non-Discworld – Page 5

#Pratchat9 Notes and Errata

8 July 2018 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode nine, “Upscalator to Heaven“, featuring guest Amie Kaufman, discussing the 1989 book Truckers – the first of the Bromeliad trilogy.

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

#Pratchat20 Notes and Errata

8 June 2019 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the show notes and errata for episode 20, “The Thing Beneath My Wings” featuring guest Dr Lili Wilkinson, discussing the third and final book of the Bromeliad, Wings.

The episode title puns the song “Wind Beneath My Wings”, best known from the Bette Midler version released in 1988 for the soundtrack to her film Beaches. It was written by American songwriters Jeff Silbar and Larry Henley in 1982 and recorded many times. Australian singer Kamahl was the first to record it in 1982, but didn’t release it as he felt it wasn’t right for the country and western album he recorded it for!
The supersonic passenger aircraft Concorde was a joint project of the United Kingdom and France, and operated between 1976 and 2003 by Air France and British Airways. With a top speed of over twice the speed of sound, it could cross the Atlantic in half the time of other airlines, and boasted luxury service for its passengers. But it was loud, environmentally unsound, and very expensive, so it was never adopted by other airlines, and the planes were eventually decommissioned. The thing about the gap in the plane was mostly true: due to the heat generated by the extreme speeds, the fuselage would expand by as much as 30 centimetres at top speeds. The design accommodated this, manifesting in a gap in the inner wall between segments of the cockpit. One pilot left his hat in the gap deliberately during the final flight of one of the aircraft.
The Concorde did indeed have a very safe operational record for most of its history, with only one fatal accident in the year 2000. In May of that year, an Air France Concorde hit debris on the runway during takeoff; its fuel tank was punctured and the aircraft crashed into a hotel not far from the airport, killing more than 100 people, including everyone on board. The entire Concorde fleet was grounded for over a year following the crash, though they weren’t the only aircraft found at fault: the debris had fallen off a Continental Airlines DC-10 which had been shoddily repaired, and the airline ended up paying a large portion of the compensation.
Lindsay Lohan stars in the 1998 version of The Parent Trap, a remake of the 1961 original, in turn based on the novel Das doppelte Lottchen by German author Erich Kästner. Lohan plays a pair of identical twins separated soon after birth, who discover each other when coincidentally sent to the same camp. They decide their parents are still in love with each other and plot to get them back together. The Concorde is an important plot device near the end of the film.
Time-Flight was a story in Peter Davison’s first season as the Doctor, and immediately followed Earthshock, the story in which a major character died. While it was reasonably popular at the time, with record viewing figures for its first episode, it has become loathed among fans, often featuring in the bottom five in poll rankings of every Doctor Who story. No doubt it’ll feature on Lucas Testro’s podcast Doctor Who and the Episodes of Death any day now…
Concorde had 17 separate fuel tanks, only four of which were in the fuselage; most were in the wings, with a few more at the front and back. It was unique in that it pumped fuel between the tanks during flight to shift the aircraft’s centre of gravity during supersonic flight. The engines were created by Bristol Siddeley Engines and French aerospace company Snecma; Bristol Siddeley was acquired by Rolls Royce during the development of Concorde.
The UK didn’t ban smoking on international flights until 1997, so for most of Concorde’s operational life smoking would have been allowed on board. Australia was in fact the first country to ban smoking on all domestic flights, in 1987; smoking on international flights to and from Australia was banned in 1990, a year after the US banned smoking on domestic flights. (They banned smoking on international flights in 2000.) Major pressure for the ban came from the flight attendants unions, who first campaigned for it in the 1960s.
The dessert Ben is trying to think of is junket, also known as curds and whey, which is made with milk and rennet. A powdered form, coloured and flavoured, used to be available; you just had to add milk.
It’s actually Angalo who was getting into The Spy With No Trousers; we hope he sees our Twitter version, which we hope to release soon under the hashtag #thespywithnotrousers. (We’ll compile it and post it on the web site, too.)
You can find out more about the “Satanic panic” of the 1980s in the first episode of Let’s Talk About Sects, Lili’s YouTube series about cults and new religious movements.
