Elizabeth Flux

#Pratchat77 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 77, “How to Get Below in Advertising”, discussing the 1963 short story “The Hades Business” with guest Lucas Testro.

Iconographic Evidence

The specific Bob Newhart advertising sketch that Lucas was thinking of is this one about Abraham Lincoln. (See also the further note about Bob Newhart below.)

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title refers to the 1989 British black comedy film How to Get Ahead in Advertising, starring Richard E Grant and written and directed by Bruce Robinson (both of Withnail and I fame).
  • You can find a digital copy of the August 1963 issue of Science Fantasy magazine at the Internet Archive here.
  • The Unfriendly Future was published in October 1965 by Four Square Books, edited by Tom Baordman, Jr. (As Ben guessed, Pratchett was indeed 17 at the time.) The book included the following stories, mostly previously published in John Carnell’s magazines:
    • Russkies Go Home!, a 1960 novelette by Mack Reynolds
    • “The Food Goes in the Top”, a 1961 short story by Will Mohler (as Will Worthington)
    • Danger: Religion!, a 1962 novella by Brian W. Aldiss
    • “Rescue Operation”, a 1964 short story by Harry Harrison
    • “The Hades Business”, a 1963 short story by Terry Pratchett
    • The Seed of Violence, a 1958 novelette by Jay Williams
  • Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) is best known as the author of the fantasy novel Titus Groan and its sequels, Gormenghast and Titus Alone, usually referred to as the Gormenghast series. Peake intended to write many more books in this series, but only completed the three novels and a novella, Boy in Darkness, before he died from Parkinson’s Disease. which was republished in 2007 reconstructed from his handwritten manuscript (the original version having errors produced from misreadings of the manuscript). Peake was also a poet, playwright and illustrator, and illustrated editions of many books including his own, Alice in Wonderland, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
  • Brian Aldiss (1925-2017) was a prolific British science fiction writer best known for his Helliconia trilogy of novels (Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer and Helliconia Winter, published between 1982 and 1985) which chronicle the history of a civilisation on an otherwise Earth-like planet with incredibly long seasons. He also wrote the 1969 short story “Super Toys Last All Summer Long” which decades later inspired the Stanley Kubrick/Stephen Spielberg film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Like Pratchett, his first published story was published by John Carnell in Science Fantasy, 1958’s “Criminal Record”, though he was considerably older, having spent his younger years in the army and working as a bookseller and editor. He was was a long-time collaborator with Harry Harrison, and the two were part of the “British New Wave” of science fiction. As related in A Life With Footnotes, Terry and his mate Dave met Brian Aldiss (and Harrison) at the 1965 Eastercon in Birmingham.
  • We previously mentioned Harry Harrison (1925-2012) in #Pratchat72, “The Masked Dancer”. Harrison was an American science fiction author best known for his character the “Stainless Steel Rat”, an interplanetary con man and rogue who first appeared in an eponymous novel in 1957. He also wrote the 1966 dystopian novel Make Room! Make Room!, which was adapted (very loosely) into the film Soylent Green in 1973. (If you know one thing about the film, it’s not in the novel.) Pratchett is known to have been a fan of Harrison’s work, considering Bill, the Galactic Hero to be the funniest science fiction novel ever written over The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (which he also rated, to be clear), considering that the former novel wasn’t a big hit because not enough readers were familiar with the source material being parodied. He also met Harrison at science fiction conventions as a teenager.
  • “Stagger soup” doesn’t seem to be a Pratchett invention, but existing slang for whiskey – though most sources we could find say it’s from North America (some say it’s still in use in Canada), perhaps dating from the prohibition era. Our guess would be that Pratchett found it through American sci-fi writing. “Joy-juice” has similarly American origins, perhaps inspired by “Kickapoo Joy Juice”, a fictional beverage from the comic strip Li’l Abner, and which was later turned into a real life soft drink by the Monarch Beverage Company in 1965.
  • The Good Place is one of Ben’s favourite sictoms, following Eleanor Shellstrop (played by Kristen Bell), a terrible, selfish young woman from Arizona who dies and ends up in “The Good Place”, a heaven-like afterlife. Eleanor quickly realises she’s been swapped with someone else by mistake, and convinces her supposed soul mate, ethics professor Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), to help her learn to be a better person so she can belong there. Over it’s four short seasons the show evolves a lot and has many twists and turns it’s more fun to discover yourself, but it is a plot point in later episodes that there are many more people in The Bad Place than The Good Place.
  • Donald Cotton (1928-1999), the subject of Lucas’ documentary Myth Maker: The Legend of Donald Cotton, was a British writer for radio, television and stage. He is best known for the early Doctor Who stories he wrote which took the show in a more comedic direction: “The Myth Makers”, in which the Doctor travels to the Trojan war, and “The Gunfighters”, in which he gets mixed up in the famous gunfight at the O. K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. He’d likely have written more, but the new producers of the show decided not to do so many historical episodes. He also helped create the television program Adam Adamant Lives!, a later project of Doctor Who co-creators Verity Lambert and Sydney Newman.
  • Bedazzled is a 1967 film written by Peter Cook in which George Spiggot (played by Cook), a man claiming to be the Devil, offers meek and depressed cook Stanley Moon (Dudley Moore) seven wishes. None of them, of course, go as planned – it’s more or less a parody of Faust. While there’s some very witty and clever stuff in there, it should also be said that the entire premise revolves around Moon wanting to date a waitress (played by Eleanor Bron) at the hamburger place where he works, and it has some very 1967 ideas which don’t really stand up today. A 2000 remake, also titled Bedazzled and directed and co-written by Ghostbusters’ Harold Ramis, starred Brendan Fraser as Elliott Richards, an equivalent to Stanley Moon who pines for a woman he works with at a computer company. Elizabeth Hurley played The Devil, who doesn’t go by an alias.
  • Bob Newhart (born 1929) is an American comedian who found fame in 1960 when his album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart became the first comedy album to reach number one in the American charts (it also reached number two in the UK). The advertising sketch mentioned by Lucas is “Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue” from that album, and in a 2005 interview Newhart claimed it was his own favourite. Newhart went on to a successful screen career, with his own sitcoms The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978) and Newhart (1982-1990), and subsequent appearances in films and other shows, including the recurring role of “Professor Proton” in The Big Bang Theory and its spin-off Young Sheldon.
  • Bewitched (1964-1972) is an American fantasy sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha, a witch who against the wishes and advice of her mother and community, marries a “mortal” man, Darrin Stephens (originally Dick York; he was replaced by Dick Sargent for the last three seasons due to illness). The series was created by comedy writer Sol Saks, based in part on the 1942 film I Married a Witch. Like the ad man in Newhart’s sketch, Darrin works on Madison Avenue for the fictional firm of McMann and Tate, his boss being one of the named partners, Larry Tate.
  • We get into a bit of business jargon familiar to Australian freelancers here, so let us explain. A sole trader – not a “soul trader”, though we considered that as a title for this episode – is a business classification used in Australia. It’s basically a one-person company, and costs very little to set up; the downside is that there’s no limited liability as there is in other structures. All Australian businesses require an Australian Business Number, or ABN, to identify them. GST is the Australian Goods and Services Tax, a 10% value-added tax introduced in 2000 on most goods and services sold in Australia. Companies (including sole traders) with revenue of more than $75,000 a year are required to register for GST, which means that they have to charge GST to their customers and pay that to the Australian Tax Office (ATO), but can also claim the GST they pay on good and services bought to run the business as a credit, reducing the GST payment they make to the ATO.
  • The story about Pratchett almost buying a DeLorean appears in chapter 15 of A Life With Footnotes.
  • Geryon was a giant in classical mythology said to have three heads. The name was later used by Dante in his Inferno as the name of greater demon, the Monster of Fraud, who is more like a dragon; Dante and Virgil ride on its back into the eighth circle, where those who committed fraud in life are found.
  • A “noodle incident” is a comedy fiction trope in which a past incident is referred to by characters but never explained. It takes its name from an example in the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, in which the characters often refer to “the noodle incident” but writer Bill Watterson decided to never explain it since the readers’ imagination will always be better than than anything he could come up with. Pratchett is fond of them, the major Discworld example being what happened to Mr Hong’s restaurant, The Three Jolly Luck Takeaway Fish Bar, which seemingly disappeared from Ankh-Morpork after being build on an old Temple of Dagon.
  • Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) was a British public intellectual best known as a philosopher and political activist. A lifelong pacifist, Russell opposed Britain’s participation in the First World War, leading to him being convicted under wartime censorship acts in 1916. He was fined £100 and when he refused to pay, hoping to be sent to prison to further attention for the cause, his books were siezed and sold at auction; most were bought by his friends and returned to him, some stamped as confiscated by the police. He was subsequently dismissed from his position at Trinity College London, though this was an unpopular decision and he was reinstated in 1919. He generally regarded religion as a form of superstition and an impediment to moral and social progress, describing himself as an agnostic or atheist, publishing an essay “Why I Am Not a Christian” in 1927. His most famous work is Principia Mathematica, a book laying out the principles of mathematical and symbolic logic, written with Alfred North Whitehead and published in three volumes between 1910 and 1913. It was a follow up to Russell’s earlier 1903 work The Principles of Mathematics. His other famous works include the essay “In Praise of Idleness”, and the books Power: A New Social Analysis and A History of Western Philosophy. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.
  • Satan in the Suburbs was Bertrand Russell’s first work of fiction, published in 1953 – rather earlier than Ben remembered. It collected three novelettes, Satan in the Suburbs or Horrors Manufactured Here, The Corsican Ordeal of Miss X (which had been previously published anonymously) and The Infra-Redioscope, plus two short stories, “The Guardians of Parnassus” and “Benefit of Clergy”. The book was apparently well-received at the time, but modern readers aren’t so kind. The titular story is more or less a variant on “The Monkey’s Paw”, in which four ordinary people respond to a plaque on the suburban house of the mysterious Dr Mallako, and don’t get what they bargained for. Russell’s journey to fiction writing was sort of opposite to Pratchett’s, coming near the end of his life – he was 80 when he wrote these stories.
  • Hades is a hit videogame developed by Supergiant Games, previously best known for their breakout hit Bastion. It’s a rogue-like game, meaning the player enters a series of randomised levels of increasing difficulty and likely dies before reaching the end, which sends them back to the start; but they improve in skill each time, making them able to get further on subsequent attempts. The player character is Zagreus, a reasonably obscure figure from Greek mythology who in some stories is the sone of Zeus, and in others the son of Hades. In the game he is the latter, and journeys through the Underworld in an attempt to find out how and why his mother, Persephone, has left. In the game, Cerberus is seen having a rest next to the desk of Hades where he receives new souls; the player is able to speak to him and pat and scratch his heads. A sequel, Hades II, is in early access; the player is no longer Zagreus, but instead his sister Melinoë, another character who is said to have been fathered by Zeus.
  • Heck is a 2013 graphic novel by Eisner Award-nominated American comic creator Zander Cannon, published by Top Shelf Comix. It collects the original comic which first appeared in Top Shelf’s digital magazine Double Barrel. In the novel, protagonist Hector “Heck” Hammarskjöld inherits his estranged father’s house and discovers a portal to the Underworld in the basement. He initially uses it to settle disputes around wills by contacting the souls of the dead, but eventually gets drawn into a bigger adventure that sees him travel through the Circles of Hell. Cannon’s most recent series is Kaijumax for Oni Press, about a prison for giant monsters, published in six volumes between 2015 and 2022.
  • We discussed Faust Eric way back in #Pratchat7, “All the Fingle Ladies”, with guest Georgina Chadderton.
  • We discussed Good Omens (the novel) in #Pratchat15, “It’s the End of the World (and I feel Nice and Accurate)”, with guests Jennifer Beckett and Amy Gray.
  • The traditional marketing mix was introduced by American marketing professor E. Jerome McCarthy in his 1960 book Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. The original version, itself an evolution of earlier ideas, was “the Four Ps of Marketing”: product, price, place and promotion. It was extended in 1981 by Booms and Bitner into the “Seven Ps”, adding not just “people” but “process” and “physical evidence”. Modern usage seems to vary with anything between four and seven “P”s, depending on who you ask and what industry is involved.
  • Matt Damon’s 2021 crypto ad, “Fortune Favours the Brave”, featured the actor walking between exhibits of supposedly great human endeavour and exhorting the viewer to be bold…and invest in cryptocurrency using the exchange crypto.com. Damon later said he only did it to support the charity water.org, which tries to improve access to safe drinking water to communities worldwide. American actor (and ex-economist) Ben McKenzie, who wrote the book Easy Money about the crypto fad, gave his highly critical opinion about the ad (and what it was trying to sell) in many places, including a January 2022 episode of the Slate podcast What Next: TBD.
  • The “comma, for the use of” jokes are primarily seen in Men at Arms (as discussed in #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory”) when Fred Colon is handing out equipment to the new recruits, though it returns as a callback once or twice.
  • Fallout: New Vegas is the sixth game in the satirical post-apocalyptic Fallout series. The games are set in the wastelands of a future America, decimated by a nuclear war with China in 2077, though the pre-War America of the games was a 1950s retro-futuristic vision of nuclear-powered cars and household robots. The first couple of games were made in the late 1990s by Black Isle Studios (originally under a different name), but following a couple of spin-off games, the license for the franchise was acquired by Bethesda Softworks, makers of the hugely successful Elder Scrolls series of fantasy roleplaying games. They made Fallout 3 in 2008, the first game to have a modern first person perspective, but some fans thought it lost too much of the satirical tone of the originals. Obsidian Entertainment, another studio which included developers who’d worked on earlier Fallout games, pitched an idea for another game using the Fallout engine set in a different part of the game’s America; it was accepted and released in 2010 as Fallout: New Vegas. In the game, the player is a Courier given the job of delivering a special poker chip to the post-apocalyptic city of New Vegas, but they are waylaid by a gangster working with the Great Khans, a local tribe of raiders, who steal the chip, shoot the character and leave them for dead. They survive and try to find the chip and complete the job, along the way altering the future of the entire Mojave Wasteland, which is being fought over by the Khans, the New California Republic, and the mysterious Mr House, who controls New Vegas itself.
  • Monty Python, as we’re sure you probably know, were a British comedy group formed in 1969, best known for their television sketch series Monty Python’s Flying Circus which ran from 1969 to 1974, and their films, which most relevantly here include Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), in which God appears to King Arthur as a cut-out animation of bearded man in a cloud, created like all the Python animations by Terry Gilliam. Their next film, Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), follows the mis-adventures of a man born at the same time as Jesus and mistaken for a messiah; God does not appear, though Jesus is seen from a distance giving the Sermon on the Mount.
  • Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day (1996) is an overtly patriotic American action film about an alien invasion starring an ensemble cast including Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman. When the immense alien saucers arrive in Earth’s atmosphere (launched from an even bigger mothership in high orbit), they create clouds to shield themselves from view.
  • Kevin Smith’s Dogma (1999) is a fantasy film in which two exiled angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) plan to re-enter Heaven by exploiting an open offer of indulgence from an American Cardinal. Early on in the film, protagonist Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino) is visited by Metatron (Alan Rickman), a Seraphim who is the Voice of God. As he explains: ‘Human beings have neither the aural nor the psychological capacity to withstand the awesome power of God’s true voice. Were you to hear it, your mind would cave in and your heart would explode within your chest. We went through five Adams before we figured that one out.’
  • Pandæmonium – not Pandæmomium, as Ben mis-speaks it here – is the name invented for the capital city of Hell by British poet John Milton in his famous 1667 epic Paradise Lost. It draws on Greek, and translates roughly as “place of all demons”.
  • The “sand ropes” stories can be found in the Aarne-Thompson-Uther folktale index as type 1174, “Deceiving the Devil with a Rope of Sand”. Examples can be found in Scotland, England, Ireland and Germany. Some of the stories star Michael Scot, a thirteenth century mathematician and astrologer.
  • The issue of Science Fantasy in which the story first appeared was volume 20, number 60, published in August 1963. A digital version of the issue is available via the Internet Archive; the link will take you to the first page of “The Hades Business”.
  • Janet is one of the major characters of The Good Place, played by D’Arcy Carden. While she frequently has to remind the human characters that she is “not a robot” and “not a girl”, Janet is the afterlife equivalent of a computer interface, able to access all knowledge and providing the means for Architects of the afterlife to create the Neighbourhoods in which human souls live out existence. Carden also plays other versions of Janet, including Bad Janet (the Bad Place’s ruder equivalent), and Neutral Janet (the very bland version who works in the “Accounting Department” responsible for deciding who goes where after death).
  • Benidorm isn’t the kind of place Ben is thinking of – it’s not even in the UK! It’s a municipality on the southeastern coast of Spain. It became a major tourist destination in the 1980s, has three world-renowned beaches, and has a famous hotel which is one of the tallest buildings in Spain. There’s also a popular British sitcom set there, also called Benidorm, which ran on ITV from 2007 to 2018. It follows a large ensemble cast of British holidaymakers from various social classes who make repeat visits to an all-inclusive holiday resort in Benidorm, though the cast changed significantly over the ten series.
  • Skegness is more the kind of place Ben is talking about. Located on the Lincolnshire coast on the East of Britain, Skegness was formerly one of the most popular holiday resort towns in the UK, but went into decline from the 1970s as overseas holidays became cheaper. It’s the home of the original Butlin’s holiday camp, now known as Butlins Skegness, and one of only three still in operation, the rest having closed in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a bit fancier than our description makes it sound, with pools and activities and entertainment, and a range of different types of accomodation.
  • Better Than a Poke in the Eye is the British fantasy newsletter formerly known as Discworld Monthly. Its creators, Jason and Rachel, appeared in our special Discworld anniversary episode, “How Did Discworld Get to 40?” The Llamedos Holiday Camp now runs every two years, with the next one in 2026, themed as “The Llamedos Hogs Ball 2026”.
  • The Prisoner is a 1967 television series created by Irish actor Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009), best known at the time for starring as spy John Dake in the earlier spy series Danger Man. Danger Man initially only lasted one season in 1960, and afterwards McGoohan was offered the role of James Bond, and Simon Templar in The Saint; he turned both down on moral grounds, mostly because as a Catholic he objected to those characters’ promiscuity (he famously insisted on no kissing in Danger Man). The popularity of Bond led to a Danger Man revival in 1964 that made McGoohan the highest-paid television actor in the UK. The show was a hit in the UK and America, where it was re-titled Secret Agent and had the popular theme song “Secret Agent Man”. It inspired various copycats and spoofs, including the cartoon Danger Mouse. McGoohan’s star power also got him more control over the show, and when he was announced he was quitting, was able to negotiate to make a new series of his own devising: The Prisoner. The premise was that a spy angrily quits his job, but after leaving the agency’s office is abducted and taken to a weird, almost surreal holiday camp known as “The Village”, where everyone is referred to only by number – the protagonist is “Number Six”. The secret controllers of the camp use all kinds of bizarre gambits to try and find out why Number Six quit the agency, but he refuses to tell them, and makes repeated attempts to escape and discover who is in charge – the mysterious and never seen Number One. Each episode features a different Number Two, who acts on behalf of Number One. Though originally conceived as a mini-series of just seven episodes, The Prisoner was extended to seventeen episodes, broadcast in 1967 and 1968. It got behind schedule, though, and a final two colour episodes of Danger Man (shown in the US as a telemovie) were broadcast in the first two weeks of its timeslot, instead of after the finale as originally planned. The finale is…well, it’s a whole other discussion, but let’s just say opinion is fairly sharply divided on the ending. But the show itself is otherwise seen as something of a weird masterpiece, and Ben highly recommends you check out some of the best episodes.

