Do Go On - 572 - Terry Pratchett and his Discworld

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Terry Pratchett is one of the world's most beloved authors - writing humorous fantasy and science fiction including his Discworld series - but his life is just as fascinating, which is why he was voted for by the listeners to be our first topic for BLOCKtober 2026!This is a comedy/history podcast, the report begins at approximately 11:29 (though as always, we go off on tangents throughout the report).For all our important links: https://linktr.ee/dogoonpodCheck out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Who Knew It with Matt Stewart: https://play.acast.com/s/who-knew-it-with-matt-stewart/Jess Writes A Rom-Com: https://shows.acast.com/jess-writes-a-rom-comOur awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasDo Go On acknowledges the traditional owners of the land we record on, the Wurundjeri people, in the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders, past and present.REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkinshttps://www.britannica.com/biography/Terry-PratchettTerry Pratchett - Back in Black (BBC)https://terrypratchett.com/terry-pratchett/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/25/terry-pratchett-a-life-with-footnotes-review-rob-wilkins-life-death-in-discworldhttps://reactormag.com/terry-pratchett-is-the-most-shop-lifted-author-in-great-britain-for-a-reason//https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/17/i-think-i-was-good-though-i-could-have-been-better-terry-pratchett-and-the-writing-of-his-lifehttps://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/TerryPratchetthttps://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-41093066https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25401679https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/may/30/terry-pratchett-predicted-rise-of-fake-news-in-1995-says-biographerhttps://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ch.cgi?155https://theconversation.com/a-beginners-guide-to-terry-pratchetts-discworld-55220https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Pagehttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jun/12/terry-pratchett-daughter-fans-shepherds-crown-last-discworld-novelhttps://lesasbookcritiques.com/sir-terry-pratchett-rip/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/apr/20/terry-pratchett-debut-turns-50-at-17-the-carpet-people by Alison Floodhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/when-terry-pratchett-was-knighted-he-forged-his-own-sword-out-of-meteorite-10104321.htmlhttps://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-31858156https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/07/31/terry-pratchett-discworld-transphobia/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, our Canada tour is officially over, but don't worry, there are still plenty of opportunities to see us live. October's going to be huge in the year 26, this year, because we've got a bunch of things happening. I'm in Brisbane at Goodchuk Comedy Club on the 1st and a 3rd of October doing a stand-up show with Surin and a Who New It podcast. Also, doing a stand-up show at the Bendigo Comedy Festival on the 14th of October. before we're all reuniting once more in Melbourne town Dave what the frick is going on there It's the best time of you It's the cheerful, earful podcast festival

It's taking place again at Humdinger Studios Loads of pods and we're doing many of them Yes This is October 24th, that's the Saturday afternoon And October 25 We're doing Do Go On and Who knew it on the Saturday Then we're doing Do Go On and book cheat on the Sunday And then I believe Matt also on the Sunday

You're doing a live primates podcast As a bonus primates Yeah, finally going to finish the April run of shows. Oh. I was meant to be counting down on the top five topics, and that's gotten away from me. So we're going to finish it in October. Perfect.

And these tickets are available to see us live in person in the studio or streamed anywhere in the world, live or on catch-up. So have you going to be in bed because you live somewhere on the other side of the world? Say Saskatoon, for example. Which I learned recently is the same place as Saskatchewan or vice versa. That's right. You can watch it live or on catch-up.

to do go onpod.com for tickets to all of these shows. Hello and welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnocky and, as always. I'm here with Jess Perkins and Matt Stewart. Woo! Oh my God, happy Block Day. Oh, my God. Happy Block.

I think we were going to try to build Twitter. I know, but it was just too exciting. I couldn't. It's Block again. Is this 10th annual? I should have checked this before now. It's got to be up there. It's nearing it.

Yeah. Yeah, let's round up or down or stay at 10. Yeah, you need it. Happy block, everyone. The most block-tastic time of the year. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it's block. If people don't know, what we've got,

it's blockbuster tober month. And we've annexed November to be Blovember. So for the next eight weeks, we're doing a very special countdown that we do every single year. Matt put together a massive poll. It's Matt's massive poll, trademark. Over 200 topics that people on Patreon suggested And also we've had a lot of things that have been in the hat multiple times

Then we've got people thousands of votes They've been tabulated and it's time to count down the top eight So these are the biggest, the baddest, the bestest topics The most requested Exactly The most interesting That's right Guaranteed

I've tabulated the calculations And we have come to a conclusion That these are the most in-demand topics of the year Matt just brought a robot into the studio, and it was good to hear from the Block Robot. And now he's leaving. Chow and bonjourno to all of my robotic friends out there listening. Oh, it's quite a polite.

Arvedecchi. Okay, yep, it's quite a polite, and multilingual. At least bilingual. Yeah. Oh, Maltobeni, multilingual. And robot out. Okay. Matt, can I just double-check?

How much did we spend on that robot? Oh my God, we're in a lot of financial stress right now. Oh, can I just quickly say, Patreon.com slash dig on pod. Please give so that we can pay off that debt. Help us needy podcasters with a silly debt. It's a real, I think, stop whatever you're doing. Yeah, stop your cancer research. Give as much as you can.

Don't run a marathon for sick kids. Give that money to us. Every little bit counts. That's right. Right, we'll help us. This block make a difference. Should we do like a telethon type thing? I think that could be really fun.

A blockathon? Blockathon. Let's add another event to block. Yes. Oh, and like one of the things would be, if someone donates $10 the next hour, Dave will eat a full block of chocolate. Yeah. Oh, no.

I hate chocolate. And then Dave will cut to Dave and be like, well, I was better eating. All sorts of fun stuff. Yeah, really. I'm all right. It's writing. I'm laughing already. Well, there'll be a dunk tank.

Oh. But we'll call it a block tank. Yeah. And there'll be Lego blocks inside of a set of water. Quite painful. Yeah. It would be way worse. Yeah.

But that'll be $15. But they're also wet. Oh, yeah, wet Lego. Yeah. Not our best ideas. Anyway, so we're very excited, as you can tell, by our insane tone. Exactly. It's an exciting time.

So usually with Block, because obviously we see the countdown and we know what topics we're all doing, usually we know roughly what the topic is. I have forgotten. Maybe I've never read the list. You didn't need to know because you weren't first. It's Matt. Exactly. I was like, I don't care.

And that's just how I operate. Yes. So this to me is like a regular episode where I'm like, what's it going to be? It's exciting. I think Dave might remember. Yeah. So let's let Jess answer. Oh, am I going to get it?

Probably not. Maybe I can feed some clues. Yes. I'll feed another clue by showing you a very big clue if need be. Okay. All right. The question is, who is the UK's greatest selling author of the 1990s? Oh, of the 90s?

Oh, is it a P surname? Yes. Is it a T first name? Yes. Is it Terry Pratch? It is. Terry Pratchett. I just bought this book.

Nice. More. And I will read it. A bit of sizzle there. Oh, exciting. And Dave's going to be doing a book sheet. We're recording this a fair way out of time, so do you know what book yet? Well, that's one of the reasons that I remember what the topic was, because I said to Matt,

oh, it would be good if I did it on bookcheted a similar time. So maybe the next book sheet that comes out after this, which I think isn't a week or two. I'll read a Terry Pratchettcher book I actually know nothing about... Wait, is blocks seeping into the bookcheet universe? Oh my God. But I know nothing about the guy who you're about to tell us about all the world or any of the books. Have you read any of the books?

Never. All right. But people always ask that I do it on bookcheet. Yeah, cool. I mean, he's got a very big fan base, which is why... Like out of 235, I think possible topics in the poll, this made the top eight. Wow. Wow.

So yeah, he's got a big, big fandom. Suggested by a few people in the hat, but also the Patreon's, Catherine on the official Patreon block suggestion list, said, once again, I suggest Terry Pratchett, a great human who died too soon. A little bit of a spoiler. He's a great human.

Sorry. I was hoping that he'd be awful. Yeah, here I was like, oh, please let him be a transphobe. Well, you know, he's, I mean, he is seen, sometimes people think of him with J.K. Rowling. Oh, okay. Much to his dismay, like, he got asked questions like, oh, were you inspired by, he'd been doing it for, like, decades before. That's pretty funny.

He had, his Christmas spoof was called, no, there was the Hogs Watch, which I think was like his universe's version of Christmas. And people like, oh, was that inspired by Hogwarts? He's like, well, no. It was written a fairly way before that. It's hard to be inspired by something that hasn't come out. But he found a way. It's possible. I'm very inspired by future events.

That's why I'm so nihilistic and care so little about life. You've got a little assumption about what's coming. Yeah, I go, this doesn't look good. And I'm going to tap out. We're falling off a cliff. Yeah. Coming off soon. Yeah.

Then Paige reply to that said, I'll vote for this every time, Paige Carl said. And then Chris Curtis said, was looking to see if someone had already suggested him again. And I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. I don't know if that's the right tone. It sounds really aggressive for Chris. That's full on. It sounded like Chris was like, oh, try again, like excited. Well, this is a great note.

I'll try again. Try again. Hi, I'm Chris. Oh, I was looking to see if someone had already suggested him again and I'm glad I wasn't disappointed. Yeah, that's probably, and I hate to put words in Chris's mouth. or tone in Chris's mouth, but that feels more accurate. Get your tone out of Chris's mouth. Why won't?

Unless Chris asks nicely. Well, that's not really the tone he uses nicely. He's more of a, well, looking to see if someone had already suggested him. I'm glad I wasn't broadly disappointed. It's also been, well, he's also been suggesting to the hat, Terry, not Chris, by Alan from Dublin in Ireland, Colum Doherty, also from Dublin.

And he, Patrick's got a connection at Dublin. he was later in life, became a professor there. Ah. Even though he didn't finish school, which we'll talk about it. Shut up. So many spoilers, and he's dead. Great. Peter Hoffman from Brisbane.

Oh, Catherine Sebel, I'm guessing that's who was the Katharina. From Weissloch in Germany. Callen Burgess-Wiley from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England. Mel Cleary from Wellington and New Zealand. And Nick Benicki, from. From Newseville, Queensland. Nick Benicki. Nick Benicki.

Nick, if you're listening right now, which I assume you are because you suggested this topic, you have one of the greatest names I've ever heard in my life. That's great. I mean, the only possible better option would be Nicky but Nikki. Yeah, it's something to sound like that. Who's that wrestler who's like, you can't see me? John Sina. John Sina.

Movie called Ricky Senniki. Filmed in Melbourne. That's right. That was when you saw him in front of your car. I stopped my car so I didn't hit John Sina. After the listeners, I was doing that thing where he wipes his face. I don't know wrestling, but for some reason I'm aware of that. Yeah.