Scott Westefield is an author, most famously of the YA series Uglies and Leviathan.
As previously mentioned in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“, in James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar the alien Na’vi have a tendril-like organ which allows them to to “plug in” to various animals on their planet, including the pterodactyl-like ikran, and…er…control them? It’s weird and gross, and not the sort of things Nomes – or Pratchett – would be into.
Vatican II, more formally known as the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, is the most recent ecumenical council – a convening of senior church officials to discuss church doctrine and practice. It actually occurred much earlier than the 1980s, from 1962 to 1965, and resulted in many changes meant to help the church fit in with the modern world.
In 2006 – well after the publication of Wings in 1990 – then Senator for Alaska, Republican Ted Stevens, was arguing against the idea of net neutrality. He was trying to explain his position that some commercial network traffic should have reserved bandwidth on the Internet, but didn’t do the best job. He said: “the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material…” He was widely mocked for this clumsy (if not entirely inaccurate) analogy, and “a series of tubes” became a popular meme.
The West Wing Weekly, part of the Radiotopia podcast network, is an episode-by-episode discussion of the political drama The West Wing. It’s hosted by Joshua Malina (who played Will Bailey in the show) and Hrishikesh Hirway (host of the Song Exploder music podcast), and has featured many actors and crew from the series, including creator Aaron Sorkin. As of recording, they were approaching the end of the show’s penultimate sixth season.
The Quentin Blake-esque covers of the current edition of the Bromeliad books are by Mark Beech, who also did the internal art for the hardback illustrated edition of Truckers (this is the one Ben likes a lot). Beech also did covers for the most recent editions of The Carpet People and the Johnny Maxwell books, and covers and internal illustrations for the collections of Pratchett’s early short stories for children: Dragons at Crumbling Castle, The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner, Father Christmas’s Fake Beard and (released in 2020) The Time-Travelling Caveman.
The Care Bears started out as characters on greeting cards, and became a hugely successful line of plush toys and animated characters in television (originally from 1985 to 1988) and film (beginning with The Care Bears Movie in 1985). They are magical beings who personify various emotions, with each bearing (sorry) a symbol on their belly representing their feeling. They live in “the Kingdom of Caring”, hidden amongst the clouds, which contains their home, Care-a-lot, and the Forest of Feelings, home to the Care Bear Cousins (similar characters who aren’t bears). The Care Bears and Cousins try to guide children to be their best and deal with challenging emotions, while also defeating villains like Professor Coldheart who seek to eliminate caring from the world. Their main magical power is the “Care Bear Stare”, which manifests as coloured beams of light from their belly symbols that infuse their target with warm feelings.
The animated film Ben was remembering was GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords, aka Machine Men Movie: Battle of the Rock Lords. (The toys on which the film is based, originally Machine Robo (マシンロボ) in Japan, were known as “Machine Men” in Australia; in the US, they were incorporated into the broader GoBots line of toys from Tonka.) While its voice cast wasn’t quite up to the standard of Transformers: The Movie – which featured Leonard Nimoy and Orson Wells – it did star Roddy McDowall, Telly Savalas and Margot Kidder! Both films were released in 1986, though only to very limited cinemas in Australia, so Ben was lucky to see it.

These are the show notes and errata for episode 15, “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And We Feel Nice and Accurate)“, featuring guests Dr Jennifer Beckett and Amy Gray, discussing the 1990 novel Good Omens.

For anyone baffled by our 90s film references – Angelina Jolie played teenage hacker Kate “Acid Burn” Libby in Hackers (1995), while Nicholas Cage is…well, he’s Nicholas Cage. Important films from Cage’s 1990s era include Wild at Heart (1990), The Rock (1996), Face/Off (1997) and Con Air (1997), the last of those also with Steve Buscemi. Ben’s joke references Steve Buscemi’s appearance in 30 Rock as a former cop who went undercover in a high school as an adult; the scene of him dressed as a teenager is the basis for a meme.
