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#Pratchat51 Notes and Errata

8 January 2022 by Ben Leave a Comment

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 of the time of this episode’s recording, 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. As of March 2025, it’s still available as a 2013 episode of the Ideas at the House podcast; you can find it via Acast: “Terry Pratchett in Conversation with Garth Nix”
  • 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 cases with political and social justice angles. The Good Fight was still running at the time of this episode, but finished after six seasons in 2022.
  • 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. By the next book, I Shall Wear Midnight, she is nearly 16 (see #Pratchat66, “Ol’ No-Eyes is Back”).
  • 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.
  • “This is where you came in” is named “How We Got Here” by trope-listing websites. 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 plot 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.
  • One 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 the 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.” This idea is most explicit in his short story “Troll Bridge”, which we discussed in #PratchatNA7, “A Troll New World”.
  • 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 etensively by those who write about 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 dance only once a year. This also correlates with the fact that Miss Treason’s steading is near, but not in, Lancre, which is well served by both Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.
  • 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” (currently unavailable).
  • 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.

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Annagramma, Ben McKenzie, Elizabeth Flux, Garth Nix, Granny Weatherwax, Miss Treason, Nanny Ogg, Petulia Gristle, Photos, Tiffany Aching

#Oggswatch2021 Notes and Errata

25 December 2021 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat’s special Oggswatch Feast episode for 2021, featuring guests Elly Squire, Liam Pieper, Nadia Bailey, Anna Ahveninen and the hosts of the podcasts Wyrd Sisters, The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret and The Compleat Discography. All of them cook dishes from the 1999 Discworld companion book, “Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook“, by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs and Tina Hannan, and illustrated by Paul Kidby.

Iconographic Evidence

We’ll add some more images of other recipes – or links to where you can find them – soon.

Bananana Soup Surprise

Bananana Soup Surprise in the pot.
Served as Nanny Ogg intended!
A few moments from the video we made of this disgusting odyssey.

Celery Astonishment

Are you astonished? We certainly are.

CMOT Dibbler’s Sausage Inna Bun

As promised, the Wyrd Sisters shared some pictures of their sausages!

Thanks so much to @PratchatPodcast for including us in your Oggswatch feast! (Liz's sausage on the left, Manning on the right) pic.twitter.com/wDlvedyZI7

— Wyrd Sisters Podcast (@WyrdSistersPod) December 24, 2021

Figgins

Figgin pastry and filling ready for assembly.
Aaron’s resident big wee hag helping out. (Picture used with permission.)
Figgins ready for the oven!
The figginshed result!

Dwarf Bread

All the ingredients ready for dwarf baking!
It certainly looks like gravel…
…especially close up!
Not much like the illustration…
Pounded flat and ready for the oven!
It really did look like a slab of asphalt at this point…
Finished dwarf bread!
Looks the part, and actually pretty good.
Proof that Anna was still enjoying it the next day.
Anna and Ben’s first adventure in dwarf bakery!