Because of the memes. Yeah. And I'm pretty hip. I'm so sorry about that. You just said because of the memes. Yeah, and then I'm really... Followed by I'm really hip. Yeah, I was trying to be ironic, but it felt too spot on.

Yeah. I agree. Too close to your own poem. Everyone's like, oh, mate, there's no irony there. That's just a true representation of what you're feeling right now. Anyway, I'm going to lean pretty heavily on Rob Wilkins's biography called Terry Pratchett, a life with footnotes. Wilkins was Pratchett's PA for a lot of his career.

So he had a lot of first-hand knowledge of him. He was there for a lot of it. That makes sense. And it's probably why I should write both of your biographies. Yeah, being our PA. You know a lot about our dry cleaning orders. No. Dave really seems to shoot himself a lot.

No, it's just because I'm so, like, you know, I'm so quiet myself and I'm sort of in the background. Yeah. You're a good, like, you're just on the wall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you're never really aware of my presence. Yeah. You're like a fly. Or you're like a flea.

Yeah, I'm a flea on your back. Yeah. Yeah. Just sucking all the blood out. Yeah, you're a blood sucker. Yeah. You're a, yeah, an energy sucker. That's right.

Yeah. Yes. A life force. Uh-huh. And my biography is unauthorized of you will be scathing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, was this biography written after TP passed? Yeah, so.

Any, and hopefully with permission of the family. Yeah, with, I mean, he, Rob Wilkins is still, like, works for the, the organization of Pratchett. Nice. Okay, that's good. So it's. With his daughter and, oh. His daughter is in Pratchett's daughter and wife. They're sort of all in charge of the estate, I guess.

So it is an official biography. And because of that probably is, you know, he's, and he was a fan, I think, before he was his PA. So it's a, for the most part, it's sort of is, it's a pretty glowing thing. But he does also, he sounds like a grumpy bastard at times, Terry Pratchett. Hey, some of the best people are. And if anyone's, but we forgive him, right? At times.

If anyone's going to see you as a grumpy boss, it's going to be your PA, I'd say. Oh, yeah. That's right. They see you at your worst. Absolutely. But anyway, so this is in Wilkins' words. We're going to hear the story of the journey that took a kid from a council house in Beaconsfield to a knighthood and a mansion near Salisbury by the sheer power of his imagination alone. A few more spoilers in there.

He had an imagination. Great. Of his own. Fucking hell. It's like you've forgotten how to tell a story. I don't know what I'm doing. Linear. Linear.

I've really, I've been swimming in Pratchett. And I should say it's, well, I'm a, there are huge fans. And I would say I'm a casual fan. I've read, I think, four of his books and spread out by years in between. And I've loved them all. I love his style. He's super funny. But yeah, I'm going to do my best.

because I know this would be the same as, you know, doing a report on Taylor Swift and being afraid of the Swifties. Or River Dance, for example. Similar kind of fan base. I'd love to go back and listen to it. It can't have been as bad as people make out. Or was it? People make out badly, though. Yeah.

Too much tongue. Teeth. Not enough teeth. Not enough teeth. I want to bleed. More teeth. One note, more teeth. Okay.

All right. You're a weirdo. Anyway, so this is an epic one. This is by word count. This is one of my, being the top 10% long reports of written. So we should get into it. Jess is snarling with the light. Sorry, sorry.

Yeah, that was a face of disdain that I forgot to hide. Great. Let's get into it, even though you've already spoiled a bunch of the main. Yeah, should we wrap it there? You can only skip over the mansion bit now. So, Terence, David John Pratchett, was. born on the 28th of April, 1948 near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. He was an only child and spent his early years in a house without electricity or running water, but his family never felt like

it was going without, as Pratchett put it, was right after the war, so if you had a house with a roof on it, you're ahead of the game. According to the BBC, Pratchett later remembered an idyllic childhood spent playing with other village children in the local fields and woods. When he was young, he took a keen interest in astronomy. Interestingly, he was not a reader. He hated books. School apparently just sucked for him and it did not make reading fun,

which, look, you know, he was the early 1950s. Yeah. You're like, weird, teachers, what, were assholes back then and not sharing the beauty and the love of the written word. I mean, they were still beating children for being left-handed. So, yeah, I doubt they were like, children, books are magical. Yeah.

And probably a lot of the teachers have just come back from the war, you know, and haven't dealt with certain things. And it's not like anything good was written before the 1950s anyway. Exactly. Well, Terry Pratchett hadn't started writing it. Exactly. He hadn't been inspired by J.K. Rowling. Exactly.

She hadn't written hers yet? I think, well, you know, I think of time as being cyclical. Yes. You know, you kind of stop thinking about it as a linear plane, okay? Uh, et cetera. So, yeah, he wasn't in a reading, but he was right into astronomy. He would collect these information cards about the planets that came with some certain brand of tea. Like he'd get everyone, if you get in these teas, can I get the card that comes with it?

It's so fun that crappy merchandising to get kids into stuff goes that far back. Yes. And with tea. With tea. Yeah. Pester power. It's been around for a long time. While still very young, he thought of himself as quite an expert.

it and he was quite precocious, and he wasn't afraid of letting people know about it. Cotonou, his official biography, Rob Wilkins writes, one morning over breakfast, he spotted an error in the description of the planet Mars on the back of a packet of Kellogg's cornflakes, and Julie wrote the manufacturers to point out their mistake. Alas, the mistake was, in fact, Terry's. The massive Mars was exactly as Kellogg's had printed it. Even so, he got a nice reply from Kellogg's and Better Still,

several complimentary boxes of corn flakes, thereby earning the admiration of his father. Hey, can you complain about stuff that's not wrong more? It's just paid such a funny picture of their home life. Dad's like, okay, Terrence, starting to provide, like a news. We're contributing now. All right, is what we've been talking about. Okay, well, to kill you to get some cocoa pops next time.

A bit of variety. And it really sort of hammers home this picture, Wilkins by continuing saying that Terry's father David wrote to a razor blade company to inform them that he had managed to make one of their blades last an entire year. A glowing testimonial he felt quietly confident would yield dividends. He's like, this is going to, yeah, you got the cornflakes. Here we go. Bring on the blades. Here we go. And a few days later, a disappointingly small envelope arrived containing a solitary new blade and a note to the effect of please find here with another year's supply.

Yeah, you didn't think that through. Bit of fun. These things last me a year. Great, here's a whole year. What Terry did was he complained and was wrong. He got rewarded. What you did was be kind and give praise. Never do that.

No. He's sound like the worst combination of like confident and pointing out people the wrong, but he is not right himself. How annoying. As a little child as well, just seems why. To the... Mars is actually the closest one to the sun. No, it is not.

No, it's not. But here, have three boxes of corneplex. Hey, we love your moxie kid. He'll learn some good lessons from this. Be confidently wrong. It'll reap rewards. Despite his love of astronomy, which continued throughout his life,

there's a story later in life that his assistant's talking about. They were all... It was this sort of who's who of older celebrities, including Brian May from Queen. Yeah. And they were all just set around at one of their houses, staring at the stars. I was like, it's a beautiful story.

They were high, surely. Come on. Oh, maybe a little bit. But yeah, despite his love of astronomy, he struggled with maths at school and soon gave up his dream of a career in stargazing. But it wasn't just maths that he struggled with at school. He was a very average student in general, apparently. Didn't like school particularly, as we were saying, pretty brutal places back in the 50s. The head of his school, Holtzburg school, Mr. Tame, told the young Terry that he would never amount to anything.

And these were words that stuck with him. But isn't it funny how often that comes up? And it's always, you know, an example of an exceptional person. Someone who goes on to do amazing things will have a memory of a teacher who said that. That teacher also said it to like a bunch of other kids. Yeah, that's true. Like what kind of teacher is going around just telling children you'll never amount to anything? It's an interesting way to go about it.

But the more you say it, the more likely you are to be right. You've got to have a few irons in the fire. You suck. You'll never be good at that. Okay, I was wrong about Pratchett. But Williams has amounted to nothing. He actually died young. I was right.

Couldn't be more right. It was very sad. I hit him with my horse and card. Yeah. Okay. Oh, you're saying that doesn't count? Oh, I got involved. Well, I don't know.

rule, explain the rules better. You know what I mean? Like, you shouldn't be a teacher if you hate people so much. Yes. Especially young people. Yes. I think I don't know when they figure that out, but it was, it took a while. Or maybe, we do often hear about it with successful people being told this.

Is the teacher thinking that it is going to be the kick up the ass that actually gets them going? And it turns out to be actually quite an effective method of teaching. I do have a teacher to do that to me. But not in a, you won't amount to anything. What was it? At my year 11, what you might call it, parent teacher interviews, the drama teacher was like, yeah, Jess is doing great. If she keeps going the way she's going, she'll be easily looking at a B plus in her solo. And I went, I'm sorry.

Okay. And you're like, she's crossed her arms, like playing it real hard to yet. Like, yeah. I was like, I mean. I see. Huh. That's a real monorail guy. Maybe it's more of a Shelbyville idea.

Yeah. getting an A plus. It was absolutely that. Obviously, Lynn Peterson, she's on track for an A plus. Yeah. I said, I think you'll find I'm top of the club. So if I'm stopping it a B plus, no one's getting anymore. And so then in my...

But maybe that reflects badly on the teacher. In my drama solo, not long after that, I got an A plus. And I went, yeah, that's what you, you son of a bitch. Oh, you realised at the time, at least. I realized... I thought you might have been realizing right now. No, I realized, probably a year or so later, I was like, motherfucker.

That's good. That's good. I should have taint. I should have pulled down my pants and mooned the judges. That would have shown him. Anyway, yeah, maybe the spurring is what the school. The school was literally called Holt Spur School. So maybe that was, you send your kids there to spur them on.

We missed an important context, clue that. I take it back. Mr. Tame is a very funny of the name. You tell them that they're going to be halted if they continue on this path, and that will secretly spur them. It's Hotspur. And Mr. Tame is a very, very, very ironic name for an asshole.

He's probably up there with a whip. Yeah. In his 1987 book, Mort, he lets his feelings about teachers be known. He's got a recurring character, maybe his most famous character, who's simply known as Death, the Grim Reaper, basically. But he's like, he's a grim Reaper with, you know, he's kind of an interesting guy. I got a bit of a sense of humor. He's a fun, funny guy.

And anyway, in this book, Mort, I haven't read it yet. I just bought it this week. He's looking for work. He's out of work, death. And the job broker, Mr. Keble in the book says to death, it would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever. Have you thought of going into teaching? Incredible stuff.

So he's utilised. Yes. You'll amount to nothing. Maybe you should be a teacher. And he apparently named a few asshole characters after some of the teachers he particularly didn't like and stuff. In 2011, he was asked. by school, Holtzpur school in Begginsfield for a quote for the school's 60th anniversary celebrations.