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat77 – How to Get Below in Advertising

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Writer, filmmaker and creative director Lucas Testro joins Liz and Ben on a trip down under to the Other Place as we discuss Terry Pratchett’s first ever published short story, 1963’s “The Hades Business”.

Shady advertising man Crucible arrives home to find none other than old Nicholas Lucifer waiting for him in his study. But he hasn’t come to take him to eternal damnation. Instead, the Devil has a business proposition for Crucible: he want to make the public conscious, Hell-wise…

At age thirteen (actually fourteen), the young Pratchett scored full marks for this story as a school assignment, encouraging him to try his luck with the editor of his three favourite spec fic magazines. And it worked! As the legend goes, he used the whopping £14 he was paid for the story to buy his first typewriter, and the rest is history…with a few bumps and detours along the way, of course.

Was the young Pratchett a genius? Do you know any fourteen-year-olds who’ve been published alongside Michael Moorcock and Harry Harrison? Are we way too harsh on a story written by a teenager, or is it fair game as an exercise in working where the author of Night Watch and Nation got his start? And what afterlife would you sell – and with what slogan? Get down with this episode’s conversation using the infernal hashtag #Pratchat77.

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Lucas Testro (he/him) is writer, filmmaker and creative director based in Melbourne. He’s worked in theatre, television and short film, including the time travel farce I’m You, Dickhead and superhero comedy Capes. He’s worked in a variety of capacities with youth creative writing centre 100 Story Building. In 2022 he founded Social Storylab, a media production house that seeks to use persuasive marketing techniques for social good. (He’s kind of the anti-Crucible.) You can find Lucas online at manwithajetpack.com, and his excellent three-part audio documentary about mysterious Doctor Who writer Donald Cotton is available via donaldcotton.com or to stream on Soundcloud.

As usual you’ll find comprehensive notes and errata for this episode on our website.

Next episode we finish a long-term goal: the end of the Long Earth series, with the fifth and final novel, The Long Cosmos! We’ll be joined by previous Steppers Joel Martin and Deanne Sheldon-Collins. Get your questions in by ASAP using the hashtag #Pratchat78 on social media, or email us at chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat41 – The Adventures of Crab Boy and Trouser Girl

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Educator Dr Charlotte Pezaro joins Liz and Ben on a trip to the South Pelagic, where they find tsunamis, gods and science in Nation, Terry Pratchett’s standalone young adult novel from 2008.

Mau is returning from his rite of passage when a huge wave washes over his island Nation, killing everyone he has ever known. He is all alone, stuck without a soul between the states of boy and man. Lost in his despair and anger at the gods he now isn’t sure he believes in, he’s ready to give in to the dark water until he meets Daphne, the only survivor from a “trouserman” ship flung into the Nation by the wave. As they learn each others’ customs and languages, and other survivors gradually begin to arrive, Mau and Daphne must both reckon with the gods and ghosts of the Nation’s past – and work hard to ensure it has a future…

Pratchett’s own proudest achievement, and winner of multiple awards, Nation presents an alternate universe where things are a little bit different in some ways…and considerably different in others. Pratchett examines his favourite themes of belief, death, imperialism and science through a new lens, in a tale of loss, growing up, and asking big questions.

Is this Pratchett’s magnum opus? Does inventing an entire universe next door make it okay for a white Englishman to tell a story about South Pacific Islanders with the serial numbers filed off? Why did he split Australia in half ? Tell us by using the hashtag #Pratchat41 on social media to join the conversation!

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Guest Dr Charlotte Pezaro is an educator with a PhD in pedagogy and years of science and technology communication experience. Charlotte is also a qualified primary school teacher, and works with other teachers to help them improve their skills. You can find out more about Charlotte at charlottepezaro.com, or follow her on Twitter at @dialogicedu.

Next time we’re heading back to Ankh-Morpork for a tale of journalism, vampirism and authoritarianism, the 25th Discworld novel: 2000’s The Truth! We’ll be joined by returning guest, writer and deputy culture editor for Guardian Australia, Stephanie Convery. Send us your questions using the hashtag #Pratchat42, or get them in via email: chat@pratchatpodcast.com

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#EeekClub2024 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for our special Glorious 25th of May episode, “Eeek Club 2024“, discussing topics chosen by our Eeek tier subscribers.

Iconographic Evidence

Notes and Errata

  • If you need an explanation of the Glorious 25th of May, see #Pratchat54, “The Land Before Vimes”, our episode discussing Night Watch. As mentioned in our previous Eeek Club specials, the 25th of May is also Towel Day and Geek Pride Day.
  • This is our fourth Eeek Club special; the previous ones are Eeek Club 2021, Eeek Club 2022 and Eeek Club 2023.
  • “Ramen hacks” are things you can add into your bowl of traditional Japanese noodle soup to make it even more delicious. (Not a lot of them are vegetarian, so Ben has given them a miss.) If you want to find some, you could look up the hashtag #ramenhacks on TikTok or Instagram, search YouTube, or do a web search, which will find a fair number of listicles.
  • Find out all the details about the Australian Discworld Convention (12-14 July 2024 in Adelaide) at their website, ausdwcon.org.
  • “Mad March” is the name given in Adelaide to the period of the year usually starting in late February and running through March when nearly all of their big cultural events occur: the Adelaide Fringe Festival (the second largest fringe arts festival in the world!), the Adelaide Festival, Womadelaide, the Clipsal 500 car race, and in some years even South Australia’s major horse race and a state election. It used to be not much else of note would happen there during the rest of the year, but as Liz mentions that’s no longer the case.
  • Maid Marian and Her Merry Men was a sitcom pitched at kids created by Tony Robinson. It spoofed the Robin Hood myth by having Robin be a cowardly tailor mistaken for a rebel leader, when actually Marian is the brains behind the outfit. We’ve mentioned it before, though not for a long time – it was way back in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”, and #Pratchat17, “Midsummer (Elf) Murders”. The episode Ben is thinking of here is “They Came From Outer Space” from the show’s third series in 1993. (Fun fact: Ben wrote the first – and for a long time only – website dedicated to the show way back in around 1994, and even corresponded with a couple of the writers and actors on the show. A lot of the information on modern Marian sites is plag- well, copied from his site, which no longer exists except in the Internet Archive.)
  • The “Keep your secrets, Gandalf” meme is from the scene where Frodo meets Gandalf as he arrives in the Shire at the start of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.
  • We mention a few TV shows:
    • The Worst Witch was originally a series of children’s books written and illustrated by Jill Murphy, the first of which was published in 1974. It chronicles the adventures of Mildred Hubble, a student at Miss Cackle’s Academy for Young Witches; Mildred’s clumsiness gets her into all sorts of trouble and earns her the titular epithet. It’s actually been two different television series, one fairly low budget one in 1998 which was so popular it had two spin-offs, and a newer one in 2017. There was also a stage musical in 2018!
    • Dead Boy Detectives is on Netflix, and is based on characters created by Neil Gaiman for the Sandman comics, who later went on to star in more adventures in comics and appear briefly in the Doom Patrol television series before getting their own show. The titular dead boys are a pair of ghosts who solve supernatural crimes while hiding out from Death so they can stay together. The first season was released ion 25 April 2024.
    • Wednesday is also on Netflix. Created by Tim Burton, it’s a new version of The Addams Family focussed on Wednesday Addams, played by Jenna Ortega. After being expelled from a regular high school, Wednesday is sent to the much creepier Nevermore Academy. A second season is coming, probably in 2025.
    • The White Lotus is a black comedy anthology series on HBO. Each season takes place at a different hotel run by the fictional White Lotus chain. The third season is coming in 2025.

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

Eeek Club 2024

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It’s the 25th of May, which can only mean one thing: Geek Pride Day! Or Towel Day. Or the Glorious 25th of May and the Battle of Treacle Mine Road…okay, that’s three things. Why not add one more? This is the Pratchat Eeek Club: a bonus episode discussing Terry Pratchett-related topics selected by our “Eeek” tier subscribers.

This year, the topics are:

  • So it’s been a few years of the Podcast. How are you guys holding up?
  • How could one Discworld character use their skills and influence to change the patriarchal nature of the Disc?
  • What is an unwritten Discworld story for you, e.g. maybe a head canon of a specific character, or a general arc of how things came into being or changed on the Disc?
  • Why no gays? (On the Discworld.)
  • Like learning how to not use magic is the whole point of magic, what have you had to learn not to do to make your life easier/better?
  • What other storylines – other than The Watch – would you like to see turned into a television show?

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You’ll find notes and errata for this episode on our website.

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#Pratchat51 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 51, “Boffoing the Winter Slayer“, featuring guest Garth Nix, discussing the 2006 Discworld novel Wintersmith.

Iconographic Evidence

Here are some photos of Ben’s office, to accompany the visual section about video meeting boffo.

The posters on the mirrored wardrobe behind Ben’s desk
The one-page RPGs on the bookshelf; you can also see the kakapo on the top shelf
The dragon made by Ben’s Mum – with bonus tortoise and Babel fish!