Notes and Errata

  • A huge shoutout to the ever-amazing David Ashton for the Hogswatch version of our theme tune!
  • We discussed Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook in #Pratchat50, “Salt Rat Arsenic Heat” from December 2021.
  • We previously discussed Paul Kelly’s 1996 Christmas hit “How to Make Gravy” back in #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land“. Perhaps we should compile a Fourecksian cookbook and include a gravy recipe?
  • While Kelly’s description of writing “How to Make Gravy” suggests it was written fairly quickly, Ben is exaggerating when he says the song was written in an afternoon.
  • The “Paul Kelly Cinematic Universe” does exist, but the protagonist of “How to Make Gravy” is not the same person from his hit single “Dumb Things”. Instead Joe appears in Kelly’s earlier songs “To Her Door” (1987) and “Love Never Runs on Time” (1994).
  • Whamageddon is a folk game in which players try to avoid hearing “Last Christmas”, the 1984 Christmas single by Wham!, between December 1st and 24th. (No shade on the song – it’s just still very popular in the UK, where the game originates, and so gets played a lot.) The game dates back to an online forum in 2010, though it didn’t get the name until 2016, when the Facebook page took it to new heights of fame. You can find the rules at whamageddon.com.
  • Names suggested for Ben’s proposed Australian variant of Whamageddon have included “Gravygeddon”, “Armagravy”, “Paullkellypse” and “Catastophgravy”.
  • Peppers or bell peppers are indeed what we Australians and New Zealanders call a capsicum. This differentiates it from the other kinds of peppers, which all have specific names. Capsicum is the genus of plants in the pepper family, but that includes most varieties of chilli as well.
  • ASMR is an acronym for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, a well-documented sensation of physical tingling and low-level euphoria felt by some in response to certain sounds. ASMR is a form of paresthesia, a term for sensations felt on the skin which do not have (or at least don’t match) a physical cause; “pins and needles” is the most common form. The tingling of ASMR is most often experienced in the scalp and the back of the neck, and can be triggered by a variety of things, though whispering is most common. The phenomenon is fairly widespread, and ASMR videos and audio recordings are all over the Internet. (If you go searching, be aware that while ASMR is not inherently sexual, there’s a fairly large subset of videos that mix in erotica.)
  • Schitt’s Creek is a Canadian sitcom created by father-and-son duo Dan and Eugene Levy, starring the pair of them, Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy as a rich family who lose their fortune and are forced to live in a motel in a town they once bought as a joke. It ran for six seasons from 2015 to 2020 on CBC, and is available internationally on Netflix. You can find the “fold in the cheese” scene on YouTube; it’s from the second episode of the second season, “Family Dinner”.
  • “How the sausage gets made” is a common idiom, meaning to discover the perhaps unpleasant process behind something on enjoys, which one might prefer not to know. It’s also a line in the song “The Room Where It Happens” from the second act of Lin Manuel Miranda’s hit broadway musical Hamilton. It describes the Compromise of 1790, in which at a private meeting Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison agree to build a new capital city for the United States in the South (rather than making New York the capital), perhaps in return for using Hamilton’s proposed financial system. The song is from the perspective of Hamilton’s friend/rival Aaron Burr, who laments that no-one really knows what was agreed in “the room where it happens”:
No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in the room where it happens
  • American sausages are not all like Frankfurts! They have more English-like ones as well. As the Wyrd Sisters themselves explain: “They’re a fairly common breakfast food, usually as part of a larger meal. The main difference is that they’re smaller and a little drier than what you get in the UK and Australia – if your sausages are grapes, ours are raisins.” Smaller breakfast sausages are also very popular in the UK, but not often seen in Australia, at least on the East coast.
  • There have been several separate chains of supermarkets in the US named Market Basket. Manning is talking about the New England Market Basket, which has stores in the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island. It was founded in 1917 by Greek immigrants as DeMoulas Market in Lowell, Massachusetts. Over the years there’s been a few disputes between branches of the DeMoulas family, which still owns the chain, but these were mostly settled in court in 2014, when Arthur T. Demoulas was fired and, after mass worker protests, reinstated as the company President. The workforce is not unionised, but employees who work 1,000 hours or more a year are entitled to enter a profit sharing arrangement, and the chain does not use automated checkouts.
  • “Freedom units” is a satirical way to refer to the imperial measurements still widely used in everyday American life, though it’s worth mentioning that this may be preferable to the weird mix of metric and imperial that you find in the UK and Canada… As Manning mentions, the “cup” is particularly confusing: a US cup is 240mL (that’s millilitres, thousandths of a litre), or 8.45 imperial fluid ounces. A metric cup – as used in Australia – is 250mL, handily one quarter of a litre. But they’re obviously very close, so you probably won’t go too far wrong.
  • We discussed Maskerade in #Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“, back in September 2019. The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret discussed it over three episodes in September 2021: “Chekhov’s Chandelier“, “As the Actress Said to the Bishop” and “Climbing Into Box 8“.
  • A sous-chef is the second most senior chef in a professional kitchen. The full title is sous-chef de cuisine, French for “under-chief of the kitchen”.
  • Jo and Francine eat scones in their third Equal Rites episode, “Crumbs All Up In There“, from January 2020.
  • Nigel Slater is an English food writer, best known as the head food writer for Marie Clare magazine from 1988 to 1993, and afterwards as the chief writer for The Observer Food monthly supplement. He’s also written an autobiographical column for The Observer for more than a decade; a popular memoir, Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger, in 2003, which was later adapted for television and the stage; and numerous cookbooks, mostly concentrating on simple comfort food. His 2007 book Eating for England: The Delights & Eccentricities of the British at Table sounds like a great resource for those looking to learn more about the influences on Nanny Ogg’s cookery.
  • Tannins are biological molecules which bind to proteins and other organic compounds and cause them to precipitate, ie solidify out of a solution. They are naturally found in most berries, some unripe fruits, nuts, wine, tea and cannabis, and as the name might suggest are also used in tanning, the process of making leather. Wine acquires tannin both from the varieties of grapes used to make it, and through the aging process, from the wood of the barrels, giving wine it’s astringent taste. Tannins occur naturally in tea as well.