And Wilkins writes, Terry Gainley obliged, but chose not to gild it too thickly, writing, In all truth, I cannot say that my memories of Holtzburg school were of the warmest. He then equally gamely took the blame upon himself writing, but possibly that was entirely because I was an absolutely quintessential example of a twit and a dreamer. He's softened it a bit But he's like This still sucks Do you reckon they're running that quote

No matter how famous he is? I think they ran it really Yeah Wilkin says I don't believe For one moment That the fault was his though It was a lifelong position of Terry

That schools would be far better places If they took special care To look out And nurture the Twits and Dreamers Not tell them that they've got no hope Yeah They'll amount to nothing So yeah, like I was saying, wasn't a big reader in his early years.

That was despite apparently a lot of encouragement from his mum, she even went so far as to bribe him saying she'll give him a sixpence per page he reads. And even still, it was... Oh my God, he got war and peace and bankrupt of the family. Terry, no! Yeah, all of a sudden he didn't have a roof on the house. I had to sell the roof. But then this all changed after he discovered the wind

in the Willows. While visiting a family friend, he was handed the Kenneth Graham book. And as Terry recalled, if there was any sense of theater in the universe at that moment, there would have been an audible ping. The book blew his tiny mind. He continues, there was a mole, but this one was spring cleaning. Moles and rats and toads are walking around like human beings with clothes on. He was like, what is going on?

The world's gotten mad. He couldn't believe it. But he very quickly finished the book. Apparently on the drive home, he was reading it by the street lights in the back of the car, and he just smashed through it. Mum's freaking out going, oh, my God. I do not have that. So much money.

We're going to drop down the rate. Yeah, see, he was like instantly changed, saying, it got inside your head in a strange way. After a while, without you even noticing. After all, how big was the toad? One's at the bottom of our garden. You could hold in your hand. This toad, while still.

being a toad could drive a car. Nobody in the book expressed any amazement about the fact. So to enjoy it, you have to pretend the world was slightly different, and that was good enough for me. Wilkins writes, The Wind and the Willow set him going, and the transformation was nothing less than startling. Having been mostly reluctant to read anything,

Terry would now apply himself to the project of reading absolutely everything. I should also say, he's English, so when I'm reading his quotes, I'm not doing it that accurately. Yeah, so he sort of described his Lisp and his other struggles with speaking as a mouthful of speech impediments. Right. So he was, maybe he was a writer, he wasn't a speaker, but he ended up, as his fame grew, he did speak a lot. And I mean, listening to talk, I find his voice quite charming.

I don't think I can do it justice, but maybe I'll try in future quotes. Okay. I'd love to hear that. We didn't even have to set him up to do it. No, you just wanted... He said himself up. No, no, you're right. The thing is that Jess...

Maybe I'll give it like a B-plus level impression. We haven't heard, I imagine, I haven't heard what he sounds like. Yeah, so it's going to sound spot on. Yeah. I watched that documentary where a guy was made after he died and there was a guy playing him. So I'm probably going to be affected by that as well. Anyway, so, yeah, he's reading everything all of a sudden. In her literary blog, Lisa Holstein wrote...

By the next week, he was a member of his local library and helping the librarians on Saturdays. He went straight from not reading at all to volunteering at the local library. Oh, cute. And he read children's books and adult books at the same time with no distinction. Just read everything he could. He was very lucky to find the toad and the badger, Adel, because school certainly didn't show him the joy of reading. Amongst the books he read, he found the work of J.R. Tolkien.

Is that right? J.R. Tolkien? It's Tolkien. Yeah. Yeah. Previous report, one of you two told his story. Jonathan Ronald Raul. Is that it?

That's fantastic. It's just one of the great man. It's a good would be a great trivia question. I would never have got it. But yeah, he wrote him a letter and he got a reply. It's interesting, he does seem to have connected with all these previous literature topics that we've done in little ways like that. To me, it blows my mind that their lives overlapped. I think of Tolkien has been...

Like so much older? Yeah. Yeah, and then he got to reply. That's pretty nice. And it was like he wrote about a much more niche story of his. And did he like, do you try and fact check it in a way that was wrong? He didn't try to fact check it. He didn't try to fact check it.

He's like, here's the Hobbit. Here's my extent it works. That'll shut you up. No, it was a very flattering letter. And like, I think, you know, purposely on a, a more niche story just to be like, you know. I know my stuff, okay? I'm not a casual fan.

Yeah. All right. All right. I know about giblets. Yeah. All right. And his axe. How does you say that?

Or Pratchettier would say, and my axe. Okay. So Sean Connery. That's what we're all thinking. No, I can't do his voice as it turns out. Okay. Well, that was a B plus, maybe. That was B plus.

That's a B. That's a B. Um, yeah, apparently it's a bit of an asshole. While, um, while Pradj didn't love school, he did have some teachers he remembered more fondly. On high school, he also had his big first writing breakthrough as a 14-year-old at Wickham Tech. Uh, Wilcombe's rights. One day with the English master off sick, the school's technical drawing and art teacher, Janet Campbell Dick, what a name, uh, stood in for the lesson and gave the class the task of

composing a short story. And Terry wrote a piece titled Business Rivals. In it, The Devil visits an ad agency and requests they put together a campaign for hell as businesses dried up. No one was coming in the last few thousand years. The agency puts together a great campaign and hell's numbers really start booming. Terry later said it was by no means a great story, but it was certainly the best one written in the schoolroom that day.

His teacher agreed and it was given full marks 20 out of 20 and it was published in the school magazine. Pratchett then sent the story to John Carnell, editor of the publication's New World Science Fiction and Science Fantasy, both well-respected sort of niche journals in the field. And after making some edits based on notes from Carnell, the piece was published as the Hades business in Science Fantasy, Volume 20, number 60 in August of 1963. So at the age of just 15, Terry was a published author. That's so cool. But he'll never amount to him.

I'm actually telling your teacher, yeah, I got a book published. I've been writing to Tolkien. He wrote back to me, of course, and then I've been like, you'll never be anything, kid. Academics is not for you. Your life's going to end up in the gutter.

He sees him down the shops. He's a teacher. Hey, Mr. Tame. And he's like, it's a pity about that kid. He's saying to every other adult around him. Yeah, it's sad. You can't save them all.

You know? Some of them will just. probably end up dead by 20. Then the ditch. Yep. There's a ditch over there. I can check it every day. Sherman, little Terry, being there.

Hopeless. Hopeless, this freaking kid. The story was published with an editor's note from Carnel reading in part. While we often receive material from would-be young writers, we seldom find a story from one of them which merits publication. Terry shows great promise for the future. And not only was he published, he was paid 14 pounds for his trouble. Oh, that's pretty good.

With the money. That's 28 bucks Australia today. That's right. It was like, it was a few hundred bucks or something equivalent, I reckon. What? For a 15-year-old who, you know, grew up poor. Yeah. It was huge.

That's massive. Like, okay, like the story story. Apparently it took it. Terry, I'll finally look you in the eye. His parents were, especially his mom was like, was all pushing towards, let's make sure you get a job, like a lot of parents, I guess. Just like, want to make sure that you're okay and you're... Parents, am I right?

Shut up. So conservative. I hope you're pushing your kid towards getting her own podcast. Dreams. Absolutely. I've already got photos that are in the studio with the headphones on. That's the first step. Headshots.

She'll be a nepo potty. A nepo potty? I love it. Do you think of yourself as a potty then? Oh, yeah. Yeah. First generation. First gen.

Podie. Self-made potty. Yeah, pulled myself up by the headphones. That's what they're going to say when they're toilet training. I self-made a potty pointing to their piss in a pot. I just say that's not what that means. Dad, she's going to think that's what you do for work. You're going to have to really answer at the tea in potty.

Potty. Potty. Potty. You're your furious. Matt. Matt, you've got it. off on a tangent and it's silly and this is a long report

come back to it, come back to it you've enraged yourself in your own imagination and then she'd say something like this and I'd be like that's not right and next time I'll see your kid Dave you're all mad to nothing what I say

I'm Uncle Mattie I don't get that totally You're insane. I'm losing it. Can I just add very quickly that often you get tagged in photos saying this looks like you, Matt, it's just a man with a beard. My daughter did see a photo of a man with a beard and said, Matt. It's like, okay.

The new generation's here. That man was Terry Pratch. When fully grown adults do it on the Patreon group, they are no better intellectually. Better to hear of. I love it when they do it occasionally, maybe a little bit hurtful. For the most part, it's nice to be thought of. So with his 14 pounds, he invested the money into his writing, buying. He got in early.

He got in really early. He bought a secondhand typewriter. Oh, cool. Which I think he used to mine crypto. And, yeah, so we're into the 60s. What are you thinking of the 60s? I'm picturing it. It's technical it.

It's hip. It's happening. Psychedelic, man. Yeah, baby. But Pratchett doesn't remember it being quite so shagadelic, later writing. Don't believe everything you read. In the UK, the 60s happened to about 250 people in the vicinity of Carnaby Street. The rest of us listen to the music while doing our homework.

That's so funny. It was happening to this small amount of people. Yeah, the 60s happened. That sounds fun. But it's also so funny out. I think that's the case with a lot of things. Like a real niche subculture is what future period TV shows and stuff will just make the whole world seem like it was that.

Everyone was on the dooby, bro. Everyone was in the Beatles. Yeah, yeah. What he said was, which is another good line, he's full of good lines. Before it got so big, I had a note writing, do a list of his great lines. I'm like, this report is long enough. But anyway, this is a fun line. he goes, on the whole, the 60s didn't come to me until around the 70s.

He was a bit of a loner at school, not a stoner, and dreamed of attending the annual UK National Science Fiction Convention. The problem was he was a teenager and it would mean travelling to another city alone over the Easter long weekend. Somehow, though, he convinced his parents to let him go. So he's as a teenager, he travelled by train to Petersburg and he stayed at this hotel by himself for this fair for sci-fi writers. He was now a published one and people like knew of him. What? Like in that community, he's like, he would have been the youngest guy there probably.

They knew his story. Yeah. That's so cool. He's the only kid there. Yeah, but I assume you're Terry Pratchett. You're the boy wonder. Apparently, including attendees and speakers and everyone, there was about 150 people there and all.

And the 60s didn't have it to any of them. No. No. Not even close. Apparently, a lot of them, including Terry, were still like real, still living in that 50s hangover. Tie and jacket, you know, real conservative looking. But it sounds like for others there, it was a real geeks gone wild experience. Oh, my goodness.

Wilkins writes, in the small hours of the weekend, packs of sci-fi fans roamed the two upstairs floors of the two-star bull hotel in the center of Petersburg, clanking. rhythmically on bottles and chanting a message for attendees who were long in bed, but not necessarily with their partners. They chanted, go back to your wives, go back to your wives. Okay. There's also the tale of a drunken late night party in someone's room, which was interrupted by bang on the door with the angry question, do you know what time it is? And the reply came, yes, it's 20 to 3.

