand, a group of Serbian nationalists (Bosnia and Herzegovina was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian empire). This lead to hostilities between Austria and Serbia and eventually to World War I.
• We note that while The Joye of Snackes certainly represents one kind of danger of magical knowledge passing into print, it was likely printed using engraved plates, as movable type doesn’t properly come to Ankh-Morpork until The Truth.
• We previously tried to cast Lady Sybil in episode 7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“.
• Miranda Hart is an English comedian and actor best known for her BBC sitcom Miranda and medical drama Call the Midwife. You might also know her from Hyperdrive, Not Going Out and various other British film and television comedies. She’ll next be seen playing Miss Bates in a new feature film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma, directed by Autumn de Wilde.