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title references not only Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but more specifically Buffering the Vampire Slayer, a long-running Buffy recap and discussion podcast hosted by musician Jenny Owen Youngs and writer Kristin Russo. Each episode of the podcast covers a single episode, and includes an original song about the show; they have a whole album’s worth of new songs dedicated to the Buffy musical episode, “Once More, With Feeling”! (One of several things referenced in the title of #Pratchat49, “Once More, With Future“.)
  • As mentioned in the footnote, “Terry Pratchett in Conversation with Garth Nix” was a public appearance by Terry at the Sydney Opera House on 17 April, 2011. You can listen to to the whole thing via this MixCloud link.
  • The Colour of Magic, Pratchett’s fourth novel, was first published in the UK by Colin Smythe on November the 24th, 1983. As we noted for Richard Watts, our guest in #Pratchat49, who also read it when it was first available, In Australia this was probably in 1985, the year of the first Corgi paperback edition.
  • Pratchett’s first novel, The Carpet People, was first published by Colin Smythe on November 16th, 1971. This was a fairly small print run of 3,000 copies, which is why any that come up for sale routinely go for huge prices. (Garth did well to get a hold of one when it came out!) The later version – rewritten and edited by the older Pratchett – was first published by Corgi on the 30th of June, 1992. The original short stories from 1965 can be found in the collection The Dragons of Crumbling Castle, first published on the 11th of September 2014.
  • The Good Wife and The Good Fight are CBS legal dramas set in Chicago. The Good Wife follows Alicia Florrick (played by Julianna Margulies), a woman who restarts her legal career as a junior lawyer when her husband, a State’s Attorney, is jailed in a corruption scandal. A major theme of the show is what women are expected to give up to be “good wives” to influential husbands. The Good Wife ran for seven seasons from 2009 to 2016, and was followed in 2017 by The Good Fight, a sequel and spin-off that follows the character of Diane Lockhart (played by Christine Baranski). A year after the end of the earlier show, Lockhart – a named partner at Alicia’s law firm – is forced out when her life savings are lost in a financial scam that dupes her protege and god-daughter. The pair move to another Chicago law firm, where another former employee of the original firm now works, and take on a number of cases with political and social justice angles. The Good Fight is up to four seasons and still running.
  • Tiffany is 9 years old in The Wee Free Men – not 6, 7 or 8, as guessed by Garth and Ben. Everyone was wrong! In A Hat Full of Sky she is 11, and as discussed she turns 13 during Wintersmith.
  • You’ll find most of Liz’s complaints about Wentworth in #Pratchat32, “Meet the Feegles”, discussing the first Tiffany book The Wee Free Men. There might also be one or two in #Pratchat43, “Big Wee Hag: Far Fra’ Home“, about A Hat Full of Sky.
  • The “This is where you came in” thing is called by trope-listing websites “How We Got Here“. A famous example of Ben’s phrase for it is in Billy WIlder’s 1950 film noir mystery Sunset Boulevard.
  • We previously mentioned the film Mean Girls (2004, dir. Mark Waters) in #Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem“. Written by Tina Fey and based on Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002 non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes, it follows new girl Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan), who moves from an isolated life in Africa to the social jungle of of an American high school.
  • Bilbo Baggins’ age is a prominent point in The Lord of the Rings, when he chooses the occasion of his eleventy-first birthday to literally disappear by using the magic ring he stole from Gollum during the events of The Hobbit. It is noted that Bilbo has not aged normally for a hobbit, who usually live for around 100 years – a bit longer than the humans of Middle Earth.
  • The Pratchett interview in which he discusses Tolkien’s influence is his 2006 chat on Book Lust with Nancy Pearl, a production of the Seattle Channel, a community cable channel run by the City of Seattle. Appropriately enough it was during his promotional tour for Wintersmith! You can find the main Tolkien quote in his answer at around the 3:30 mark, which also includes his classic story about how and when he first read the books. An earlier – possibly the original – version of the same thought appears in Pratchett’s 1999 essay “Magic Kingdoms” for the Sunday Times, prompted by the publication of the third Harry Potter novel. It’s collected in A Slip of the Keyboard, and this version has been circulated in image form recently, so we include it here as text:

J. R. R. Tolkien has become a sort of a mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way Mt Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints. Sometimes it’s big and up close. Sometimes it’s a shape on the horizon. Sometimes it’s not there at all, which means the artist either has made a deliberate decision against the mountain, which is interesting in itself, or is in fact standing on Mt Fuji.