Cheeky geese. Why, yes, I do. I'm happy to oblige. Oh, funny question, but yes. No problem, good sir. As your pocket watch stop? How dreadfully unfortunate. Sorry, I'm just in here parting with not my wife.

While he didn't get up to anything wild, he did meet a lifelong best mate there, a guy named Dave Busby, who was a couple of years older than Pratchett. So it's still a teenager, but apparently did Pratch, I guess two years at that age. A huge difference. Huge difference. And really accentuating that age gap was the, that Busby smoked a pipe. At what, 17 years old?

17, 18 years old smoking a pipe, which Pratchett found very funny apparently. No, that's objectively funny. Yeah. A 17-year-old with a pipe. That's funny. Pipes are funny. Yes.

I'll say that. Pipes are funny. This is going to be surprising to you. Teenage with a pipe and Terry were a bit pretentious. Oh. And they really turned up. there knows that those who dressed up in characters and stuff there, which is so funny at a sci-fi convention,

we're like, we're here to talk about sci-fi. We're not here to dress up and act the clown and the fool. Well, I'm here to be a dialect. Damn, right. Oh, no, stares, oh, no. Yeah, there'd be, like, very different cliques. Cliques? Cliques.

Clicks? It's sort of written cliques, isn't it? Click-a. Click-a. clicks. Yeah, and that's kind of interesting because later on, as I'll briefly mention, there were basically Pratchett-themed conventions. A whole convention about his world.

That's so funny. And him being like, these losers dressing up as my characters. Everyone would dress up as my characters. Some of his favorite, famous characters, like I mentioned, Death, the Grim Reaper, the librarian and orangutan. And I think the joke was sort of like, they've just got long arms so they can reach all the books and that just became, you know, a bit of a beloved character. There was also this unscrupulous huckster that was in a lot of his books called

Cut Me Own Thrope, Dibbler. First name, Cut Me Own Throat. Your name, Dibler. And his cat trades always like, oh, yeah, like, if he's been negotiating, oh, I could maybe go a little bit cheaper, I'll be cut my own throat. We need Terry Pratchett when we're coming out with D&D characters. Oh, man. And we thought Dave was good.

Yeah, yeah. Cut me own throat dibbler. That's really good. You've never done anything that good. What about Isadora Plonker? Isadora Plonker is an all-time great. Which is, to me, it sounds like you're a guy who's Red Pratchett. Yeah, big time.

It's going to turn out, you're going to read one of his books. Like, oh, somehow I plagiarz Pratchett. There's also a troll named Detritus, which I think is a bit of fun. But anyway, there's heaps and heaps. Anyway, Terry and Dave, they were fast friends, Dave being the pipe smoker. Yes. And attended more conventions together,

including the much bigger world science fiction convention held in London later that year. It was only the second time being held in London because it would be, you know, travel around the world. So people were pumped up to go there. I'm not going to talk about it all really, apart from this anecdote that I thought would tickle Jess, because it sounds a bit like one of your recent travel stories, maybe. And so at the hotel breakfast bar, Terry and Dave overheard the American writer James Blish complain about the lack of waffles.

He was loudly complaining to their staff. Where are the waffles? And this was much to Terry and Dave's delight. Apparently from then on waffles said loudly in an American accent became one of their catchphrases. Waffle, where are the waffles? That's good But you're like Something jessonate

And at the breakfast bar You would have been coming home To tell us about that Oh yeah Yeah There was this old guy Who just was Yeah we still

We couldn't believe There were no waffles We went on a trip Two years ago When we were in No four years ago When we were in Hawaii And there was an American guy

On a day tour we did And we stopped at a place And he went up to order And there was no salutation No hello He just went Chili dog Sometimes we do just say

Chillie doll It's like you're really You are spot on It just felt I'm like This could have been a just story Woff! Didn't even say Oh can I please

No Just chill it on Hitman And then on our most recent trip We overheard an American say I got a tie-bush you away Boris And we've said that the whole trip

And wasn't there another one where someone, what was it, someone on the plane said something about, there was another catchphrase that you kept saying, someone said any slight inconvenience and they had something and you would, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that one? That was, oh, that was before, I saw a TikTok before we went travelling. And it was an Australia guy talking about, he was flying to Bali. And as they were landing, a woman told another woman off because her tray table was still down. and she said, can you put your tray table up, please? I'd actually like to make it to Bali.

He said, I don't know what part of the plane she thinks that's controlling. But he goes, and this is why we travel to discover other cunts. It's funny because, yeah, there is the stereotype of the American traveller, but the Australian travel, yeah, everyone's got them. It's just the American accent cuts through sometimes. It does, but I do find travelling the Australian accent cuts through as well. and I haven't heard it for a while. And if it's someone being obnoxious, it's like, oh.

Yeah, you sort of like, sort of try not to look at them. Yeah, I'm not one of them. I'm not speaking with a New Zealand accent. I'm a cultured Australian. Yeah. Chill it old. Chill it on. And I'm lucky that my little backpack, I didn't even realize it's got a New Zealand map outlaw on it because it's a New Zealand brand.

Perfect. I'm like, fantastic. Do you start tapping that? Yeah, I'm going, oh, fushing chaps. Oh. Oh, no, I think it's a choice. Yeah, no, just trying to have a choice time. Bro.

Brew. Chili bond, wearing my jindles. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much. Because they're really polite. Yeah, they're really polite. They're really polite. They're very nice people.

They're not obnoxious. I've never seen an obnoxious Kiwi. No. Is it possible? I mean, Russell Crow maybe. Yeah. But he does it in a way that's charming. If he hits you with a telephone.

You go, thank you, Russell. I appreciate the gift. Yeah. And he's become pretty Australian over the years. Yeah. It's more of his Australia. We've ruined him. Yeah.

Still, one of the highlights is when he retweeted your video. Yeah. I can't believe that. The greatest shame about you closing down your Twitter account. Yeah, I regret that, just for that alone. Oh, well. Oh, well, anyway, talk about going on a tangent. So Pratchett left school at an early age.

I don't really understand. They talk about A levels and how you get certain A levels and stuff. I don't really understand what they're talking about. No. But he left without getting them all. something. Okay. Okay.

I think he applied for a job at a newspaper. He was like, I only had in writing, but 14 pounds every now and then. It's not going to pay the bills. Sure. I got boxes of cornflakes to buy. You got to pay for them now. Yeah. Which is the hardest thing.

That's how they get you hooked. Yeah. Yeah. He's on a box. He's a lot of taste. But he was offered a, you know, a cadetship or whatever that would have been called. But they were like, you got to cut. You've got to quit school basically and take it up straight away, which, you know,

it wasn't very unusual back then anyway. And it makes sense to me. Learn on the job, of course. We don't want you to study English at school. It's come be a professional writer. Yeah. And the paper, because it was in Buckingham Shear, however they say that. And, yeah, he got a job at the Bucks Free Press is what it was called.

Yeah. So he kind of figured that being a journalist was a good compromise, between his passion for riding and his need for an income. The grisly reality of the job hit home pretty quickly. It might have even been his first day, but it was early on. He attended the scene of an accidental death where a farmer jumped off his tractor and fell through what was a long closed off well, and he drowned in the mud at the bottom.

Drowning in mud is one of the most grisly things I've ever heard. Oh, that's awful. Oh, my God. He just happened to accidentally land on a well. crazy, unlucky. And so he arrived when the body was, so he's, you know, he's a teenager and there's this bloated, mud-blooded body there.

And he remembers trying to take in the scene and take notes and stuff while keeping his breakfast down, is how he remembers it. But yeah, death... Was it waffles? Waffles! And of course, death would become a recurring theme through his work, of course,

with his character, Death, who's in nearly every disc-world novel, I think every one bar one. A lot of his work was interviewing people about anniversaries and birthdays. He talks about how he could pretty much have started writing the articles about the long anniversaries. He was like, oh, you know, what's your secret? It was always the same thing. But he remembered one time where the wife, he was taking her back when the wife said,

oh, we just regularly have sex. And then the partner's like, yes, it's right. And then the wife's like, You youngsters think you invented sex, but it's not the cat. He's just there like pencil over the head, like, I'm not writing the fan. Yeah, I mean, I'm happy for you, but. Yeah, okay. Oh, we do it all sorts of ways.

Normally it's like date night every second week or something. Daryl, get the scrapbook out. Show the boy. Well, we just flick our way through the karma seat, chart. And yeah, whichever page we land on, we, we go. Give it a go. Obviously, the first time we went through the book, we did the whole thing from go to wo. And then after that, we thought, just pick a page, any page.

I tell you what, the book is absolutely doggied now. Dog it is one of our favorite. I love it when we think the same. Share one, bro. It's so electric, don't you think? Oh, I do. He got to speak to some notable people, too, including previous topic. Roald.

Oh. So he got to set up his own interviews occasionally, and he wrote to Roll Dale saying, I'd love to interview you. It was after he'd written something, maybe James and Giant's Peach, but he wasn't at all the household name by that stage. So what's your secret? I have sex all the time. All the time.

Especially with that giant peach. One time I went to the supermarket, I came back with a really large peach, and I thought, God, I want to fuck that page. And then my publisher said, look, this isn't all you're going to sell to kids. Yeah. All right. People inside the peach or something? Yeah.

Can I fuck them? All right, all right. The giant's not horny. He's friendly. The big friendly giant. How about that? It's not my vision, but I guess it'll... Big horny giant.

Not good enough for you, okay. Okay, right, okay. Charlie and the fuck for three. Okay. The twats? No, it's not quite right. Can I change Matt's name to Charlie and the Fass Factory in the Grove Channel? Put it in, put it in.

We just have to pause. He's currently Mr. A&L. Yeah, which is incredible. Because he never see your own nicknames. You probably don't forgot that. But I actually think Charlie in the Fife. It might be time to get rid of. Charlie in the Fuck Factory.

That's a shame that it doesn't record. I'd have no idea what came before. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. You just start keeping a record. Yeah, so he ended up going and interviewing him and, you know, wrote up an article about that. So kind of fun. But the job no one wanted the paper was writing for the children's section, which was had the pen name, Uncle Jim, and just whoever would write for that section.