  • There’s a bit of confusion about books adapted into films featuring magical cooking with chocolate in the title, so to clarify:
    • Ben is talking about Mexican author Lara Esquivel’s 1989 magical realism novel Como agua para chocolate (Like Water For Chocolate), about a young woman forbidden to marry the love of her life, who magically (and unwittingly) infuses the food she cooks with her emotions. It was filmed in Mexico in 1992, adapted by Esquivel, directed by Alfonso Arau, and starring Lumi Cavazos, Marco Leonardi and Regina Torné. Both novel and film include authentic Mexican recipes. A companion work, Tita’s Diary, was published in 2016.
    • Everyone else is talking about Chocolat, a 1999 magical realism novel by English-French author Joanne Harris. It’s about a witchy single mother, Vianne, who arrives in a small French village at Lent and opens a chocolaterie, leading her into conflict with the village’s priest. It was followed by two sequels, The Lollipop Shoes (2007) and Peaches for Monsieur le Curé (2012). It was filmed in 2000, directed by Lasse Hallström with a cast featuring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Alfred Molina, Johnny Depp, Lena Olin and Carrie-Anne Moss.
  • The media tie-in cookbooks mentioned by Joanne are:
    • The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook (2019) by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, for the videogame The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (and it’s many predecessors).
    • A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook (2012), also by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones television series, plus the companion book From the Sands of Dorne (2017). (There’s also an unofficial one, published in 2012, The Unofficial Game of Thrones Cookbook: From Direwolf Ale to Auroch Stew, by Alan Kistler.)
    • World of Warcraft: The Official Cookbook (2017), also by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, based on the MMORPG video game World of Warcraft. (Joanne wasn’t kidding about this being a lucrative gig for some authors; Monroe-Cassel also has books out or on the way for Star Trek, Overwatch, Firefly, Star Wars and more.)
    • Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook (2020) by Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson and Michael Witwer, inspired by the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons.
  • While we’re talking about these books, if you’re looking for them, be wary of imitations! It seems since 2020 there’s been a rash of cheap self-published unofficial ebooks of similar collections of recipes, especially where the expiry of a license means the official one is no longer available, or where it was never offered as an ebook in the first place. It’s not clear if these are any good or even actually full of appropriate recipes, so try and save your money for the people who’ve put in the real work.
  • Gilmore Girls is an American dramedy series about young independent mother Lorelai Gilmour and her daughter Rory, who moved away from Lorelai’s rich parents to live in the small town of Stars Hollow. The show ran for seven seasons on The WB and The CW between 2000 and 2007, with a revival mini-series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life on Netflix in 2016. The show has inspired more than one cookbook, which is unsurprising given how Lorelai and Rory’s lives – personal and professional – revolve around food…
    • Eat Like a Gilmore: The Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of Gilmore Girls (2016) and Eat Like a Gilmore: Seasons: The Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of the Gilmore Girls Revival (2021) are both by Kristi Carlson, and seem to have been the first and most popular of the bunch. They’re also available in a box set of both books, which together contain two hundred recipes!
    • Gilmore Girls: The Official Cookbook, by Elena Craig and Kristen Mulrooney, will be the first official one, and is coming in 2022.
  • The “Gas mark” is a scale for oven temperature used mostly in the UK and Ireland. It dates back to the 1930s, when many gas ovens were produced using a standard gas regulator, in most recorded cases a “Regulo” brand one, which had “marks” from 1 up to 9, as well as ½ and ¼, to indicate various levels of heat. Their instruction manuals, along with recipe books given away with some ovens, used the marks rather than a specific temperature, in the form “Gas: Regulo Mark 7”. Eventually this became widespread enough that other brand regulators used the same numbers and by the 1950s the brand name was no longer used, with recipe books referring to “gas mark 8” and so on. Gas marks correspond to temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit: gas mark 1 is 275 °F, and each mark above that adds 25 °F (or subtracts it, in the case of ½ and ¼). Similar scales exist in other countries, notably France (labelled “Th”, short for thermostats) and Germany (“Stufe“, German for “step”); those scales are, of course, different to the gas mark and to each other. But modern cookbooks will generally include a temperature, as well as the mark, Th or Stufe.
  • It’s not surprising Ben hasn’t heard barberries, the fruit of the Berberis plant; turns out they grow all over the world except in Australia! The European species is Berberis vulgaris, which grows wild, but has fallen out of use in many countries. It’s still popular in Iran; the Persian name for it is zereshk (زرشک), and in Europe at least most commercially available barberries are grown there. The berries are tart and tangy, and when dried are around the size of a currant, though red in colour.
  • Figjam is the 2005 single released by Brisbane hip-hop band Butterfingers, from their 2006 album The Deeper You Dig… It reached number 11 in the Triple J Hottest 100 that year, but only around 50 in the mainstream charts. In the song, the acronym is “Fuck I’m Good, Just Ask Me” rather than Great.
  • Figgins are indeed mentioned in Guards! Guards!; the master of the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night uses the term repeatedly as a vague threat, mentioning that interlopers will “have their figgin put on a spike”, and noting to himself that his followers have never asked what a figgin is. A footnote explains that in The Dictionary of Eye-Watering Words, a figgin is defined as “a small short-crust pastry containing raisins”, and provides several other obscure culinary delights that could have made it into the Master’s speeches. CMOT Dibbler is later seen selling figgins from his tray alongside his sausages, and it’s a repeated joke that the Elucidated Brethren assume anything said about figgins describes a horrifying form of torture. Figgins also score a minor mention in Men At Arms, when Vimes imagines his fate if he were to stay in the watch to an old age with no family.
  • The Discworld cookery masterpost on Tumblr is a delight. Thank you, user toooldforthisbutstill, and to the major contributor, fantasyfeasts, who also makes stuff from other worlds.