Terry Pratchett, “Magic Kingdoms”, 1999
  • Pratchett’s other Tolkien references include a lot of stuff about dwarfs (and indeed the use of the plural “dwarfs”), the Gollum sequence in Witches Abroad, Mustrum Ridcully, aka “Ridcully the Brown” (a very different take on a Brown wizard who is close to nature), and his deliberately non-Tolkienistic takes on elves, orcs and goblins. In several interviews – including the one linked above – he also describes Discworld “in the short form” as “Middle Earth 500 years on, when everyone’s actually got to settle down and deal with one another.” (See #PratchatNA7, “A Troll New World“, for more on this idea.)
  • Lady Justice is the modern incarnation of Justitia, the Roman goddess of Justice, introduced by Emperor Augustus. Justitia herself is likely inspired by Dike, the Greek goddess of moral order and fair judgement, who also held a pair of scales, possibly influenced by earlier Egyptian gods like Maat and Isis. (Dike’s mother, Themis, is also described as a goddess of justice.) Justicia was also depicted holding a sword, but the blindfold worn by the modern version of Lady Justice seems to have been introduced in the sixteenth century. The earliest depiction of Lady Justice with all three elements seems to be the statue on the Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen (Fountain of Justice) in Bern, Switzerland, which was sculpted by Hans Gieng in 1543. Not all famous depictions of Lady Justice have the blindfold – for example the statue of her on the Old Bailey courthouse in London.
  • As Ben mentions, not everyone can or does visualise things in their imagination – in fact the ability to do so exists on a continuum, across all senses, not just sight. This kind of “blind” imagination is described as “aphantasia”, and around 3-5% of humans are estimated to think this way. This 2017 article from The Conversation does a pretty good job of explaining aphantasia, but there’s also a worldwide Aphantasia Network, established in 2020.
  • Not only are personifications of fate often depicted as weavers – see previous episodes #Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires” and #Pratchat48, “Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang” – but the moirai, the Greek fates, are the children of Themis, and sisters to Dike!
  • To be clear, we don’t hate any of the story teaching terms we groan about in this episode – Ben uses them in his teaching work a lot! – but they do take us back to school days we’re happy to have left behind us. In case you’re not familiar with any of them:
    • The “inciting incident” is modern writing jargon for the moment in a story where the protagonist’s regular world is disturbed. While it’s used by just about everyone who teaches Western-style writing (who often define it as having anywhere between three and seven defining characteristics), it can be fairly directly traced back to the work of story scholars like Gustav Freytag and Joseph Campbell.
    • A “story graph” or “story arc” is a curved line meant to show time progressing in the story from left to right, and tension, excitement or some other measure of the story’s intensity going up and down. It demonstrates the same basic principles as Freytag’s Pyramid, which is to say the most tension or excitement etc goes somewhere in the middle, at least in standard Western story structures. In primary school creative writing it is sometimes called the “story mountain”.
    • A “topic sentence” is a device taught in essay writing in which an early sentence in a paragraph – often the first one – gives the reader an expectation of what the paragraph will be about.
  • The Dark Morris is first mentioned – though not by name – at the very start of Reaper Man (see #Pratchat11, “At Bill’s Door“). Pratchett tells us that while all inhabited worlds of the multiverse have a Morris dance, only on the Discworld in one small village in the Ramtops is it danced it properly. Their secret is “the other dance”, which is described in more detail at the end of the book: that dance it’s danced without music, while dressed in black and wearing bells made of octiron, which make “the opposite of noise”. The award-winning Lancre Morris Men, led by Jason Ogg, appear in Lords and Ladies, but they don’t seem to be the ones who dance the Dark Morris; they mention that the Morris is “for every day”, whereas the dancers of the Dark Morris do the regular and correct Morris dance only once a year. This also correlates with the fact that Miss Treason’s steading is not in Lancre – which is well served by both Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax – just somewhere nearby.
  • In Joe Dante’s 1984 horror comedy Gremlins, teenager Billy Peltzer (Zach Gallagher) is given a mysterious Christmas present bought by his travelling salesman/inventor father from a weird little shop (you know the sort). It’s a strange, intelligent and very cute creature called a mogwai (the name is derived from the Cantonese word for devil, 魔怪), and it comes with three rules: keep it away from bright light, especially sunlight, which will kill it; do not let it come into contact with water; and – most famously – “never, no matter how much he pleads, no matter how much he begs, never ever feed him after midnight”. By the end of the film, of course, all three rules are broken. We previously discussed the film’s 1990 sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, in #Pratchat34, “Only You Can Save Deadkind“.
  • For more about the Scots language, see the episode notes for #Pratchat36, the afore-mentioned “Home Alone, But Vampires“. In short it’s a Germanic language which, like modern English, derives from a dialect of Middle English. If you’d like to hear some Scots spoken and learn a few words, we highly recommend following poet Len Pennie on Twitter (@Lenniesaurus) or TikTok (@misspunnypennie). Len posts a “Scots word of the day”, recites her own poyums, and is all around excellent.
  • A showie (a shortened – and happily gender neutral – form of “showman”) is a worker in a travelling show; it’s the Australian equivalent of the US term “carnie“, which is derived from the word carnival. Carnie dates back to the 1930s, but it’s possible “showie” might be a little older. In Australia, such workers operate rides, games and concessions at agricultural shows, open markets and cultural festivals, and many operate family businesses that have been around for three or four generations or more. Many showies do not like the term carnie.
  • On Roundworld, the word “boffo” dates back to at least the era of vaudeville, and was used in showbiz circles as a noun to mean a hit show, act or film. We’ve not had much luck in finding a more specific origin; if you have a lead, let us know!
  • For more on Hyancinth Bucket – the lead character in the sitcom Keeping Up Appearances, who insists her surname is pronounced “Bouquet” – see #Pratchat43, “Big Wee Hag: Far Fra’ Home” and #Pratchat39, “All the Fun of the…Fish?“.
  • When Ben talks about “the heart and soul of witchcraft“, he means “the soul and centre“; as Granny Weatherwax would readily admit, there’s not always room for heart to enter into it. (For more on this, see #Pratchat43.)
  • As mentioned this episode, Pratchett’s short story “The Sea and Little Fishes” introduces many things important in the Tiffany novels, including Mrs Earwig, the Witch Trials and Zakzak Stronginthearm and his magic shop. We discussed it with Marc Burrows in #Pratchat39, “All the Fun of the…Fish?“.
  • Tir Nani Ogg is a pune, or play on words, referencing Tír na nÓg, the Irish “Otherworld” (or part of it) and home to the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods of ancient Celtic Ireland. As discussed in #Pratchat17, “Midsummer (Elf) Murders“, Tír na nÓg was often said to be accessed via underground passages, much like the Long Man’s barrow in Lords and Ladies. Of note for the Tiffany stories: another name for the Otherworld – or perhaps a different part of it – is Tír fo Thuinn: “Land Under the Wave”! For more on how this relates to Pratchett’s version of elves, see the episode notes for #Pratchat17.
  • Anoia, Goddess of Things that get Stuck in Drawers, is introduced in chapter ten of Going Postal, as one of the gods to whom Moist prays for deliverance. (For more on this, see #Pratchat38, “Moisten to Steal“.) Moist prays to her again in Making Money, with surprising results. As discussed, in Wintersmith Anoia reveals she was once a volcano goddess, always smoking because the storm god rained on her lava. This is a clear callback to Going Postal, in which Anghammarad says that Adorable Dearheart reminds him of “Lela The Volcano Goddess, Who Smokes All The Time Because The God Of Rain Has Rained On Her Lava”.
  • The state of witchcraft has changed considerably over the course of the books. At the start of Witches Abroad, Granny and Nanny attend a sabbat of Ramtops witches at which only four witches are present – Nanny, Granny, Gammer Brevis and Old Mother Dismass. They bemoan the “increasing shortage of witches”, which is so bad there’s no-one available to take the place of Desiderata Hollow, and discuss “moving the boundaries” so they can cover her patch. They are scandalised that a nearby township has brought in a wizard, and Granny also rejects the idea that Desiderata might have named her own successor, since – as we see in Wintersmith – that’s not how they do things in the Ramtops. By the time of Lords and Ladies, the young coven led by Lucy “Diamanda” Tockley has revived interest among the younger Ramtops folk about witchcraft.
  • In Roundworld mythology, the Cornucopia – from the Latin for “Horn of Abundance”, and usually translated as the “Horn of Plenty” – is associated primarily with the Greek and Roman pantheons, and there are multiple accounts of its origin, though it is usually the broken horn of some kind of nature god or similar creature. In one account, infant Zeus, hidden in a cave so he wouldn’t be destroyed by his father Cronus, accidentally broke the horn off of the magical goat which fed him milk. Many gods and goddesses in both Greek and Roman pantheons have held the cornucopia, though few are associated with Summer – rather they are mostly gods of riches, prosperity, the harvest or even fate. It’s now also associated with Thanksgiving in North America, and via that becomes a major motif in Suzanne Collins’ dystopian series The Hunger Games.
  • The language on the cornucopia does seem to be ancient rather than modern Greek. The translation by the memory of Dr Bustle is accurate, as far as we can tell.
  • The universal translator pre-dates Star Trek by a little over twenty years, first appearing in the 1945 novella “First Contact” by American writer William Fitzgerald Jenkins (writing under the pseudonym Murray Leinster), which probably also coined the titular phrase. Versions of a universal translator are used in many science fiction programs to avoid having to deal with frequent language barriers in stories about meeting other cultures. Notable examples include the TARDIS telepathic circuits in Doctor Who (not explained until more than a decade into the show’s history), the “translator microbes” of Farscape and – perhaps most famously – Douglas Adams’ invention of the Babel Fish in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
  • Hivers are described in A Hat Full of Sky, where the writings of Dr Bustle explain that they are not demons, but a form of bodiless, mindless not-truly-alive consciousness which drifts through space, and which were formed in the first moments after the creation of the Universe. As the Hiver that inhabited Dr Bustle and Tiffany later admits, it seeks refuge in human minds in order to hide from “everything” – Hivers consciousness has no filter between itself and the entirety of existence, so they are constantly overwhelmed and afraid. Steeleye Span took this as inspiration for the song “Hiver” on the Wintersmith album (more on that below).
  • If like Liz you’re daunted by the amount of Star Trek available, Ben recommends Max Temkin’s articles: “Star Trek: The Next Generation in 40 Hours“, and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in in 82.5 Hours“. They recommend the essential episodes you need to watch to follow and get the gist of those two beloved Star Trek shows from the 1990s.
  • Moist von Lipwig is an (ex?) con-man and the last major new protagonist introduced by Pratchett to the Discworld. Caught for his various crimes in Ankh-Morpork, the Patrician offers him an honest job revitalising the post office in Going Postal. (See #Pratchat38.) In the television adaptation, he is played by Richard Coyle, best known from Coupling and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. Moist later becomes master of the Royal Bank and Royal Mint in Making Money, and in Raising Steam is made the city’s representative overseeing the creation of a new railway system. As for tax auditing, Pratchett had mentioned that he was considering a book starring Moist von Lipwig titled Raising Taxes, in which he would take over as Ankh-Morpork’s head auditor. It was expected to be the next book after I Shall Wear Midnight, but that was instead followed by Snuff and then the rather different Lipwig story, Raising Steam. (For more on other hints of Pratchett’s planned books that never saw the light of day, see the episode notes for #Pratchat37, “The Shopping Trolley Problem“.)