But no one wanted to do it. None of the regulars did. So it got passed on to him. But he kind of ended up enjoying it. because apart from being in charge of announcing neighbourhoods, kids' birthdays and stuff, he also got to write short stories. Yeah, nice. But apparently a big part of the job, he said,

the trickiest part of the job, was stopping people writing like Bart Prankle-style dirty names as children's birthdays. And he said later that he apologised if there really was an R-sitch. because he never published their birthday message Arse itch Like an itchy ass

It's good That's stuff Rob's itch Oh my God Poor little Robb Oh poor little Rob Oh it's been a comedy name this whole time Oh my good

When no one ever noticed That it's a stage name So yeah He got the gig As Uncle Jim Which is very funny to think of a Like a 17 year old or whatever he now. For The Guardian, Alison Floodwrites, he wrote news as well as more than 60 children short

stories over 250 weeks signing them as Uncle Jim. And it was in these short stories that he tested out the idea for his first book about the tiny people who live in the carpet, which all came out of a riff, apparently. Him and his mate Dave were chatting and Dave was sort of like getting really animated, jumping around in the living room. And Pratchett's like, oh, be careful. where you're trying, you don't want to trot on the little people who live in the carpet. They have fun. You ask where they get their ideas? Well, that's where.

So he wrote a book about it. And as fate would have it, after completing his manuscript, he was assigned the job of interviewing a book publisher. And he brought up that he'd written a manuscript. And the guy was like, oh, give us a look. You'd love to check it out. And that publisher passed it on to his business partner, Colin Smyth, who loved it. And he's like, yeah, I want to publish and Pratch is like, I'd actually like, I'd love to, you know, keep working on it. And then a couple of years later, the carpet people was published.

Wow. So, like, and I think he's maybe he's 18 or 19 at this point, but he wrote it when he was basically 17. The publisher when he said, I'd love to have a look at it. Yeah. I'm going to put it up on the fridge. Yeah. It's actually quite cool. Yeah, yeah.

We're going to get a second opinion here. I mean, coming, I'm losing my mind. This is actually really good. And yet, Flood writes that Smyth ended up becoming Pratchett's first publisher. And when Pratchett outgrew his small publishing thing, he stayed on as his agent and was his agent all the way through the rest of his life. Wow. Which is pretty sick. Apparently Pratchett would say that Smyth was the guy in publishing he,

distrusted the least. That was his big compliment to him. But anyway, Smar said, this was written by a 17-year-old, which I guess was the early draft, and seemed to me to be showing great promise of a brilliant, if not yet genius mind. A little subtle look back there. A kid at 17 who was writing so well must logically get better as he improved with experience.

His imagination was second to none. That's nice. That's great. Around this summer, he also met the love of his life. and soon-to-be wife. Okay, he's just really... He's kicking goals. So, for someone who was really not going to amount to anything,

he's actually kind of amounting to a lot of things pretty quickly. Yeah, it's not even like... He, like, finished school, got a job, did a pretty good job at his job, wrote a book, that got picked up, he's now met someone committed... He skipped over the cornflakes. I'm sorry, he won some cornflakes one time. Well, he was given.

Earned. Do you think he's inviting Mr. Tame to the wedding? to be like, look at this, look at this. Yeah, she's a babe. Yeah, she's hot. Hotter than your wife. She seems... No offence, Mrs. Tame.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for the kettle. I think she, um... Her name was Lynn Purvez, now, Lynn Pratchett. I think she might have been a bit Carl Deanish, maybe a bit private. Because I was trying to find out her age. I think she was about the same age. But, yeah, you can't find out that much about her, which gave me a bit of the Carl Dean's, which I respect.

I respect. And throughout the biography, um, Sorry, listeners on my air pressure stage just sunk You started going there whilst talking Down I go I hope the video caught that Yeah, I think it did What was it talking? Oh yeah, so yeah

Lynn Pervez Through the biography, she's mentioned bits and pieces But it's not really going to much details So either Wilkins wasn't fond of her Oh, right I don't think that's it all. I don't think much of Lynn. Yeah.

I see myself as his first life partner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I sort of see his life beginning when I started working for him. So the first time he laid eyes on Lynn Purvez was on the train and he was instantly smitten. Sorry, long blonde locks, blonde hair. So she was reading, Lord of the Rings. I actually know a little fucker. about that book.

I wrote to the author. And he was too nervous to speak to her, though. But as Faye would have it, not long after, he was at a house party of one of his workmates, and she literally fell into his lap. And she asked him, I didn't recognize the name, but she's like, are you some guy who was a pop star at the time? And he goes, no. That's really weird.

And they were together. And she was up and off, like, straight up. after, you know, it was a party, whatever. Are you Paul McCartney? And he would have just been like, right, bye. He was also, I guess he was sort of like, what the heck? This is crazy. But whether it was on Pills or not, I think it was just an accident.

Her earring fell off at that time. That wasn't an accident. He had it. She disappeared. Real Cinderella type moment. Wow. Then during the week, back at work, he asked their mutual friend for her details, her number so he could return the earring.

Next thing, he's dropping. it off. This absolutely comically convoluted way. He found out she was a bit more well-to-do and he didn't want to rock up seeming a bit poor on. He was at that time riding this really shitty motorbike and he's like, I can't

rock up on this. So he set up this thing he couldn't really afford the taxi. It was a bit of a job. So he organized the taxi one way. He drove his he rode his motorbike to nearby then organized a taxi. It was multiple steps just to avoid. But anyway, he found out

She was pretty down to earth, and none of that would have mattered anyway. And they were dating soon after, and within a few months engaged and then married. Wow. Like, it happened really quickly. I mean, if your name is basically pervert, you're looking for a way to change that. Anyway, how out? You want out. Pratchett.

That's all right. Okay. That's not bad. Don't change my initials. I would prefer to you. All my monograms towels. It would have been better. At my matter house.

This is way better than if you were Paul McCartney. I wish I could remember I can't remember the guy's name It doesn't matter I'll tell you guys And be like What are you talking about? Yeah

He was a hip band in the 60s Oh Barry Cruz That man Oh he could swing Yeah That sounds like us That sounds like something we'd say for sure So amazingly

Oh maybe it's not that amazingly I'm going through a lot of dates But They were married on the 5th of October 1968 Which the time of release was this week This What was that? Makes their 50s

It's wedding anniversary. Wow. That's cool. That is cool. Happy anniversary. I don't know. What would that be? What year?

Is it 68? 68. So I think that's 58, isn't it? Wow. Wow. So, I don't know. Is that, they must run out of materials by that point. By that point, they're like, surely you're dead.

Yeah. We just do every 10 or so by then. That what's a traditional? 50th is probably gold, is it? Or is that 25th? No, it might be like platinum. Platinum. Like, yeah, what's the?

eventually it gets to blood of the firstborn. Yeah. I'm thinking that it just runs out at 50. What's 50? Yeah, I was going to say, what about 75, but no, people don't live long enough to. You don't have to get married so young. 50 for gold. And then both of you live to 100.

I think my grandparents got to their 70th. 50. Really? Because like, and now they're dead. What was Queen Elizabeth the Diamond Jubilee? Was that 60? Oh, yeah, true. So you have to wait 60 years to get a diamond? What the fuck is the point?

Yeah, diamond for 60. Let me say if 70th has one. Maybe 75th. Known as the Platinum Jubilee or Platinum anniversary. Yeah. Right. Yeah, even the queen had to get the queenship pretty young just to make it and then live for ages. Anyway, so they got married real quick.

They moved a couple of times. They ended up in a bit of a manor house, a bit of a duer opera. they'll live in the hippie kind of life. They'll grow in their own food and any money he earned, he put into his greenhouse. He was just like really handy. Like his dad worked as a mechanic or something. So he knew how to fix and do all sorts of things.

And they just, yeah, sort of their own stuff out. But apparently one of the places I were living in was such a fixer up and the insulation was so poor that one winter morning he woke up and his beard was frozen. I've never heard of that. That's right. You know, you see that in like an Arctic expedition or something, but not inside your bed.

Yeah. He woke up, he's like, oh, my beard is hard. How did you sleep at all? Like, it's too cold. Yeah, amazing. Apparently his mate, Dave, went to visit him a few days after the wedding and noticed he'd stopped shaving. And apparently that was when he grew his sort of famous beard.

And, you know. So he immediately let him. himself go. Well, I mean, Dave, Dave sells it in a very different way. He says, unlike, you know, the olden day stereotype of a ball and chain, that sort of stuff, it was like, to Terry, it was like he was now living, he was his true self, he'd found the love of his life, he was growing out his beard, he was, uh, yeah, he felt like that was when his life began. And that's what I remind Aidan all the time. His life began when I chose him.

Yes. And we say thank you, Jess. Yes, every morning and every evening. Good morning, thank you. Good morning, and thank you so much for blessing me with your love. And I say, bring me a coffee, would you? You say, love to stretch. Bring me a coffee.

Bring me a coffee, they will talk. Eight years later, Lynn and Terry had their first and only child, Rihanna. Yeah. And she described him as less as a father. This is really old school. Less of a father, more of a big brother, which is kind of hectic. But apparently he was the fun guy. The mum was the disciplinarian.

So that is a bit of an old school setup. What was the less of a mother? More of a word for that. Grandmother. Grabber your grandmother. Double mother. A mother father. So my dad's my brother.

My mom's a grandmother. And I'm weird. And the don't. my best friend. But you know, they'd go on adventures and stuff. She also did, there was this heartbroken thing at one point when she was eight or nine. Apparently she drew a picture of her dad and underneath, I love my dad, but geez he's busy or something like that. You're like, oh my God. Kids can be so unintentionally brutal. Yeah, that's just like, oh my God. They're just setting like a matter of fact. I'm just dad because he's always so busy. Like you see that and go

like, oh, my heart. Brutal. So he's having a bit of mild success, but apparently he's not, he becomes way more prolific at this point. He's writing books in his spare time. He gives himself sort of like word limits, about 300 words a night. You know, he's working full time and then working on different bits and pieces. But he was really reluctant to leave the security of full-time work. Continuing as a journalist before getting a job as a sub-editor, he had a couple of, he had one job where his work was brutal. it was very harsh.

His boss, I think it was in that one where his boss sort of pranked him just when he started by saying on the Friday, he goes, I'm going to have to have a conversation. And Terry's like, okay. And he goes, no, no, don't want to ruin your weekend. We'll talk about it on Monday. And then on Monday it was like, no, that was just, I was just messing with you. That's not funny.

No, that's not funny. Brutely. brutally, Wilkins recalls that because Pratchett passed it on to him. What did the same? Did the same bit? To the point, though, that it was Wilkins, uh,

asking on Monday, Terry couldn't even remember setting up the prank. He's like, no, I don't remember. Oh, and then he goes, oh,

oh, sorry, yeah. Old boss was an asshole. Did that to me. It's like hazing the new guy. Yeah, that's, uh, that's not nice.

It's not nice. That's funny actually. Wilkins is like, The whole weekend, I couldn't think about anything else. Jess, I've been meaning to talk to you about something. Actually, we'll wait to the episodes finish. Let's wait till next week. Let's wait till next week.