We’ll add a few more notes soon.

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

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Anna Ahveninen, Ben McKenzie, Elizabeth Flux, Elly Squire, Liam Pieper, Nadia Bailey, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, Photos, The Compleat Discography, The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret, Wyrd Sisters podcast

#Pratchat50 Notes and Errata

8 December 2021 by Ben Leave a Comment

These are the episode notes and errata for Pratchat episode 50, “Salt Rat Arsenic Heat“, featuring guest Cal Wilson, discussing the 1999 Discworld companion book, “Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook“, by Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs and Tina Hannan, and illustrated by Paul Kidby.

Iconographic Evidence

To prove we really did cook these things, here are some photos! Be warned: the last one is not for the faint of heart…

  • Stage one of Rincewind’s Potato Cakes: mashing the potatoes!
  • The potato mixture with sage and fried onions added. (It’s already delicious.)
  • Frying up the cakes – these ones are waaaaay too big.
  • A couple of more reasonably-sized potato cakes. They turned out great!
  • The “brinner” meal with scrambled eggs made in the same pan.
  • Liz’s Wow-Wow sauce, artfully drizzled on a plate!
  • You can use it on an omelette…
  • …or on meat!
  • We apologise for this highly upsetting image…but we think you’ll agree Cal did an amazing job of making Sticky Toffee Rat Onna Stick.