  • Stories about a fish that has swallowed something thrown away go back a long way. The Greek historian Herodotus recounted a story about Polycrates, the tyrant of Samos, who was advised by Egyptian king Amasis to rid himself of some of his many possessions in order that he know some hardship, or else expect a tragic end. He threw his prized emerald ring into the sea, and regretted it, but he was later brought a fish as tribute which, when gutted, contained the ring. The best-known fairytale with this motif is usually called something like “The Fish and the Ring”, and some sources say it is of Norwegian origin. It’s a story of ATU type 930, “The Prediction”, or more specifically 930D, “Fated Bride’s Ring in the Sea”. The story recounts a wealthy or noble man who learns he, or his son, is fated to marry the daughter of a peasant; he tries to dispose of her in several ways, but she is repeatedly saved by fate, eventually having a gold ring taken from her and thrown into the sea, being told by the nobleman not to come to him without the ring. It’s found inside a fish, and this is usually the point at which the nobleman accepts fate cannot be cheated. It can also be interpreted as a self-fulfilling prophecy, since without the prophecy and his intervention the man would never have even met the woman.
  • “Bluebeard’s Bride” – or just “Bluebeard” – is a French folktale about a notorious nobleman – often later described as a sea captain – whose many wives have mysteriously vanished. When he asks a neighbour to marry one of his daughters, they are frightened, but the youngest eventually agrees. Bluebeard gives his new bride the keys to his enormous house and tells her she may go anywhere except the basement. While he is away she invites her sisters for a party, but is overcome with curiosity and sneaks into the basement…to find the bloody corpses of Bluebeard’s previous brides. She drops the keys, which become stained with blood, and on his return Bluebeard discovers she has found his secret; however she is saved by her brothers, who kill him, and she inherits his wealth, which she uses to bury his other wives before moving on. The tale is ATU type 312, which is known as “The Bluebeard” or “The Maiden-Killer”.
  • The 2007 Doctor Who episode “Blink” by Steven Moffat introduces the Weeping Angels, creatures who (typically) appear to be statues of angels covering their eyes. But this part of their ultimate defence, in which they become “quantum locked” when observed, unable to move but also very difficult to be hurt, as they transform into stone. (They cover their eyes so as not to observe each other.) As soon as they are not observed – for example, if someone watching them blinks – they are able to move incredibly quickly and silently. Their touch while unobserved transports a victim back in time to before the time of their birth, and they feed off the energy created by this possibly paradoxical change to history.
  • We’ve talked before about the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions and the Lovecraftian parody in Pratchett’s earlier work; see particularly #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick“, for discussion of Cthulhu and the other Lovecraftian entities who clearly inspired the Things. Pratchett most directly parodies the Lovecraftian style in “Twenty Pence with Envelope and Seasonal Greeting”, the non-Discworld short story we discussed in #Pratchat45, “Hogswatch in Grune“.
  • The “Phantom of the Opera book” is Maskerade, the penultimate book starring the original Discworld witches. We discussed it back in #Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“.
  • Tolliver Groat was introduced in Going Postal (see #Pratchat38) as the oldest ever Junior Postman, but by the end of the book was promoted to Assistant Postmaster. During the events of Making Money, presumably set shortly after Wintersmith as it was published next, he will (at least briefly) rise to the position of Acting Postmaster. In the television adaptation of Going Postal, he is played by Andrew Sachs of Fawlty Towers fame.
  • Steeleye Span are one of the best known British folk rock bands, formed in 1969 at the height of the British folk revival by bass player Ashley Hutchings, who left the other big folk rock band of the time, Fairport Convention, following a car accident. The initial lineup also featured vocalist Maddy Prior, her duo partner Tim Hart on guitars and vocals, and husband and wife team, guitarist and vocalist Terry Woods (later a member of The Pogues) and vocalist and strings player Gay Woods. Their success and fame were secured by early hits: in 1973 they made it nearly to the top 10 with “Gaudete”, an a cappella recording of a traditional Latin Christmas carol from the 17th century, and in 1975 “All Around My Hat”, a traditional 19th century song about a sailor who goes to sea and returns to find their lover about to marry another man. sold like hotcakes and got them to number 5 in the charts. Their signature style is traditional folk songs set to modern instrumentation, with electric guitars and a rock beat, including popular songs like “Thomas the Rhymer”, “Black Jack Davey” and “Alison Gross”. They’ve also written many original songs – including the tracks on Wintersmith (see below). They are still performing, and released fiftieth anniversary greatest hits and live albums in 2019.
  • The album Wintersmith was released in October 2013, with a deluxe 2-disc version featuring four extra tracks and a live performance following in 2014 (this is the version Ben has). The story goes that Terry discovered folk music when a friend made him listen to the Steeleye Span track “Thomas the Rhymer”, and immediately wanted to find and listen to everything they’d ever done. Some sources name Maddy Prior as Terry’s favourite singer. Prior in turn is a big Pratchett fan. It’s not clear when they first met, but Steeleye Span played at Terry’s 60th birthday party in 2008, and a few years later Terry approached the band with the idea of making an album based on Wintersmith. Most of the sixteen songs are inspired directly by the novel, but there are also tracks drawing on The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky and I Shall Wear Midnight. Pratchett himself appears delivering a spoken word performance on the track “A Good Witch”, and was directly involved in the project, working with the band on the lyrics. Guitarist (and actor) Julian Littman, who joined the band in 2010 and wrote some of the songs for the album, noted that when appearing on stage with the band a year or so before his death Pratchett told the audience: “If I’d known it was going to be that good I’d have written a better book.” Ben loves it too, and as a fellow Steeleye Span fan, hopes to discuss it more fully on a future episode of the podcast, perhaps after we’ve covered I Shall Wear Midnight.
  • For more on Steeleye Span’s Wintersmith album, check out this 2024 article from Louder, “How a Terry Pratchett novel became a Steeleye Span album”.
  • When Ben says “What You Witch Is What You Get“, he is invoking the phrase WYSIWYG, an acronym for “What You See Is What You Get”. It was used mostly in the 80s and 90s in computing, to describe interfaces which showed you on the screen what the computer would produce on the printed page (or other non-digital output) – something which seemed miraculous at the time. Ben probably should have said “Witch You See Is Witch You Get”, but you can’t have ’em all. Pratchett made fun of the phrase in The Science of Discworld (see #Pratchat35, “Great Balls of Physics“) when, at the end of chapter five, Ridcully invokes “the ancient principle of WYGIWYGAINGW”: “What You Get Is What You’re Given And It’s No Good Whining”.
  • You can hear Ben’s thoughts about Nanny Ogg being more powerful than she appears in #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches“, about Wyrd Sisters. He mentions that book being “the first one”, i.e. the first in the witches series; that title might more properly belong to Equal Rites, though as only Granny Weatherwax appears, it’s certainly not the first book about the Lancre coven.
  • Terry’s favoured hat was a black, wide-brimmed Louisiana, often mistaken for a fedora. He wrote about his love of hats – including the specific brands and types he’s bought over the years – in the 2001 article “A Word About Hats” for the Sunday Telegraph Reveiw, which is collected in A Slip of the Keyboard.
  • The new Tooth Fairy is appointed in Hogfather. See #Pratchat26, “The Long Dark Mr Teatime of the Soul“, for more on that book, but we won’t spoil their identity here.
  • Both versions of the personification (or avatar) of Time appear in Thief of Time, discussed in #Pratchat48, “Lu-Tze in the Sky with Lobsang“.
  • Old Man Trouble is mentioned in Soul Music, Hogfather, Feet of Clay and Thief of Time. The Discworld Companion describes him as the personification of Murphy’s Law (i.e. “Whatever can go wrong, will.”) but he’s a reference to the Roundworld “Old Man Trouble”, a personification of problems or bad luck, thought by some to be a polite way of referring to the devil. He is best known from his appearance in American songs, especially the George and Ira Gershwin classic “I Got Rhythm” – the reason for Lord Downey thinking being able to carry a tune would keep him safe from Old Man Trouble – and the Fats Domino song “Old Man Trouble”.
  • Talisman: The Magical Quest Game is a board game originally designed by Robert Harris and published by UK games giant Games Workshop in 1983. In the game, players choose from a variety of fantasy hero characters, and roll dice to travel through a fantasy kingdom, encountering various dangers while attempting to find a Talisman which will allow them to travel into the centre of the board. If they can make it there and reach the Crown of Command, their character becomes ruler of the kingdom and they win the game. Apparently the original design wasn’t fantasy themed at all, but had the players take the roles of boys at a boarding school attempting to be prefects! The fourth edition, first released in 2008, is currently published by Pegasus Spiele. It’s one of those games most beloved by those with nostalgic memories of playing it as a teenager; Ben prefers games which aren’t quite so heavily reliant on the luck of the dice, but it continues to be be popular.
  • Honey Heist is one of Grant Howitt’s many one-page RPGs. It gained popularity in online RPG forums and then a bigger boost in fame when it was played by the cast of hugely popular roleplaying YouTube show Critical Role. You can get Honey Heist on the Rowan, Rook and Decard website, offered via a pay what you want (including nothing) model.
  • As depicted in the photo above, Ben’s handmade kakapo – the endangered ground parrot of New Zealand – was crafted by Sayraphim Lothian as part of their Journey project in 2014. You can find out more about the project on Sayraphim’s website.
  • We don’t have a photo of Garth’s Disreputable Dog and Mogett, but we can tell you these are animal characters from the Old Kingdom books, magical creatures who travel with their wizard masters. It is important that their collars remain “safely on”, but we won’t spoil the reasons why here.
  • A “Lazy Susan” is a turntable designed for use in the middle of a table to help serve food. Similar devices predate the name, which seems to first appear in the World War I period, though exactly where the name comes from is unclear.
  • Terciel and Elinor is, as Garth explains, a prequel to the Old Kingdom books; the titular characters are the parents of original protagonist Sabriel, who appears in the first novel Sabriel and its sequels Lirael and Abhorsen. Please note that when Garth says “this year”, we recorded this episode in December 2021.
  • Frogkisser is Garth’s funny 2017 novel aimed at a middle grade or young adult audience about the Princess Anya, who has the power to break curses with a kiss. She goes on the run when her evil step-parents want to take over the kingdom for good. On a Quest to save the kingdom, she is aided by “a loyal talking dog, a boy thief trapped in the body of a newt, and some extraordinarily mischievous wizards”…yes, I think we can see the Pratchett influence here.
  • Newt’s Emerald is Garth’s 2015 novel of Regency romance, spiced up with a bit of “fantasy of manners” – i.e. a magical take on the “comedy of manners” style of Restoration comedy novels. It follows the adventures of Lady “Newt” Truthful, who dresses as a man in order to recover the stolen jewel in her family’s collection: the Newington Emerald.
  • Who Watches The Watch is, in their own words, “A fun (but highly intellectual) podcast in which four pals read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, talk about left-wing politics and have a riotous good time while they’re about it.” It began in May 2020 and episodes are generally released every week or two. The original plan was to read the Watch books as a lead-in to discussing The Watch TV show, but after reading Guards! Guards! they decided to cover the Discworld more broadly. They also have a spin-off show, Immortal Incantations: Heartspell, in which the hosts – Chaz, Lucy, János and George – are writing their own fantasy novel. You can find out more about both shows on their Patreon page.