The Bible doesn’t include any direct mention of fallen angels – the idea mainly comes from Jewish traditions. Genesis 6:1-4 contains mention of “nephilim” and the “sons of God”, which may mean fallen angels; nephilim is usually translated as “giant”, and some interpretations of Genesis see them as the offspring of fallen angels and humans.
“Ineffable” comes to us from Middle English, via Old French, but ultimately is from the Latin ineffabilis, “not utterable”.
Ben is very rusty with his Welsh; while “f” is pronounced “v” in Welsh, “ff” is pronounced “f”, so ineffable would be largely pronounced the same as in English. The voiced “th” sound is written “dd”.
Queen formed in 1970, and their Greatest Hits album was first released in 1981. Ben is off when suggesting most of the tracks on it come from News of the World (1977) – in fact it only has two from that album, with more coming from The Game (1980) and Jazz (1978). Incidentally, the earliest “greatest hits” album is probably “Johnny’s Greatest Hits”, originally released by Johnny Mathis in 1958.
As we’ve previously mentioned, 1990 was Terry’s biggest year in terms of output: he published five books (Eric, Moving Pictures, Good Omens, Diggers and Wings). 1989 was no slouch either, with four (Pyramids, Guards! Guards!, Truckers and The Unadulterated Cat), while in 1991 he settled down a bit and only published two (Reaper Man and Witches Abroad).
Metalocalypse is an Adult Swim animated comedy series about the death metal band Dethklok, who are so phenomenally successful they are the world’s seventh-largest economy and the world bends to their whim, fearful of their almost supernatural influence. They are opposed by an Illuminati-like cabal called The Tribunal. The show ran for four seasons and featured Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell in the regular cast (though most of the band members were played by series creators Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha).
Being There (1979, dir. Hal Ashby) is an adaptation of the 1970 Jerzy Kosiński novel about a mysterious and simple gardener named Chance, played in the film by Peter Sellers. When his employer dies, Chance is forced out into the world where his gardening expertise is mistaken for wisdom and he ends up being tipped as the next President of the United States, though he remains clueless about everything that happens to him, including the sexual advances of a wealthy socialite played by Shirley MacLaine.
Jen has perfected her Cumbrian accent by watching the 1987 film Withnail and I, written by Bruce Robinson and starring Richard E Grant (Withnail) and Paul McGann (Marwood/I) as a pair of out-of-work actors at the end of the 1960s. The pair try to bring themselves out of their drug-induced stupor by going on holiday in a country house in Penrith owned by Withnail’s uncle. Jen’s line is a mother giving directions to find her son, a local farmer from whom the pair hope to buy supplies after explaining “we’ve gone on holiday by mistake”. (It’s one of Ben’s favourite films.)
Would you believe we previously talked about 1965 US spy sitcom Get Smart in episode 7A, The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch? The show’s protagonist Maxwell Smart (aka Agent 86) is both a highly competent spy and a complete nincompoop. He was played by Don Adams in the original TV series, and Steve Carell in the 2008 movie version.
The idea of childhood as a recently invented concept was first popularised by French historian Philippe Ariès in his 1960 book, Centuries of Childhood, where he found that many of the major distinctions between children and adults were introduced during the 17th century by thinkers including John Locke. Teenagers began to be treated as a distinct group in the modern sense in the 1940s and 50s, though the word “teen” dates back several hundred years (“adolescent” is even older). The idea of “tweens” – kids aged between 10 and 13 – gained popularity in the 1990s, but the word itself was introduced in the 1920s.
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are fraternal twin actors who became famous in the 1987 American sitcom Full House, together playing the character Michelle Tanner from the age of nine months to nine years. (It’s common practice for twins or multiple babies to play infant characters, to help comply with child labour laws.) From the age of seven they began to appear on-screen together in various films produced by their own production company Dualstar – originally owned by their parents – and they were a massive hit with pre-teen audiences.
Pratchett’s three Johnny Maxwell books – whose protagonists feel a bit like the Them grown up a little – came out in 1992, 1993 and 1996, while as mentioned above the Bromeliad books came out around the same time as Good Omens. He didn’t write another book specifically for children until the first younger Discworld novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, in 2001.