Notes and Errata

  • The episode title is reference to the famous 2017 cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, by American chef Samin Nosrat. Nosrat also had a Netflix cooking show of the same name, which appeared in 2018. We’re sure you’ll work out how the rat comes into it, but we may not have mentioned Lord Downey’s contribution to the book: a recipe for mint humbugs which includes the ingredient “arsenic to taste”…
  • Cal’s previous episodes were #Pratchat1, “Boots Theory” from November 2017 and #Pratchat3, “You’re a Wizzard, Rincewind” from January 2018.
  • Cal’s Tiktok username is @calbowilson; look for the hashtag #baristacats.
  • To avoid any confusion:
    • The “Baristacats” are Cal’s cats, Pirate and Barnacle, who like to sit on top of the coffee machine in her kitchen, leading her to create a series of videos in which she tries and fails to get them to serve her coffee.
    • The Aristocats (1970, dir. Wolfgang Reitherman) is a Disney animated musical about a family of aristocratic cats who get into trouble and must turn to an alley cat and his friends for help.
    • “The Aristocrats” is a famous dirty joke in which a family of performers try to get a job by describing to a theatre manager the incredibly depraved and taboo-breaking things they do in their performance – usually a long list, improvised by the comedian – before being asked the name of the act; they respond with “The Aristocrats!” While it dates back to the vaudeville era, it continues to be popular in private among American comedians, with the point being to improvise the most transgressive and offensive description of the act. It was the subject of a documentary film in 2005, The Aristocrats, directed by Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza.
  • Liz’s cats are named after Isaac Asimov and Aldous Huxley. There have been recent prestige television adaptations of their best-known works: Asimov’s Foundation for Apple TV+ in 2021, and Huxley’s Brave New World for the NBC streaming service Peacock in 2020. Brave New World was cancelled after the first season, but Foundation is getting a second season.
  • The Great British Bake Off – known as The Great British Baking Show in the US – is an extremely wholesome reality television show that started in 2010. Contestants are (usually amateur) bakers, who compete in a series of challenges to impress a panel of judges, all for the glory of being crowned the best baker (there’s no prize money). It’s produced by Love Productions, originally for the BBC, where it grew to be so successful on BBC Two that it was moved to BBC One. Despite commissioning Love Productions to make other shows about sewing and pottery using the same format, the BBC made an in-house program about hair styling, Hair, in 2014. This led to a legal dispute over copyright that eventually led to Love Productions taking the show to Channel 4, where it’s been since 2017. Many countries have their own version, including Australia.
  • Bridgerton is a 2021 Regency-era period drama made for Netflix, adapted from the Bridgerton novels by American author Julia Quinn. It’s known for its racy sex scenes. We previously mentioned it in #Pratchat41, “The Adventures of Crab Boy and Trouser Girl“.
  • J H C Goatberger – publisher of the Disc-famous Almanack – and his chief printer Mr Cropper both appear in Maskerade. We discussed it in #Pratchat23, “The Music of the Nitt“.
  • The Encyclopædia Britannica is probably the most famous English-language encyclopaedia, which is a compendium of knowledge. The Britannica was first printed in 1768 in the United Kingdom, and most of its editions span multiple large volumes. In 1901 it was taken over by American managers, who shortened and simplified its language and began selling it via door-to-door salesmen. It still exists, though the last print edition was published in 2012; it’s now exclusively online at britannica.com.
  • Where Did I Come From? is the 1973 classic children’s book about sex and reproduction. It was originally subtitled “The Facts of Life Without Any Nonsense and with Illustrations”, and is the first of many similar books by Peter Mayle, an English businessman who became an advertising copywriter and then author. Mayle went on to write the Wicked Willie series of risqué cartoon books about a talking penis, which might sound familiar: they were illustrated by Gray Joliffe, the same person who drew the cats for Pratchett’s The Unadulterated Cat! More about that in #Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat“.
  • We’re pretty sure the “sexy origami” book mentioned by Cal is 2015’s The Amazing True Story of How Babies Are Made, by Australian cartoonist and illustrator Fiona Katauskas. She was inspired to create it because when having the talk with her own son, she found she was using the same book her parents had used – Where Did I Come From? – and thought it could use an update.
  • If you’d like to know about Ken’s underpants area, we recommend this delightful piece from Jezebel, “The Strange, Sad Story of the Ken Doll’s Crotch” from 2019, by Rich Juzwiak.
  • In Kevin Smith’s 1999 film Dogma, Alan Rickman does indeed play Metatron, the angel who is the voice of God. If you’re curious to know what his underpants area looks like, there’s a great photo of him showing it off while holding a Ken doll in this piece for Digital Spy in which Kevin Smith pays tribute to Rickman after his death in 2016.