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat1 Notes and Errata

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Theses are the notes and errata for episode 1, “Boots Theory“, featuring guest Cal Wilson discussing the fifteenth Discworld novel, 1993’s Men at Arms.

  • We did indeed have Cal back to discuss Sourcery – see #Pratchat3, “You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind”. Cal also returned for our fiftieth episode, “Salt Rat Arsenic Heat“, to discuss Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook. Tragically Cal passed away unexpectedly in 2023; but a person’s not dead while their name is still spoken. GNU Cal Wilson.
  • For more on our decision to start with Men at Arms, see #Pratchat0, “And the Winner is…“, and also Liz’s post, “Let’s Start From the Very Beginning (but not actually)”.
  • Men at Arms is the fifteenth Discworld novel, and the second to feature the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. Ben does now write these things down (and, indeed, has a very comprehensive spreadsheet).
  • What Ben meant about the copyright on “Discworld” is that this is the first book in which “Discworld” appears on the imprint page as a registered trademark. Intellectual property (or IP) law is a complex topic, and can differ greatly from region to region, but to cover the basics:
    • Copyright (denoted by ©) is the protection of original works from being copied or otherwise used without the creator’s permission. This mostly applies to literary, dramatic, musical or other artistic work (including visual art), often lasts for a fixed period (the creators’ life plus 70 years in Australia), and is automatically applied without a creator having to do anything. A creator can extend it to others, as Terry later did by assigning copyright to he and his wife Lyn, and then their company, Dunmanifestin Limited. Copyright doesn’t protect ideas, only the specific expression of ideas, which is where some of the complexity comes in.
    • A trademark (denoted by ™️ or ®) is a “sign” that shows a product was made by a certain person or company. The sign can be almost anything: a word, a specific colour or style of packaging, a logo, a design, even a sound. It’s an old concept, similar to the “maker’s mark” used by artisans that is often mentioned in Antique Roadshow on silverware, jewellery, ceramics and so on. Anyone can start using the ™️ symbol, which suggests a common law trademark, but the ® denotes a registered trademark which is more easily enforceable by law. These are managed by government agencies (e.g. IP Australia). Also worthy of note is that if you have a trademark, you have to actively be using it, and you must defend it if someone else starts using it, or you will likely lose it.
    • It didn’t come up in this episode, but there are some complexities involved if a copyright belongs to a company and that company ceases to exist without its assets being transferred to another company or person. In the UK this can mean ownership of a work transfers half to the original creators, and half to the Crown, which has led to speculation that King Charles now owns half the rights to the Discworld videogames – though this has yet to be resolved…
  • You’ve probably heard of the Thames, but the Yarra is the common name for the river Birrarung or Biarrarung Marr, which flows through the heart of Melbourne, or Narrm. It runs for nearly 250 kilometres from the Yarra Ranges in inland Victoria to the ocean in Port Phillip Bay, though its course and nature has been changed extensively since European colonisation. It was previously nicknamed “the upside down river” due to the golden-brown muddy colouring it acquires by the time it flows through Melbourne. This is also the product of colonisation, as land clearing and mining have increased the erosion of surrounding fine clay into the water.
  • The negative reviewer of Pratchett’s work to which Ben refers was Northern Irish poet and literary critic Tom Paulin, who appeared on BBC2’s Late Review television program and derided Pratchett, writing him off as a populist: “… selling thousands of copies – a complete amateur – doesn’t even write in chapters – hasn’t a clue.” This seems to have been in around 1993 or 1994; Pratchett proudly reproduced the quote in the front many of his books, with the earliest example Ben can find being in the 1995 Corgi paperback of Interesting Times.
  • Terry Pratchett’s debut novel, The Carpet People, was first published in 1971, when Pratchett was 23 years old. However an earlier version of the story was serialised as some of his very first published fiction in the Bucks’ Free Press in 1965, when he was only 17! Most of the instalments of that version appear in the second collection of his early stories, Dragons at Crumbling Castle, published shortly after Pratchett’s death in 2015.
  • While the Vimes Boots Theory is articulated in the way of Pratchett, the idea behind it is of course not new. We’d like to thank Jeanette Hall on Twitter, who shared a link to an earlier version of the Boots Theory! In 1914, Irish house painter and sign writer Robert Noonan wrote published the semi-autobiographical novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, “Being the story of twelve months in Hell, told by one of the damned, and written down by Robert Tressell.” (Tressell was the pen-name used by Noonan.) Based on his life working in Hastings between 1906 and 1910, the book contains a passage about the price of stockings and coal and how they are the means by which “the working classes are robbed.” We’ve included an excerpt below, but you can read the original text at the Union History website shared by Jeanette. You can also see the original manuscript! (This feels especially poignant because Ben’s own Great Great Grandfather was a painter in Belfast until his death in 1910 prompted the McKenzies to migrate to Australia.)

Although their incomes are the lowest, they are compelled to buy the most expensive articles – that is, the lowest-priced articles. Everybody knows that good clothes, boots or furniture are really the cheapest in the end, although they cost more money at first; but the working classes can seldom or never afford to buy good things; they have to buy cheap rubbish which is dear at any price.