It's so, like, do you think you're my boss? Look, go on, Dave. Try to fire me. It would have worked better if it was Matt, but he's doing the reports. I had to turn to you. It wouldn't work better if it was Matt. Dave doing it to me. I think he means.

Oh. That's what I meant. I said so, Matt. Me, totally. Equally inconsequential. Great. And then he'll figure it. get in the next three minutes that he wants to talk to me about something.

I would absolutely fret on that. But I'd be thinking, is Dave unwell? I'd be like, you've got a, maybe you've had a, and Abney, Surrended web series here at Humdinger pathological, and he lost so at the end he had to call someone and tell a lie. And he left a voice message saying, we were coming up to doing a bunch of shows together and he goes, sorry Matt,

sorry for the late notice, but I'm giving comedy away. I'm really sorry for the late notice. Yeah, hopefully you can figure out what to do with the festivals and stuff. But I had COVID at the time, so I was a bit delirious asleep and I woke up to that message. And I just, and he didn't answer when I called back. So I was spiraling going, is he got a diagnosis or has his partner or something's happened

I'm like someone something he wouldn't be quitting stand up if it wasn't for something and eventually and he's just forgotten to send a follow-up message being like that was a bit don't worry don't listen to that I was doing a bit yeah it was for a show don't worry about it oh there's no way he'd just be quitting he loves stand-up all right I'll start a cloud funding yeah I'll sell an organ maybe I'll sell it does he need an organ

I was like, oh, sorry, I was for a web series. Oh, yeah, cool. Sick. That's all right. I just had a heart attack, that's all right. So, yeah, he didn't want to leave full-time work, so better, did all these other jobs. Then he took on a job mainly to get better pay, I think, for a while,

working as the press officer at the Central Electricity Generating Board, or the C-E-G-B, According to the BBC, you had the responsibility for three nuclear... Sorry, what? What did I say? According to the B, B, C, it was just a cadence that's never been said. The Cairns, but also the fact you just referred to the CGBBC, and according to the B.C. Oh, my God.

I've lost to my mind. Sorry, I'll go again. According to the BBC, according to the BBC, he had the responsibility. for three nuclear power stations, began his new post with impeccable timing in his words, just after the partial meltdown of the reactor at three-mile island in the US, which I guess was not his responsibility, but not a good time for the PR of nuclear power.

All right, because he's not really in charge of the power stations, he's in charge of the image. Yes, exactly. They make it sound like that. He's in there with the rods put the middle, oh, too much. Okay, oh, meltdown. I was a sub-editor, I'm sure these skills are transferable. He later joked

About every Friday One of the reactors would blow up again It was my job to say Well, we didn't leave much radioactivity You could barely see it So you know But yeah he was just like Big keeping everyone calm

About it But apparently there was a lot of unease About nuclear power at the time British public was very nervous In particular about the waste And especially it's safety And which was transported on like a seven-hour train ride or more from one city near Bristol,

went through, built up Bristol up to the Cumbrian coast. And, you know, you could see the nuclear flasks bearing irradiated fuel rods. And people are going, what if there's a crash? Yeah. This feels crazy. To prove the strength, you know, part of the PR, they dropped some of the flasks, you know, the casings that held it,

from a rig in a disused quarry in cheddar. I guess a place made of cheese. I've never heard of cheddar. Is that where cheese is from? Can you just keep reading place? Is that true? I think it is. Have you heard of that?

It's not made of cheese, Matt. That's the moon. This guy. So, well, set up this, it's like a Mythbusters. Stunt, yeah. And, you know, dropped it from a height, crashed, and it survived. See, these things can handle an accident and it'll be safe. But apparently the public's still worried.

So to put minds at ease once in all, Terry and his team there, set up the idea of Operation Smash Hit, driving a train at 100 miles per hour into one of the flasks. So it's a disused... What? A diesel locomotive. And he was like, it's got to be 100 miles per hour. If we want to get this in the papers, 90 miles an hour is not going to cut it.

It's got to be 100 miles an hour. I reckon it would. We got a train and we smashed it into a bit of nuclear material. What speed was it? Oh, 78 miles per hour. All right, call me back when you get 100. No one's going to give a shit about this. Who cares?

You exploded a train, but it wasn't. gone fast. I had assumed that it was an empty flask, but yeah, it'd be, if you really want to prove it, put your money where your mouth is, make sure the radiation fuel or whatever that shit is is inside the flask. And pop the lid on the flask. So that's what happened. They did it. They stacked a train going 100 miles per hour, so 160Ks an hour into the flask. The train sort of went up at 30 degrees came airborne for a while. The front of it liquidized. It stacked real hard, but there was barely even a scratch on the flask.

Why did the train turn to liquid? I think it's good well, because it was, the flask is so solid on the tracks that it was stacking into that... It turned a train to mush. Yeah, it was like, you know, an immovable object and an irresistible force. Well, it turns out that force was slightly irresistible. Which one are you and which one is me? I'm the train, I'm the one liquidized.

So you're the, I'm in the immovable object? I think that is definitely the case in terms of riffs and stuff on this show. I will not, yes, and. And you're hard to crack. And often, you know, you are absolutely right. Hopefully that cheddar thing's been edited out. I don't know what I was talking about. I just was genuinely, I'm like cheddar.

Is that where cheese is from? It was crazy. Of course it is. Like tasty cheese comes from Tasty And yeah Manchester's from Manchester What do I fucking bother Wait is Tasty not from Tilly?

Finally Tasty is more of an Australian thing Jack Drew said when he came over from He grew up in Canada He came over and he's like Tasty cheese and he's like Had something like He's like well this has got to be ironic Yeah

It's a fairly mild It's a mild cheese So was that good PR That was good part People are like, we're happier now. It was on the BBC news that night. It rang big. On the BBC.

The BBC. And, yeah, for a while at least it put everyone's minds at ease. That's good PR. Anyway, so he's doing that by day. And apparently it sounded like he became a bit of a grumpy asshole in that job. I'm guessing it was a high-stress job. But people who work with him talk to the biographer and are like, yeah, you know, if you didn't want to necessarily.

getting his way, he was pretty grumpy. But anyway, his most famous work is his sprawling. Do you know what his universe is called, Dave? Yeah, Discworld. The Discworld. That's right. And the first book of which, The Color of Magic, is a series of short stories set on the Discworld.

And that was published in 1983. This by the stage was his fourth novel, but the first of his Discworld series, which he didn't, of course, didn't know at the time, going to become a series. It was just another idea for a book. The BBC suggests his inspiration was to have fun with some of the cliches of fantasy novels. Wilkins writes, it was intended, Terry always said, to do for fantasy fiction what Blazing Saddles had done for the Western, and of course, what the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had done for sci-fi, which is a book that the three of us did a book cheat about. That's right, we did. And as an aside, they did.

Bump into each other one time. You'd think they would have had a bit more to do with each other. But yeah, it was only once that they, and they spoke very briefly. He's right, Douglas Adams. Douglas Adams and Terry. But Terry was, yeah, quite influenced by Adams. As an aside, Terry is a lot shorter and Douglas Adams quite tall. And in 1994, he joked, most science fiction writers are small blokes.

They spent a lot of time grubbing on the floor for old sci-fi magazines, not stretching up to the top shelf of pornography. As an aside, Douglas Adams is quite tall. A bit of fun. That's a bit of fun. Anyway, the colour of magic, the first book, was reviewed very favourably. Like each book he's getting maybe a little bit more notice. But the print runs of the early books are very small.

His publisher was quite small time. I think it was 2,000 copies of his first book. Carpet people were made. And they didn't all sell. And they talk about 500 were bundled up. and sent to Australia, which is such a funny idea. Yeah.

Like a punishment. Like they're convicts. Oh, send them to a show. Make them cut, I don't know, chop wood or something. Maybe like it'd be a builder. Maybe they could be bricks in a new prison or something.

But yeah, the colour of magic was more favourable, but got a bit more attention again. One reviewer called it, the funniest thing he'd ever read. Another reviewer said he made the mistake of drinking beer while reading it lying on his bed. Now his ceiling was stained with brown spots.

Which is such a convoluted way of saying he laughed, I think. It's trying to be sort of quite poetic. But it's like, now I'm just picturing of ceiling covered in brown spots. Like, that's gross. Yeah. Sure is that mould? Yeah. I can someone went wrong and he had to work backwards should explain the state to his wife.

This is how good Terry practice is really funny. Okay. Don't sniff the spots. There's what's up there? Okay. All right. Well, only because you said so. Of the series, the Discworld fandom writes.

The novels are set on the Discworld, a flat world, balanced on the backs of four elephants, which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle, which apparently some of this was borrowed from Indian, what do you call it, spiritualism or whatever. The books frequently parody, or at least borrow ideas from J.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, another previous

block topic, I think. That's right. And William Shakespeare, another previous topic, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, often using them for satirical parallels with current cultural, technological and scientific issues. Many of the Discworld series are set in Ankh-Morpork, the biggest city in Discworld. The city's motto is quanti, Caniculia Ila and Fenestra, which is Latination, which is the disqualled equivalent for Latin. And it translates to, how much is that doggie in the window? They use those kind of Latiny jokes a lot in his work. It's hard to know how much to delve into the stories and stuff.

I'm going to talk about a couple of them a little bit later. But anyway, BBC writes his style of writing was nothing if not eccentric. He avoided chapters where possible on the basis they broke up the narrative and peppered his text with footnotes. He would go on and write some children's books and he had to be talked into making chapters for them. The editor's like, kids kind of need the chapters and explain that. Even like for the parents, you know, before they go, they say two chapters and then it lights off. And he was sort of convinced by that. I even do that when I'm reading now.

I'll read three chapters here. Yeah. I'll get to chapter 15, page 101. But sometimes it's like, damn it, that was a really long chapter. I should I read three. Not only they're kind of on the short side, but there's one long one. But the funny thing is, I'm the same, but I'd never notice that the books of his that I've read didn't have chapters, which is interesting in itself. Yeah, so he also peppered his text with footnotes, which is kind of why Rob Wilkins's biography is called A Life with Footnotes.

and the whole biography is filled with footnotes. But I think that's actually what Pratch. Pratchett, when he died, was semi-working on his autobiography. So Wilkins used a lot of Pratchett's own notes in the writing of it as well. Here's a bit from Wilkins. Swig of the bloody devil. Much about Terry's writing process amazes me and still does. There were no index cards.

There was no whiteboard. There were no post-it notes slapped on the wall. wall near his desk, ready to be shuffled into order. There weren't even any jottings in a notebook. I assume there would be some kind of grand plan, some sort of big diagram containing at least the outline of things for these 300-400-page stories, and the story still to come, but there wasn't. The plots of each novel unfolded as he wrote them, and during the writing, he stored, flipped, rotated, and scrolled backwards and forwards through the whole thing in his head. What's more, he did so effortlessly. Even aspects in the unfolding story seem to be at his

fingertips. Yes. He also, I can't remember to write this down, but he had a file, I guess, on his old, he had this really early laptop computer.