  • Ben’s very silly quip here is a reference to Patrick Stewart’s appearance in the Ricky Gervais sitcom Extras. Like all the other big name actors who appeared in cameo roles, he plays a weird parody of himself, who tells Gervais’ main character about his idea for a facial comedy film in which he has the power to make women’s clothes fall off. His refrain is that by the time they put them back on, “It’s too late, I’ve seen everything.“
  • The recipe book plagiarism scandal we discuss is about Elizabeth Haigh’s book Makan. Singaporean-born Haigh was a contestant on the 2011 series of reality cooking show MasterChef in the UK; while she didn’t win, the experience cemented her love of cooking and she went on to great success as a chef, even opening her own restaurants, one of which – Pidgin – was awarded a Michelin star in 2017. Her book Makan was published in October 2021, but soon Sharon Wee, author of Growing Up in a Nona Kitchen, made allegations that many passages relating stories of learning to cook from a grandmother were paraphrased or directly taken from her book. Comparisons of passages where posted online by New Zealand cookbook store Cook the Books, and other authors discovered Makan seemed to “borrow” from other other books and recipe blogs too – both in the anecdotes and personal stories, and some of the recipes. You can read more detail about the scandal in this piece from Eater magazine by James Hansen, though it seems no further information has been officially disclosed, pending the outcome of legal action.
  • The introductory text that Ben reads at around the 14:30 mark is for the entire fictional book, not just the cookery section as he suggests.
  • We discussed Carpe Jugulum in #Pratchat36, “Home Alone, But Vampires“.
  • Ben mentioned some cookbooks for other fictional worlds, specifically 2012’s A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook, 1999’s Star Trek Cookbook – co-written by Ethan Philips in the persona of Neelix, the character he played on Star Trek: Voyager! – and two cookbooks based on Doctor Who. Ben was thinking of the original one from 1985, The Doctor Who Cookbook, but a newer one inspired by the revived series was published in 2016: Doctor Who: The Official Cookbook. It’s worth noting there are plenty of unofficial cookbooks for recipes based on various fictional worlds, too.
  • The character Liz mentions from Game of Thrones is Hot Pie, who appears in the second and third novels in the series, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, and the first four seasons of the television show.
  • Schnapps – from the German schnaps – isn’t a specific kind of alcohol. The original German word is used generically for any kind of strong alcoholic drink. In English it usually means one that is flavoured and sweetened with fruit, but there aren’t any rules – it’s sort of the opposite of Champagne.
  • The famous English Twitter user who grows big vegetables is 72-year-old ex-butcher Gerald Stratford (@geraldstratfor3). He’s not a farmer, but an avid vegetable gardener, and after amassing a huge following on social media published a book in 2021, Big Veg. You can read of Gerald’s rise to fame in this lovely article from Eater magazine by Jenny G Zhang. [We promise we’re not sponsored by Eater, they just seem to write the best articles about English food-related stuff! – Ben]
  • Ben would just like to clarify that when he says Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook is “a real fan’s book” (at around 23:40), he means it’s really a book for fans, not a book that’s for “real fans”. We don’t go in for that sort of gatekeeping around here – and neither did Pratchett, as evidenced by the way that he expressly tells readers where to find out more if they’re lacking context. There’s no wrong way to be a fan, except for hurting other folks with how you go about it.
  • Bergholdt Stuttley “Bloody Stupid” Johnson is first mentioned in Men at Arms, as the designer of the gardens surrounding the Patrician’s Palace, which are said to be the “high spot” of his career. His proper given names are revealed in Maskerade, in a footnote about the organs used by the Opera House and University.
  • Speaking of B S Johnson, the “pie bird” is indeed a real thing. They’re an evolution of the originally quite dull ceramic pie funnels stuck into pies to allow some of the steam to vent, preventing fruit pies from bubbling over and helping to ensure a crispy crust. In the earlier twentieth century manufacturers started making them in all kinds of animal shapes, though birds were most popular. Read all about the history of pie birds in this article by Baileyberg at Food52. (See? Not all our sources are Eater this month…)
  • We also discussed the “humour” genre of books in #Pratchat22, “The Cat in the Prat“, in relation to The Unadulterated Cat. The primer example mentioned by Ben was Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche, though there are thousands to choose from, and they continue to be published, if in smaller numbers. Modern such books are often compilations of social media accounts, like The Midnight Society, the (entirely fictional) minutes of the meetings of of club made up of famous horror, fantasy and sci-fi authors.