Six weeks previously Owen bought a pair of second-hand boots for three shillings and they were now literally falling to pieces. Nora’s shoes were in much the same condition, but, as she said, it did not matter so much about hers because there was no need for her to go out if the weather were not fine.

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell, 1914
  • Also of note: the Vimes Boots Theory influenced the work of UK equality and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who in January 2022 created the Vimes Boots Poverty Index. The Index was intended to be a record of the prices of staple foods and other essentials over time, to demonstrate the disproportionate impact of rising prices on the poor. It was also specifically meant to show that government reports which only take inflation into account are inadequate, since they are not an accurate indicator of the way goods prices change. The Pratchett Estate – particularly Rhianna Pratchett – wholeheartedly endorsed this use of Vimes’ name. In the end, media and social media attention for the idea (using the hashtag #VimesBootsIndex) was enough to persuade the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) to change how they calculated cost of living expenses, largely making the compilation of the Index unnecessary. You can read more about it on the L-Space wiki.
  • Scooby-Doo is a children’s adventure show which began in 1969 with the Hanna-Barbera animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! It centres on a group of mystery-solving teenagers: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers and Shaggy’s dog, a Great Dane named Scooby-Doo. Sometimes calling themselves “Mystery Inc.”, the group travel America in a mini-van called the Mystery Machine investigating supposedly supernatural occurrences. Famously most of their adventures end by revealing that the ghost, monster or other weirdness was a hoax all along, perpetrated by an old man in a costume. The show was hugely influential – not least because it helped fill the gap left after more violent superhero cartoons of the 60s like Space Ghost and The Herculoids were cancelled following protests from parent groups. There have been numerous animated series and films, and even live-action films, since 1969, and more are still being made. The characters are not usually explicitly romantically linked; Cal references a reboot that had genius Velma and dorky hippie Shaggy dating, and this has happened at least a couple of times. They are shown to try dating in both the 2010 animated series Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated and the 2011 live-action film Scooby-Doo: Curse of the Lake Monster (a sequel to the 2009 reboot of the previous live-action films from 2002 and 2004). For the record, in both versions they quickly realise they don’t have a spark and remain “just friends”.
  • It is a 1986 horror novel by Stephen King in which a group of teenagers face a nameless evil creature, the titular “It”, which changes shape to evoke fear in its victims. It primarily appears in the shape of a clown named “Pennywise the Dancing Clown”. In a memorable sequence from early in the novel – replicated in both the 1990 TV mini-series adaptation and the first of the two-part film adaptations in 2017 – the Clown appears in the town sewer. In both versions Pennywise has primarily white-face makeup, not dissimilar to Paul Kidby’s version of Dr Whiteface. (“It” was portrayed by Tim Curry in 1990, and Bill Skarsgård in 2017.)
  • 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. In the UK, the tradition can be traced back to Stan Built in the 1930s, though most of his original eggs were damaged or destroyed. In 1988 (or 1984 according to some sources), Clown Bluey, Chairman of Clowns International at the time, resurrected the tradition. This mini documentary from 2017 features Debbie Smith, the Clown Egg Gallery artist from 2010 to 2023. Clowns International still seems to run the egg gallery, with their website including a form to order a pair of eggs (one for the gallery and one for you), now painted by current artist Julie Proctor. So we’re sorry again, clowns. (Thanks to Maia in Michigan, who put us onto some sources via Twitter which helped us update this entry!)
  • Ben uses commedia dell’arte more-or-less correctly.
  • 99% Invisible is a podcast all about design, hosted by Roman Mars. The episode about the invention of cellulose mentioned by Ben while discussing the Alchemist’s Guild is “The Post-Billiards Age” from May 2015. (This episode will get mentioned again in #Pratchat10, “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Broomstick”.)
  • There are indeed ghosts on the Discworld, appearing in several of the novels. We’ll be meeting some of them fairly soon, as one plays a major role in Wyrd Sisters. (See #Pratchat4, “Enter Three Wytches”.)
  • 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 try to keep our spreadsheet handy in future episodes to avoid such basic mistakes.)
  • “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. (See #Pratchat14, “City-State Lampoon’s Disc-Wide Vacation”.) In fact he first shows up when the Watch does, in Guards! Guards! (See #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch”.)
  • 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 do get a little of his backstory in Night Watch; see #Pratchat54, “The Land Before Vimes”.
  • 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. See #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King”, for the creation of at least a temporary guild of Watchmen in The Fifth Elephant.

#Pratchat76 Notes and Errata

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These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 76, “Real Men Don’t Drink…Decaf”, discussing the 2003 standalone Discworld novel Monstrous Regiment with guest Freya Daly Sadgrove.

Iconographic Evidence

Here’s “how is prangent formed”, the most famous YouTube compilation of misspelled Yahoo Answers questions about being pregnant, from 21 October 2016. While it’s mostly a bit of fun, it’s important to remember these were all asked by real people who had real fears and worries, just no way to edit their hastily (and perhaps secretly) typed questions. The US has a lot to answer for when it comes to sex (and indeed general) education…

Here’s that Traffic Accident Commission ad we mentioned, but please be warned, it’s pretty intense (though not gory).