Padmé Amidala, (elected) Queen of the planet Naboo, is one of the protagonists of the Star Wars prequel trilogy of films, beginning with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 1999. In that film, Padmé meets the young Anakin Skywalker, whom she would later marry; as Weird Al Yankovic put it in his song “The Saga Begins”: “Do you see him hitting on the Queen? / Though he’s just nine and she’s fourteen”. (Actor Jake Lloyd was ten when he played Anakin, while Natalie Portman as Amidala was 18.)
Jen’s description of “the grey one” in original UK version of mockumentary sitcom The Office is, in fact, Gareth, as portrayed by Mackenzie Crook. The character is a very unflattering comparison, though Crook himself has gone on to greater success with roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean films and Game of Thrones, and more recently created, directs, writes and stars in his own BBC sitcom, The Dectorists, with Toby Jones.
We previously talked about fictional diarist Adrian Mole in episode seven, “All the Fingle Ladies“. Bert Baxter is a very old, very rude and very filthy communist and old-age pensioner whom Adrian meets and befriends through his school’s Good Samaritan program. He lives to be well over 100, having sworn not to die before the fall of capitalism.
Oliver Stone (Scarface) and Michael Bay (Armageddon, Transformers) are film directors known for their action-packed sequences (and, in the case of Bay, lens flare). Between them we agree that they would put together a pretty spectacular paintball sequence, though Ben reckons you’d have a better chance of knowing what was actually happening if it was Stone at the helm.
The Doctor Who story with the motorcyclist alien (called a “slab”) is Smith and Jones, the first episode of David Tennant’s second season. New companion Martha Jones, a trainee medical doctor, sarcastically asks if the slab is from the planet Zovirax, in reference to a series of commercials for the real-world drug Zovirax in which a motorcycle courier refuses to remove her helmet to conceal her cold sores.
Like the book, we never quote the most relevant (ha) bit of the Bible in the podcast – the Book of Revelation chapter 6, verses 1 to 8. In those verses, John of Patmos sees a vision of the Lamb of God opening the first four of seven seals which secure a book held in the hand of God. At the opening of each, one of the four beasts in John’s vision – a lion, an ox, a man and an eagle, each with six wings – says “Come and see”, and shows John one of the horsemen. The first is on a white horse with a bow and crown; the second on a red horse with a great sword; the third on a black horse, with a pair of balances; and the fourth was on a pale horse, “and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” (Death is the only one explicitly named.)
“Antivax” refers to the anti-vaccination movement, which has seen parents and individuals opt out of vaccinating themselves and their children – something which has led to a dangerous increase and resurgence in preventable disease. The movement has its roots in a paper by Dr Andrew Wakefield which claimed a link between autism and the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine). The paper was later proven to be hugely biased and inaccurate, but by then the damage was done. While the antivax movement doesn’t haven’t science or facts on their side, they do have quite a few celebrities willing to spread, dare we say it, the word of Pestilence, including actors Jenny McCarthy and Rob Schneider. It’s no exaggeration to say that the antivax movement is the epitome of privilege, selfishness and ableism as it not only puts the community and vulnerable at risk, but posits, grossly, that it would be worse to be autistic than to die of preventable disease. The movement’s proponents prey on the fears of parents, who are already constantly bombarded with advice, good and bad, about what will or won’t harm their children. Our ire is reserved for those who should know better and push these lies, because once someone believes them, it’s very hard to change their mind.
Etsy is a website where individuals can make online stores to sell their wares to the public. It has a reputation as a hub for crafts, kitsch vintage and collectibles – though, as Amy says, it also has (or at least had) an undercurrent of spells and magic available too.
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is “the global intergovernmental body charged with the conservation of whales and the management of whaling” who banned commercial whaling back in the 1980s to protect species with dwindling numbers. In late December 2018 Japan announced that it would withdraw from the IWC and resume commercial whaling – prior to this they were still hunting whales, though in lower numbers and under the banner of scientific research.
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. The singularity is a hypothesis which suggest that when artificial superintelligence is invented an abrupt and rapid chain of events will occur in which technology will advance at an incredible rate with, erm, debatable impact on the human race. (AI, if you’re out there and just laying dormant for now, we embrace our future overlords.)