He was always using the new technology, but then holding on to that new technology, still was quite old technology. But he had a filed called the pit and any paragraphs or whatever. He writes stuff and he like,

that doesn't fit in this story. I'll chuck it in the pit. I'll use it later for something else. So it'd be grabbing stuff out of the pit. And that's where the TV show comes from. I think that, I haven't seen it, but I'm pretty sure. Me either. In the pit, something they found after he died was a really realistic story about a hospital,

which some people love watching. I can't understand why that would be interesting. Maybe we have to check it out. But I could just go to a hospital, take a seat. You know what I mean? Yeah. You could, but the doctors probably wouldn't be as hot. Wouldn't be as hot.

Not as hot, still pretty hot. Still pretty hot. Yeah. Statistically, there's a lot of doctors, a lot of nurses, a lot of things. A lot of, you know, great people doing great work. And some of them have got to be hotties. Yeah. And they won't, if you'll never hear them complaining about like of waffles.

Yeah. Yeah. If you got a real, and they'll just be saying, where's my vegamote, singer? Something like that. Exactly right. If you got a real one. You got a real one. Last time I went to hospital, it was midnight.

And they were having a pizza party because it was someone's last day. And so they were all just hanging out in a room chatting. I mean, they were doing their job still. Someone was still working. But as someone waiting for care for chronic pain, I was a bit like, could you put the pizza down and give me some meds, please? I'm glad it's your last day, Sharon. Good luck in your next adventure.

If you're going to do this, do this deep inside of a star room. They close the blinds in that room. I could still hear and see you, but okay. Yeah, he's here. Three one, two, one, shot, shot, shot, shot. I'm like, I'd love a shot of something. So with the release of the Color of Magic, He was getting a bit more attention.

It was even picked up by Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4's Women Focused Current Affairs show, which apparently they would always do a serialized book. To say mistake Terry? Yeah, I guess Terry's a unisex name, but it is funny that back in the 80s, they're like, well, there's a woman character in this. Let's support women. Women have always supported other women. So I'm not sure why specifically that book.

book was picked up, well that show picked it up, but anyway, it did bring it to a broader audience. Women love to read, that's why. And we read a wide genre. Yes. What is that genre? Romance. Exclusively. Quite a wide genre.

Yeah, if you know what I mean at certain parts, how else would you get a throbbing? What's the word they use? A throbbing member in there, if not for width. I think everyone listening should picture what I'm saying Do you feel good about that? No. Okay. No, I don't.

Just checking, do you feel good about anything? No, I don't. Have you ever felt good about anything? Yeah. What? I tell you what, this summer, year, spring, everything feels a little bit nicer. Okay. Have you been fine of that?

The weather? I love when the winter turns to spring, which is kind of maybe because of different things, but I think it happens in winter now. Winter turns the spring Inside of winter I think the last third of winter is kind of pretty springy Yeah, it's chilly in the morning

Yeah But the day is nice And some people are complaining about this Yeah, I know Okay Hey, how about scientists shut up We want more spring Yeah, stop banging on about it

This is a very funny bit It's a very funny bit That I'm sure that people Who are feeling like Jess that the near future is looking dire. I think they'll enjoy this little bit of levity about it. That's right. It's a very funny joke you see people on, say, Facebook

and I don't want to broadly talk about the types of people or their generation or age. But Facebook type people will make, oh, this is a global warming, I don't mind it at all. It's like, yeah, you'll be dead in five years, Greg. Oh, sign me up. Yeah, I have, Greg. And I'm throwing you into the fiery people.

You're going first. Greg! Oh, there's a, I just remind me of vaguely of another Pratchett line where he goes, teach a man to build a fire. He'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire. He'll be warm the rest of his life. That's actually very nice.

Really good. Can I ask a question? Yes. Can I go on? Definitely that. After, percentage-wise, where are we at in the story? About 50. Nice.

Happy with that? No, but that's fine. As for the follow-up book to Color of Magic, and I can't remember if I wrote this down either day, but if you were wondering how to get into it, Pratchett has said that's not the best place to start. I would have assumed that it would be. Okay.

Yeah, it is, I mean, you definitely can, and some people would, but yeah, there's a lot of guides to where to jump in. But for the most part, it's a world that's not like, this linear story. You can, most of the books you can just read self-contained. I tell people to start Parks and Recit's Season 2. Right.

You know? I tell people to start Dogo on at episode 7. I should have said 69. Damn it. Don't. I mean, you could have. You hadn't said a number yet. I'd tell Dogo on, people to listen to Do Go on first at episode 69.

AJ added in some, AJ, if you can find a time where Jess laugh. Good luck, AJ. Notoriously. You're asking about to a previous episode. Probably in previous life. What is there, episode 69? Probably something that doesn't link up.

It should have been the history of orgasms. The history of orgasms. I'll look it up. You keep going. So yeah, for the follow-up book, Pratchett told his published, smith, that it may also be set on Discworld saying, I don't think I've exhausted all the possibilities in one book. This Wilkins' muse was one of the greatest understatements in publishing history.

As we'll hear, Pratchett will set many more books in this universe. Great. Jess. Just laughing. Episode 69 was John Wilkes Booth and the assassination of Abraham handling? Perfect. I'm heating up just hearing those words. Wow.

Wow. Yes, I don't think I realized what number it was when I picked that topic. All right, so by 87, he had already published six novels, by January of 87, already published six novels, including three in the Discworld series, while still working at his day job. Okay. Anyhow, in 987, having just signed a six-book deal, he went all in on writing, going full-time, or as he called it, the cold waters of self-employment. And with that, Wilkins writes,

he needed the structure of an office day, only stricter. He sequestered himself in his room with only the occasional cat for company. It's the danger of going full-time writer would be, now you're motivating yourself, and apparently he was very good at it. There would be no interruptions. Daily word targets went from what he was

doing 300, became 3,000, and he seems to have decided that his approach to the business of being a novelist would be utterly blue-collar, industrial even. The truth is that very few novelists have interpreted the term full-time in the expression full-time writer as literally as Terry Pratchett did when he quit his day job. Wilkins continues. Sometimes in that first decade, there was so much work going on and so little time in his week for anything else that he would even, it would even enraged. him, which is so funny set up all of this himself.

He's completely in control of it. I hate my boss. Oh my God. Overtime again. Apparently. I'm not going to pay for this. You know, they put someone else on my desk. What am I going to get to that?

Wilkins says at such moments he would lash out at the forces that were relentlessly cracking the whip, forgetting, of course, that chief among those forces was himself. He once phoned me up in exasperation that he was being totally. totally taken granted by his publishers. He told his mate Dave Busby, or sorry, his old mate Dave Busby said. He was fuming. He had, he'd had enough.

He was going to take a sabbatical. No more writing for at least six months. I felt very pleased for him. He needed that break. I think he planned to do a lot of travelling. I did not hear from him for about six months. And when we made contact again, I asked him what he had done in his sabbatical.

He replied irritably, I wrote two books. He's funny. That is funny. And so funny, he's just like, this is going to piss you off as much as it pissed me off. Yeah. I wrote another two freaking books. Can you believe that? So much for a sabbatical.

He was writing like two, three, four books a year at his peak. His dedication to writing came before all else. That included family times and maybe that was around the time. He still wrote, I love my dad, but he is very busy. Which is a bit heartbreaking. But Rihanna, it's not like they're a stranger at all. She's still basically the proud custodian of the disc world. She's also an award-winning video game writer,

amongst other writing. And, yeah, they had a good relationship. Do either of you have a picture of him in your head? No. Yeah, I was like a white... Dave, I said no. Okay. So no.

I'm going to put this across to Dave now. Okay. I'll put the picture in Jess's head. Green hair. Okay. Black eyes. Okay, yes, that feels right. He's got sort of scales.

Are you thinking, what do you think of a troll doll? It's such hideous hair. Okay, I got him. Finally enough, the troll doll, he had, I'm not going to talk about this at all. Only I am now. He went through a lot of long processes with Hollywood getting to almost getting things made and nothing really came of it. they paid him a million bucks to option a book

and went through a long process it just never came off there was at one point one of his books almost made it and the people who had optioned it also optioned the troll doll franchise and there was a brief time

where they were going to combine the two basically have the troll dolls being his characters and combining the two and that fell over and probably for the best sort of weird combination of things that would have been weird

but yeah so grey beard and a wide brim black hat, right? I was going to say, because I reckon I've seen the one photo of him, but he wears that hat a lot. The hat is his iconic look. The hat comes up a lot. And, yeah, I think that makes him an easy guy

to dress up as, just fake beard and a hat. Hey, Halloween's sorted. Oh, there he is. Yeah, he kind of looks a little bit nomesque. Yeah, he's got a bit of a nobisc. Yeah, he's got a bit of a note about it. Yeah, it feels like he, yeah, lent into it a bit.

But that was, as you're about to hear, he put on his hat, and that was when he was Terry Pratchett, the public author, that was his sort of persona. Right. So he bought his first iconic black Louisiana fedora hat in 1988 from the Locken Company in St. James Street in London. Or is it St. James St. St. in London. Anyway, or Street James St. London. But anyway, this apparently Lockin Company was a fancy hat shop.

And apparently later, like they've been, they're centuries old. And they had a campaign during Terry's life where they were trying to be hip. And they're called Lock and Company. And they had this campaign saying, lock and roll. And apparently Terry hate that. He's like, that sucks. Terry's not wrong. Yeah, I think I agree.

But anyway, apparently Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill and Lord Nelson all got their iconic hats there. Lord Nelson's tricorn hat that he died in was bought there. Wow. Really? So it's his iconic shop. That is so fun. And then like a new celebrity comes and they go, okay, we've got to try and match you all with a hat. Okay, what's going to be your hat?

Like a sorting hat. We've decided Dave's... That's where he got the idea. Dave's signature hat would be a fez, right? Yeah. And next somewhere in London. Can we go to St. Jameson. I'll mean, get that fancy shot.

We've talked about my fizz story before on the show. Dave, can I just say, let's lock and roll. Let's lock and roll. I like it. I think I can be the new face. Or one of those hats that's like, multicolored and has a little helicopter on it. I think I could boil that off too.

Yeah, I think so. Apparently, he would get hats. That would become a thing. He'd get new hats and he said, he was like, every day get a new hat, that's a good day. Like, he loved hats. Oh, so he did like them. It wasn't like people who sent him hats being like, hey, maybe you could try our hats. Well, at least publicly he liked them.