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is a bit of a mash-up of two ideas: first, Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, the 1982 book by Bruce Feirstein satirising American ideas of masculinity (and which we last mentioned in our episode about The Unadulterated Cat, “The Cat in the Prat”). The second is another riff on the classic vampire line “I don’t drink…wine”, originally from the 1931 film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi (though the original line was “I never drink…wine”). Just to be clear: we don’t think there’s anything wrong with drinking decaf, or believe in the idea of a “real man”. You’re a man if you think you are; that’s how gender works.
  • “Let’s Get Down to Business” is the first line of the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from the 1998 Disney animated film Mulan. Mulan is an adaptation of a Chinese folk story from around the 4th to 6th centuries BCE about Hua Mulan, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to fulfil her family’s conscription obligations, saving her father from being forced to join the army. She goes on to win great battles and achieve great fame. In the film, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” is sung by Mulan’s Captain, Li Shang (played by BD Wong, but sung by Donny Osmond!), during a training montage for Mulan and her fellow fresh recruits.
  • Diana Wynne Jones (1934-2011) was a British fantasy children’s author. As one of Liz’s other favourite authors, we’ve mentioned her a lot – and one of these days we’ll do an episode or more about her books. Her most famous works include the Chrestomanci series about magical parallel universes, and Howl’s Moving Castle. The titular Howl is a mighty wizard, but the protagonist of the story is Sophie, the eldest daughter of a hat shop owner, who is cursed with old age by the Witch of the Wastes. Sophie gets a job as a cleaner for the wizard Howl, and makes a bargain with his fire demon, Calcifer, that he will restore her youth if she can free him from his contract to the wizard. It was very succesfully (if very loosely) adapted into a film by Hayao Miyazaki for Studio Ghibli in 2004.
  • The panel featuring Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones was “Whose Fantasy” at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1988. (Ben found it after we wondered if the two were friends in #Pratchat46, “The Helen Green Preservation Society”, and we mentioned it more recently in #Pratchat72, “The Masked Dancer”). It was chaired by Neil Gaiman and also features John Harrison and Geoff Ryman.
  • You can read the full text of the Daily Express review of Monstrous Regiment on Colin Smythe’s web page for the book. It opens with: “Not so long ago in a pub far, far, away Terry Pratchett announced that he had discovered an interesting fact. In the American Civil War more than 300 women had enlisted in the army dressed as men. There may have been more. These were just one ones who told people about it afterwards.”
  • Questionable Content (QC for short) is a long-running webcomic written and illustrated by American-Canadian cartoonist Jeph Jacques. It started in 2003, and is a slice-of-life story about indie rock fan Martin Reed and friends, set in a slightly futuristic world where artificial intelligence and advanced cybernetics are commonplace. At the time of writing it’s had more than 5,200 instalments! Elliot is a character introduced in 2011, an employee at a bakery first visited by Martin in Comic 1,845. Like Paul Perks, he’s a big but gentle man.
  • We previously met the small-but-officious Nuggan in the “illustrated Discworld fable” The Last Hero, as discussed in #Pratchat55, “Mr Doodle, the Man on the Moon”.
  • For the curious, you can find a list of Abominations Unto Nuggan mentioned in this book (and elsewhere – mainly The Last Hero and The Compleat Discworld Atlas) at the L-Space Wiki.
  • For reference, the members of the Monstrous Regiment are:
    • Lieutenant Blouse (no first name given; later promoted to much higher rank)
    • Sergeant Jack Jackrum (no other name given; later promoted to Sergeant Major)
    • Corporal Strappi (later revealed to (probably?) be a Captain and a “political”)
    • Private Oliver “Ozzer” Perks (Polly; later promoted to Sergeant)
    • Private Maladicta (Maladict)
    • Private Carborundum (Jade)
    • Private Igor (Igorina)
    • Private “Tonker” Halter (Magda)
    • Private “Shufti” Manickle (Betty)
    • Private “Wazzer” Goom (Alice)
    • Private “Lofty” Tewt (Tilda)
  • Ben gives a short account of The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women in the footnote, but if you want to read it, the full text is available via Project Goodmountain – er, Gutenberg.
  • We first heard about Terry Pratchett’s 2014 interview at the Wheeler Centre during the recording of #Pratchat26, “The Long Dark Mr Teatime of the Soul“ – our guest, Michael Williams, was director of the Centre at the time, and was the interviewer for the event. His story about making a faux pas – and Terry’s reaction – are included in the third episode of our subscriber bonus podcast, Ook Club. The full discussion, titled “Imagination, Not Intelligence, Made Us Human”, is available via YouTube. There’s a lot of good stuff in it! Pratchett mentions researching the history of women fighting and living as men at “a nice little place in London run by ladies who like other ladies very much indeed”; this is around the 31:30 mark.
  • “Sweet Polly Oliver” (also known as “Pretty Polly Oliver”) is song #367 in the Roud folk song index. It comes from around 1840 or earlier, and the first lines are “As sweet Polly Oliver lay musing in bed / A sudden strange fancy came into her head.” As Liz mentions, in the song Polly is following her lover, whom she eventually finds promoted to Captain and wounded; the doctors give up on him, but she nurses him back to health and they get married.
  • There are many other references to real protest and folk songs in the book; here are some of the folk songs:
    • “The World Turned Upside Down” – a British protest song from the 1640s, railing against restrictions placed on the celebration of Christmas by the British Parliament. A long-standing but unlikely story is that it was played by the British army band when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to the Americans after the Battle of Yorktown, hence the Hamilton song “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)”. (Usually the band would play a song from the victor’s nation, but supposedly George Washington refused this tradition and told them to play a British song.)
    • “The Devil Shall Be My Sergeant” – a reference to “The Rogue’s March”, a song which was once traditionally played when drumming a disgraced solider out of the army. It had various sets of unofficial lyrics, many of which included the line “the Divil shall be me sergeant”. When it was no longer used officially by armies, it was played as “rough music” – yes, that was a thing on Roundworld, both in a similar sense as in I Shall Wear Midnight (see #Pratchat66, “Ol’ No Eyes is Back”), and more literally as a tune to shame followers of unpopular causes.
    • “Johnny Has Gone for a Solider” – an Irish folk song popular during the American Revolutionary War.
    • “The Girl I Left Behind Me” – Roud index #262, also known as “The Girl I Left Behind”. This is an English folk song from Elizabethan times, traditionally sung when soldiers marched off to war or a naval vessel set sail. It’s also the source of the lyric “Her golden hair in ringlets fair” which Igor quotes when coming up with excuses for Polly to have her old hair in her bag.
    • “Lisbon” or “William and Nancy” or “William and Polly” – #551 in the Roud index, this is possibly the song that Jackrum mentions when explaining the “Cheesemongers” nickname, which begins with the line “’Twas on a Monday morning, all in the month of May”. It’s sung by a sailor, William, who’s about to sail for Lisbon, and is leaving his pregnant lover, Nancy or Polly, behind. Nancy writes back to him saying she’ll disguise herself as a man so she can sail with him and save him from the terrors of the navy. The rest of the song doesn’t really match Jackrum’s description, which mashes up a whole lot of different bawdy folk tunes. There’s also “Dashing Away With the Smoothing Iron”, #869 in the Roud index, which begins with the first half of the line; it’s about a man repeatedly admiring a woman while she’s doing her ironing, and was the inspiration for Flanders and Swann’s “The Gas-Man Cometh”.
  • We read The Last Continent way back in 2020 in #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land”. The Last Continent is the twenty-second Discworld book, published in 1998, nine books and four years and four months before Monstrous Regiment. (Pratchett was still publishing two books a year at the time.)
  • Traditionally, tailors do indeed ask if gentlemen “dress to the left or right”, but stories conflict over whether this is because they intend to make said gentleman’s trousers more roomy on that side, or whether they just ask to avoid any awkward moments while taking inside leg measurements.
  • There have been many Roundworld equivalents of the Nugganite Working Girl Schools; some of the most infamous were the Magdalene Laundries run by the Catholic Church in Ireland. These were filled with so-called “fallen women” – mostly, but not exclusively, sex workers and pregnant girls – who were forced to work for free and suffered abuse at the hands of the staff.
  • Indulgences are a practice of the Catholic church. Ben is referring to “full indulgence”, a complete forgiveness for all sins offered to Crusaders, but regular indulgences are the reason for the minor penances of saying a number of “Hail Mary”s in order to be forgiven for sins confessed. When they were introduced the idea was that previous Catholics had lived such perfect lives that there’s a “treasury of merit” within the church, allowing them to give out lesser penances than the older, much harsher ones.
  • Ogres having layers is a reference to the 2001 DreamWorks animated film Shrek, in which the titular ogre (played by Mike Myers with a Scottish accent) explains to a talking Donkey (played by Eddie Murphy) that he’s not just the awful smelly monster that everyone assumes: “Ogres are like onions. They have layers. You peel them back and you find something else.” The film is (very loosely) based on a 1990 picture book by William Steig.
  • Maladict’s hallucinations make many general references to the tropes of Vietnam War films, but the main specific one we could spot was from Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987). In the film, the character Joker (played by Matthew Modine) writes “BORN TO KILL” on his hat, which matches the undead Maladict’s “BORN TO DIE”.
  • Matchbox Twenty are an American rock band from Orlando, Florida, fronted by singer and keyboard player Rob Thomas. Their debut 1996 post-grunge album Yourself or Somebody Like You was a massive hit, including the song “Push”, most recently seen being sung by various versions of Ken in the 2023 movie Barbie.
  • Blink-182 are a Californian rock band formed in 1992 whose third album, Enema of the State (1999), was probably their biggest success, with the singles “What’s My Age Again?” and “All the Small Things” doing well in many English-speaking countries at the time.
  • We last spoke of Danger 5 in #Pratchat52, “A Near-Watch Experience”. Created for SBS in 2012, Danger 5 is an action-comedy from the Australian comedy team Dinosaur. The first season is a parody of old school “men’s adventure” magazines and TV shows, with the titular “Danger 5” team repeatedly thwarting (though failing to capture or kill) Adolf Hitler in an absurd 1960s version of World War II. The second season from 2015 moves the team, Hitler and the target of their parody into the 1980s. You might still find it on Blu-Ray or DVD if you’re lucky; it was released by Madman Entertainment, but isn’t widely available. It was on Netflix in several territories for a while, but not any more; you can at least find clips, cast commentaries and even the prequel episode “The Diamond Girls” on the Dinosaur YouTube channel. In 2020 there was a new “Only on Audible” podcast series, Danger 5: Stereo Adventures. Dinosaur, or at least some of their creative team, have since created the animated series Koala Man for Hulu (it’s on Disney+ in Australia).

A few more notes coming soon!

Thanks for reading our notes! If we missed anything, or you have questions, please let us know.

#Pratchat76 – Real Men Don’t Drink…Decaf

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Kiwi writer and poet Freya Daly Sadgrove joins Liz and Ben from Sydney as we adjust our uniforms and march into the horrible realities of war (class, gender and literal) to discuss Terry Pratchett’s thirty-first Discworld novel, 2003’s Monstrous Regiment.

Polly Perks has cut off her hair, put on some trousers and joined the army under the name of Oliver, all so she can find her strong but gentle-minded brother, Paul. Is soon turns out that her regiment, led by the infamous Sergeant Jackrum who swears to look after “his little lads”, is quite possibly the last one left in all of Borogravia. In her search for Paul, Polly will have to deal with the enemy, the free press, a vampire who might kill for a coffee, Sam Vimes, and The Secret: she might not be the only impostor in the ranks…

Coming in between the first two Tiffany Aching novels, Monstrous Regiment – which is also monstrous in size, possibly Pratchett’s second longest novel – is the last truly standalone Discworld story. It introduces a wonderful cast of characters who, sadly, we’ll never see again. Not only that, but it gives major supporting roles to old favourites Sam Vimes and William de Worde, with a side order of Otto von Chriek! Critics at the time compared it to Evelyn Waugh, Jonathan Swift and All Quiet on the Western Front, and it remains one of Pratchett’s most beloved and celebrated novels – both for what it says about war, and about gender.

Did you know The Secret before you read Monstrous Regiment? What’s it like re-reading it when you do know? How do you feel about the ending(s)? How does Pratchett’s handling of gender hold up against our modern understanding? What would you prohibit, in Nugganite fashion? And would you rather have a type of food or clothing named after you? Get on board the conversation for this episode with the hashtag #Pratchat76.

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Freya Daly Sadgrove (she/her) is a pākehā writer and performance poet from New Zealand, currently living in Sydney. Her first book of poetry, Head Girl, was published in 2020 by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and she is one of the creators of New Zealand live poetry showcase Show Ponies, which presents poets like they’re pop stars. Her first full-length live show, 2023’s Whole New Woman, blended poetry with live rock music. Freya has a website at freyadalysad.com (though it might not be available at the moment), and you can also find her as @FreyaDalySad on Twitter.

As usual you’ll find comprehensive notes and errata for this episode on our website, including lots of photos of the components we discuss.

Next episode we’re discussing two short stories about animals: “Hollywood Chickens” (found in A Blink of the Screen) and “From the Horse’s Mouth” (from A Stroke of the Pen). Our guest will be the author of The Animals in That Country, Laura Jean McKay. Get your questions in by mid-April 2024 by replying to us or using the hashtag #Pratchat77 on social media, or email us at chat@pratchatpodcast.com.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.

#Pratchat67 – The Three-Elf Problem

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This month we welcome back the very game Steve Lamattina as we put on our witch’s hats, grab our brooms and head out into Lancre to solve problems in Martin Wallace’s The Witches, the fourth official Discworld board game.

As Tiffany Aching or one of her fellow apprentice witches, you’ll run around Lancre solving problems big and small with headology and magic, helped by an assortment of local characters. But it’s not just about getting the highest score – you’ll also need to watch each other’s backs or everyone in the kingdom could lose! Be sure to stop and share tea, or you might end up a cackler…

Which witch is your favourite? How does The Witches rank against the other Discworld board games? Do you see it as a great family game, a mediocre co-op challenge, or something in between? Who do you wish had been included as a card or playable character? And would you use the game to introduce your friends to board games, the Discworld, or both?

Check out the episode notes for pictures of the game components, and use the hashtag #Pratchat67 on social media to join in the conversation on this one!

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Steve Lamattina is a writer and editor whose work spans film, music, education and technology. He was once CEO of the youth publishing company Express Media, whom we still stan, and currently works for the Victorian Department of Education. You can find him on Twitter as @steve_lamattina.

Next month we’re going back…back to nearly the beginning! Yes, for #Pratchat68 we’re setting the procrastinator coordinates for 1981 as we read and discuss Pratchett’s proto-Discworld sci-fi novel Strata. It’s a nice short book to get in before we tackle The Long Utopia in July… Use the hashtag #Pratchat68 to send us questions about Strata!

You’ll find the full notes and errata for this episode on our web site.

Want to help us get to the end of our six(ish) year mission and read every Pratchett book – and more? You can support us with a tip, or a subscription for as little as $2 a month, and that’s cuttin’ our own throats! See our Support Us page for details.