  • Spotted dick is indeed a real dish, also known as “spotted dog” and “railway cake” (the latter name especially common in Ireland). The English version is a baked pudding made from suet and dried fruit – most often plums, sultanas or raisins – which are the eponymous “spots”. (For more about this, see the Hogswatch Feast bonus episode.)
  • Ben did indeed research the various kinds of fat mined in Überwald for #Pratchat40, “The King and the Hole of the King“. You can find his list of them in the episode notes for #Pratchat40.
  • Vegetable suet is made from refined vegetable oils. Like animal suet it’s only readily available in the UK, and not all varieties are gluten free, so check the fine print if you’re buying some and that’s a consideration for you. Nigella Lawson’s website also recommends grated vegetable shortening as a substitute; the most easily found form of this in Australia is Copha, which is made from coconut oil. (See the link for instructions on how to grate it.)
  • As it turns out, the difference between lamb and mutton varies depending on where you’re from. In the UK sheep meat (and indeed the sheep) is called lamb in its first year, and mutton if the sheep is two or more years old. In Australia, a sheep’s age is measured instead by how many teeth – specifically permanent incisors – it has (or rather had): Australian lamb comes from a sheep with no permanent incisors; mutton is from a sheep with more than two. (Sheep usually grow a pair of new ones each year, so it works out mostly the same.) Meat from sheep in between lamb and mutton age is called “hogget”, though apparently in the UK plenty of “lamb” is actually hogget in disguise – a step down from mutton dressed as lamb, we suppose. Organic and rare breed farmers in England’s North are known to sell hogget, though. Sheep typically live for around ten to twelve years (when not eaten by foxes, wolves or humans), so seventeen year old mutton isn’t something you need to worry about.
  • The Discworld mainstay “sausage-inna-bun” first appears alongside its most famous vendor, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, in Guards! Guards!, discussed in #Pratchat7A, “The Curious Incident of the Dragon and the Night Watch“. He shows up to hawk food to the crowd watching the hero attempt to slay the dragon, though he never says “sausage-inna-bun”; instead he describes them as “hot sausages”, and shouts “inna bun!” as one of their many attributes. On this occasion he is also selling peanuts and figgins alongside the sausages, all cooked in a tiny frying pan on his tray.
  • We previously discussed Bunnings sausages in #Pratchat21, “Memoirs of Agatea“. In brief: a “sausage sizzle” is a traditional way to raise money for charity by selling cheap (and possibly donated) sausages cooked on a barbecue in slices of bread, usually with fried onions and tomato sauce or mustard. It’s common – or it was, in pre-pandemic times – for ubiquitous hardware store chain Bunnings Warehouse to have a sausage sizzle outside its stores, usually in a carpark.
  • Roundworld drop scones are not siege ammunition, but rather small pancakes made by dropping a dollop of batter onto a frying pan. Depending on where you grew up in Australia, drop scones might be better known as pikelets. We won’t get into the discussion of what constitutes a “regular” scone, as this varies considerably around the world. (Australian ones are generally similar to English ones, though we have pumpkin and date varieties less popular elsewhere.)
  • The French word for bread is indeed pain, but Ben does not pronounce it remotely correctly. The French word uses a neutral vowel sound, not either of the “a” sounds Ben uses. Sorry French speakers.
  • We were unable to confirm it, but it does seem that Paul Kidby’s illustrations for Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook are all originals, done for this book. Certainly the ones of the imps and the various dishes don’t appear anywhere else that we know of.
  • Malicious compliance is when someone follows instructions given to them to the letter, knowing that it will cause harm or problems. It’s often described as a form of passive-aggression, though it is sometimes used as an effective form of protest against ridiculous or draconian demands from managers or officials.
  • “The Sea and Little Fishes” is the third of five published Discworld short stories. We discussed it in #Pratchat39, “All the Fun of the…Fish?” While it does introduce the Witch Trials, and names the scarecrow used for the Cursing “for several hundred years”, no further information about Unlucky Charlie is given; this section is mostly new.
  • Carved wooden lovespoons are a tradition that dates back to at least the seventeenth century. Welsh ones may be the most well known, but they’re also found in Germany, Scandanavia and Eastern Europe. While the “Lancre Loveseat” may well be inspired by them, it should also be noted that Nanny lists “Llamedosian spoon” as the appropriate gift for a fifteenth anniversary.
  • The tweet advising that women may be “fascinated” by giving them cheese was an image of a page from the 1971 book The Complete Book of Magic and Witchcraft by Kathryn Paulsen. You can read more about the history of cheese in witchcraft in this article from The Conversation, inspired by the original tweet by Gavin Wren, which we’ve included below. (Pratchat would like to note that we do not condone the use of witchcraft or any other kind of coercion when making advances toward folks of any gender.)