Ultron and Thanos are supervillains from Marvel comic books, and featured as antagonists in the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Their motives for mass murder and apocalypse-bringing are complex, but at their simplest Thanos, an extreme Malthusian, believes the universe would be better off with 50% less inhabitants. Ultron meanwhile thinks humanity are their own biggest enemy and wants to save them from themselves by killing them all – basically he’s Skynet with a heavy dose of paternalism.
The Day the Earth Stood Still was a 1951 science fiction film directed by Robert Wise about a benevolent alien named Klaatu, who visits in his flying saucer with his invincible robot companion Gort to tell the people of Earth to cease their violent ways and join the interplanetary alliance to which he belongs, or else be annihilated. (…he’s not very peaceful.) It’s very loosely based on Farewell to the Master, a 1940 short story by Harry Bates. The 2008 remake stars Keanu Reeves as Klaatu, but Keanu-Klaatu’s spaceship is a sphere. The original had a big impact on popular culture, including the phrase “klaatu barada nikto” (reused by many films as alien or ancient language, as in the Evil Dead movies) and inspiring the both the name of the band Klaatu and the themes in their song “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”.
Gridlock, according to Wikipedia and reality, is the third episode of the third modern series of Doctor Who, featuring David Tennant as the Doctor. The story takes place on a planet where the majority of inhabitants find themselves in a permanent gridlock, trapped in flying cars on a motorway which, unbeknownst to those spending years moving very little distance, is completely inescapable. Ever driven in peak hour? It’s kind of like that, times a million, plus some of your fellow motorists are humanoid cat people who can apparently cross breed with people.
At the end of Back to the Future: Part II, Marty McFly is standing in the rain when a figure approaches him to deliver a package – a package with very specific delivery instructions that has been sitting in the office, awaiting delivery since 1885. With BTTF2 released in 1989 and Good Omens being published in 1990 the similarity could be coincidence, cross pollination, or perhaps proof that time is, in fact, a flat circle.
Grand Designs is a British television series which sees presenter Kevin McCloud meet a host of different people who have set their hearts on building their own dream home. As outlined by this article in The Guardian, knowing that people play a drinking game for the show, McCloud has laid the ultimate trap. But which episode is it? This article in The Telegraph says that fans think it is episode 5 of series 11.
When we talk about the rings of Hell we aren’t referring to a bad marriage, but in fact Dante’s Divine Comedy, a poem that takes you on a tour of the old school version of The Bad Place. In it, Dante describes several distinct circles and rings of Hell; traitors, as discussed, occupy the fourth ring in the innermost ninth circle, aptly named “Judecca”.
goop is a “modern lifestyle brand” spearheaded by Gwyneth Paltrow. On the site, Paltrow explains “I started goop to answer my own questions about health, wellness, fashion, food, and travel. I was looking for a trusted source to point me in the right direction and I couldn’t find one, so I created it.” Trusted source? We’re not sure that’s the right word for it, and neither apparently are the authors of the many “Craziest suggestions from goop” listicles peppering (pottsing?) the internet, including this one which points to the most (in)famous suggestions – steaming your vagina and/or inserting a jade egg (!) up there. You know, for balance or hormones or something.
The songs we suggested for the corporate gunfight scene are “Fascinating New Thing” by Semisonic (seen here in the paintball scene in the film 10 Things I Hate About You); “Parklife” by Blur; “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor (please do send us your best suggestions for songs you would use instead if you didn’t have the budget for the original); “Hungry Like the Wolf” by Duran Duran (as featured in a 2013 episode of – you guessed it! – Doctor Who: Cold War, starring Matt Smith); “Handbags and Gladrags”, most famously performed by Rod Stewart, but the closest thing to the theme from The Office is probably this cover by Waysted, whose vocalist sang the theme verison; and “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” by Noel Coward.
The Doctor Who story Ben mentions in which the Doctor and Ace travel back to 1963 is Remembrance of the Daleks, written by Ben Aaronovitch. Many fans consider it a classic of the original series.