Pro dating tips pic.twitter.com/t0agf7JrgN

— Gavin Wren (@GavinWren) January 12, 2021
  • We’ll learn more about the Discworld’s Moon – and Leonard da Quirm – when we cover The Last Hero, but it is considerably closer to the Disc than our Moon is to the Earth. It has to be, as it appears about the same size, but is only about eighty miles (or 130km) across. The Earth’s Moon is over 2,150 miles across (3,475km), and about 238,855 miles (or 384,400km) away, so for the Disc’s Moon to appear about the same size, it must be a bit under 9,000 miles from the surface of the Disc. (For simplicity we’re going to ignore the likely difference in lensing effects of the Earth’s atmosphere and the Disc’s intense magical field.) For context, that’s a bit more than a third of the distance around the Earth! The Disc’s Moon likely passes much closer to the Rim, so a supermoon is probably a weekly event for places like Krull.
  • The Moon being a giant egg was a weird plot used by Doctor Who in the 2014 episode Kill the Moon.
  • Branston Pickle is a chunky, pickled chutney that’s made from diced vegetables pickled in a sauce made from vinegar, tomatoes, apples, sugar and spices. It’s been made since 1922 and continues to be hugely popular in the UK. In March 2020, manufacturer Mizkan Euro recalled some of their products as they may have been contaminated with pieces of plastic packaging. This recall affected jars with use-by dates of 2022; you can check if you have any affected jars here, but any you find in stores now will be fine.
  • Massel is an Australian brand which makes vegan stock and other vegetable-based food products. They’ve been around since 1982. Ben only ever buys the vegetable kind, but now realises that their other flavours are labelled “Chicken Style” and “Beef Style”, so they’re a good vegetarian substitute for the real deal.
  • Marzipan is made from honey, sugar and almond meal. There are different kinds but they don’t seem radically different, though when its used on fruit cakes it is usually glazed and, as Cal says, more traditional icing goes on top.
  • The Overlondon Project’s question with the emojis was as follows:
    Most practically edible and least edibly practical… 🧙‍♀️🍆🥕🍌🥒🍑🥭 and possibly 🦑
  • The restaurant in Going Postal is Le Foie Heureux – “the happy liver” in Quirmian. There isn’t a description of the food beyond how much it costs, sadly, but we can dream. The restaurant in Hogfather isn’t named, but its dishes include Mousse de la Boue dans une Panier de la Pâte de Chaussures (“mud mousse in a basket of shoe pastry”) and, as featured in this cookbook, Brodeuin Rôti Façon Ombres (“man’s boots in mud”).
  • Biers is the Ankh-Morpork bar where nobody asks your name; it’s frequented by the undead and other creatures of the night who want a place where they can escape the pressures of being normal. It makes its most notable appearances in Feet of Clay (see #Pratchat24) and Hogfather (see #Pratchat26).
  • It turns out that while you can make alcohol from cabbages, it doesn’t seem a popular choice – partly because cabbages don’t contain much sugar, so they don’t ferment into alcohol on their own. Cabbages are more usually fermented into the non-alcoholic food sauerkraut. There is, though, a cabbage wine made in Narusawa prefecture in Japan, an area which like the Sto Plains grows mainly cabbages. (Narusawa wine is also 40% grapes, though.)
  • You can buy commercial beef spreads, but the brands Ben names are beef-extract based drinks, sold in paste form similar to yeast extracts like Vegemite and Marmite. Bovril has been made in the UK since the 1870s, while Bonox is Australian, first sold in 1919 by the same company who invented Vegemite. (For more on that, see the notes for #Pratchat29, “Great Rimward Land“.)
  • Fairy bread is an Australian children’s party staple: buttered white bread sprinkled with small bits of sugar confectionary, usually spherical “hundreds and thousands” (in Ben’s opinion the superior option), or sprinkles.
  • For more on the great potato cakes vs potato scallops debate, see this survey of regional variation in Australian language conducted by the the Linguistics Roadshow in 2015. (It’s the first response.) For the record, “potato cake” won the bigger vote, but neither cake nor scallop had a clear majority.
  • You can hear an extract from Sven’s podcard in #Pratchat24, “Arsenic and Old Clays“. Note though that the bit Ben describes about the ads for Maggi noodles only appears in the full podcard, which is included in the fourth episode of our subscriber-only bonus podcast, Ook Club, from April 2020.
  • The Australian SF (“Ditmar”) Awards, or just Ditmar Awards for short, are the Australian national awards for achievement in speculative fiction and fandom. Any eligible works can be nominated by members of the Australian fan community; the awards are then voted on by members of the Australian National SF Convention (or “NatCon”) for that year. The established Australian cons take it in turns to be the NatCon; in 2021, it was Conflux in Canberra. You can see a list of all the 2021 Ditmar nominees and winners in Locus Magazine. Pratchat was also nominated for the “Best Fan Publication in Any Medium” award in 2019.
  • The Coode Street Podcast, the winner in our category this year, is a long-running bi-weekly show which describes itself as “an ongoing casual conversation between two friends about the nature of science fiction (among other things).” It launched in 2010. The two friends who host it are publisher and editor Jonathan Strahan, and editor, critic and humanities Professor Gary K. Wolfe. Prior to this win, The Coode Street Podcast had been nominated for seven Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Award, the BSFA Award, and six Ditmar Awards…but not won any of them! (Sounds like we have a few more award nominations to rack up before we win anything…)
  • You can find out more about the cancellation of the 2022 Australian Discworld Convention on the official website at ausdwcon.org.
  • Ben is correct: Garth Nix won the Ditmar for Best Novel for his 2020 book, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London. It also won the 2020 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and was nominated for the 2021 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

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

Posted in: Episode Notes Tagged: Ben McKenzie, Cal Wilson, Dwarfs, Elizabeth Flux, Mustrum Ridcully, Nanny Ogg, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook, Photos, Rincewind

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#Pratchat84 - Ankh-Morpork Archives & Discworld Almanak8 April 2025
Listen to us discuss the in-universe Discworld books The Ankh-Morpork Archives volume I and II, collecting the Discworld diaries, and The Discworld Almanak. Join the discussion using the hashtag #Pratchat84.

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