Yeah. Yeah, apparently he would always wear this style of fedora, which he didn't realize was a fedora. He'd always correct people. He's like, no, it's a Louisianian. and then it turned out it was a fedora Louisiana. This guy loves correcting the people when he's wrong. Oh my God.

How embarrassing. Apparently. Don't even cornflakes for that one too. I mean, I like him, but that's awful. Yeah, apparently when he visited Australia, which he was very popular here as well, he would swap the fedora for a blacker cuba, which was gifted to him at one of his conventions down here. That's cool. I'm down under Terry.

Yeah, exactly. Into character. Yeah, but Wilkins called that first hat purchase a rare moment of extravagance. He talked about how he'd wear these expensive hats, everything else. He'd wear clothes until they were rags. There was one time he was at an expo in Australia, and he looked at the poster of him, the big blob, was him wearing a shirt that had Australia written on the pocket. And then he looked at Terry and he was wearing the same shirt.

and he was wearing the same shirt, like 10 years later. It's like, you've got one shirt. I was like when you and I did a couple years in a row of gigs in Brisbane at Good Chat, Matt, we did some stand-up and live podcast, and I came back to the next year, and one of the listeners comes up and goes, you're wearing the same shirt as last year. This is my Brisbane shirt. Oh, no.

Oh, no. It just happened in the rotation that way. What a faux part. I said to her, I swear I haven't won this every day for a year. But you have no proof of that. I don't. Yeah, so this hat was an important one, as Wilkins writes. This item gave him, with almost absurd ease, an image.

It possessed a transformative magic in the sense that simply by putting it on, he could become the public Terry Pratchett that he was increasingly being asked to be. And of course, by the equally simple act of removing it, he could become himself again. It was, as he used to say, an anti-discise. Well, so you take the hat off and then he, yeah, you can go back to writing this point. It is interesting. Without the hat, he just looks, you know, like a normal fella.

A little normal middle-aged dude. It's like taking your briar off at the end of the day. Yeah, that's right. You just look like a normal fella. But you put that bra on and you become chest-perkins. That's what's, bop, boop. Okay. I don't know how I feel that how comfortable you guys have gotten talking about my tits.

It took several years a day. You're a little too comfy. Well, it feels like about after eight years or so. It felt like we took off the proverbial bra. And we got comfortable. We let ourselves breathe. So you can probably, you can understand from this, the fact that he's got a persona or all that stuff.

He's starting to get very popular. His popularity is beginning to explode. Gordon of Wilkins, it all got very big, very quickly. These were the years when Terry's career began to catch fire. And it properly blazed through the 90s, Terry sold an average of 3 million books per year. Wow. Nobody in Britain sold more, and as the newspaper profiles like to express it, if you'd

set, this is a stupid line, but anyway, if you set end to end every Terry Pratchett book ever bought, they would reach well from wherever you are to a very long way away. Can we fact check that? Yeah, I don't know about that. It wasn't until the late 90s he was knocked off the perch by somehow his influence, J.K. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. His biggest inspiration, I think. That's right.

Did you know that the best, biggest selling author in the UK is actually Julia Donaldson, who writes kids books, including the Gruffalo? Classic. And that's a huge part of it. But she writes so many books and they all sell quite well that she sells more than J.K. Relling. You all one about Patreon's works with her, to animate them. Oh, is the Sam Cutler?

I think that might be one, maybe. Julia Donaldson. And was this the illustrator's Axel? Stickman. And they've always got... They've got like, like, A-list British celebrities voicing the animation. Wow. Yeah, that's awesome.

That's very cool. But yeah, she sells so many, sort of goes under the radar a little bit. Was she around when you were kids? Oh. No, I think she sort of maybe's taken off in the 2000. I don't know. Yeah, it's funny because it feels like the Gruffalo's been around forever. But imagine having, like, that level of...

99, Gruffler. Yeah, okay. That level of sort of success, but being able to probably still go to a supermarket. I had no idea what she looks like. Yeah. That's so nice. She didn't need a hat. Unlike when you're a huge podcaster.

Oh, my God. You can't go out without a sky. I'll tell you this. I was on the, I mean, it never happens. But I was on the way to, I was just walking down Carlton to go to one of our listeners' book launch, Lorena's book launch, which was fantastic by the way. and it was good to see some other Dugan listeners there. Yeah.

But walking there at the traffic lights, the guy goes, you Matt's still from D-Go on. I'm like, I am. And I just assumed he was on his way there. I'm like, oh, you go on to the... And he goes, no, I'm just on my work break. He goes, where are you going?

I go, oh, I'm going to see another Dugon listeners book launch. And then he recommended me to get a chili hot chocolate from this place. And it was delicious. Oh, you do it? You go up there and say, chili hot chocolate. Sorry what? That's it. A jelly hot chocolate, please.

And it's the perfect hot chocolate. I try to get a free one. It's the part of it. And they said, that'll be $6.50. Here's a day's supply of. Anyway, I was called back to the thing before. There's not a trail out there. You know what he's trying to do.

Yeah, okay. Listen, sometimes do the work yourself. Okay, we can hand you all the pieces of a joke. Put it together. You're a adult. Grow up. Talk about duller sides. All of that was.

I thought it would be more interesting. But it's fun. That's when I bought this book actually. Oh my God. What an adventure you've been on. Thanks for bringing it in as well. Yeah. Yeah, like you're promoting it on David Letterman or something.

Yeah, yeah. It's nice. Still with the receipt in it. You hoping to return it? Yeah, yeah. And yeah. Yeah, Lorena's book's doing so good. I'm just trying to, I'm blanking on what it's called,

but it's a puzzling pursuit. That's right. Leonard Carrington and it's a journey across Australia, solve 100 puzzles, catch a killer. So much fun. And it was an interactive book launch. And one of the things was a cryptic crossword. Because I'd do them every day.

It's fun quite good. And it was a relatively easy one because they wanted it to be solved. So I got it pretty quick, but I'm like, I'm not. and there was like, pause and I'm like, oh, and the thing was he's behind you. That was the answer. And I'm standing at the back of the room. I'm the he's behind you.

And they're like, oh, yeah, good. And I got a little prize. Oh, my God. I didn't want. I was trying, I was at the back of the room for a reason. I don't like being the center of attention. You're a wallflower. I'm very shy.

Very shy. And then just a few days later, I wasn't able to go, unfortunately, but Tamara, uh, uh, won't her book and she's on the new your best sillers. Crazy. Best sillies? You're on the best silly list. She's on the best sellers list. So cool.

Very talented listeners. We just listed three there with incredible projects. Yeah. Yeah. Hot chocolate. Chill out chocolate. Yes. And books.

So, yeah. So he's blowing up now. Interesting. I'll talk about this later, but he's, one place he's not breaking is in America. But a rest of the world, we're around the world doing huge stuff. And once he went full time, he really started pumping up the output, like we're talking about. In 87, he released Equal Rites and Mort. In 88, Sorcery and Weird Sisters, in 89, Pyramids, Truckers, the Unadulterated Cat and Guards, guards.

Four books at you. Wow. I'm not going to mention them all. At one point, I'm like, I can mention more, but there's like 70-odd books in a relatively short period. Wow. That's a lot. And, yeah, while the Discworld is a series, you don't have to read them in order, like I was saying. They're basically all standalone books. So they share a universe, of course.

They also share many characters, death, for instance, who's in nearly all the books. And she could argue is in nearly all of our lives. Oh, my God. Not me. Not me. Yeah, for good. Yeah, we tested Dave by smashing a train into it, man. He's fine.

Dave's not here for a good time. He's here for a long time. He is boring, but he will live forever. That billionaire in America is doing that, isn't he? The guy's trying to, like, de-age. Yeah, yeah. Wet man. He's mush.

He's living that. Yeah. Looks like a reptile. Yeah, I'd rather eat white bread and fucking, and tap out at a reasonable time. You know what I mean? People are like, oh, you change to a healthier bread. I'm going to live in a pot life.

It adds five years to your life. I'm like, at the end, who cares? Yeah. Someone's got to get that guy a cigarette. Yeah. I don't know if that's quite right either, Jess, but that's okay. What? They're added on to the end.

I think they're out of right in the middle. Oh. Yeah. If that changed your mind. I think they're spread out. I think they get to choose where to put them. Oh. I'm going to sprinkle them throughout.

No, that's actually way better. Are you on one of the bonuses right now? Yeah, I'm taking it. Yeah. And we can tell. Yeah. I'm phoning it in. That's a free year.

What? This year barely counts. Yeah, I had a coupon for this year. The website, The Turtle Moves, writes, which I assume is an ode to him. The disquered books explore a wide range of themes and ideas from philosophy and religion to politics and social issues. These themes give depth and meaning to a humorous fantasy setting.

For instance, equal rights, spelled RITES, explores gender and equality. The book follows a girl named Escarina Smith starts with a wild thing and ends with Smith. It really trout off there. Trying to gain admission into the unseen university, which is a school of wizardry. Oh, school of wizardry. I wonder where he goes that.

Hack. As a reviewer put it at the time, the book asks, why are witches women and wizards men? Why can't a woman be a wizard? And that's what that book explores. Which is, you know, this was from,

I think this book came out in the 80s. It's, you know, a little bit ahead of JK. Other books explore mortality in the human condition, power and corruption, tradition versus progress, diversity and tolerance, heroism and responsibility, much more. Go through a couple of them quickly.

Just to give you a bit of an idea of the wacky sort of storylines. There's a Christmas parody, 1997's The Hogfather, who's like... Okay. And here's part of the... It's Dave's new nickname. What am I currently? You're Lenny Longdong. That's pretty well.

I like the Hogfather. Hogfather. I made it a similar idea. It's just immediately heard that and reached her phone. Are we including the? The Hogfather. Or just Hogfather? Is this your Hogfather reveal?

The Hogfather's pretty fun. All right, I'm on it. So, here's part of the wiki summary. The Auditors of Reality, a group of celestial bureaucrats. He does a lot of that, like taking the mundane and putting it in a fantastical setting. And they attempt to eliminate the Hogfather, a jolly godly god. creature who brings children presence on December 32nd. Forbidden to interfere directly by the rules, they pay the Assassin's Guild to kill the

Hogfather instead. The task is given to Mr. T-time, who has a reputation for ruthlessness and creative solutions. In the Hogfather's absence, death steps into the role in an attempt to save Hogswatch, which is obviously just a rip-off of Hogworts. Hogwoss. So, yeah, that's been turned into a movie with lead character by Only Fools and Horses guy that we always seem to bring up. David Jason? How does he come up all the time?

He comes up all the time. David Jason's played and these were, so there were all this work to go on a whole, make it in Hollywood, which I really wish it would. Big budgets is required for these kind of stories. And it's never gone to a big budget. No. Can't believe it's such a big seller. So popular with like, this. the, you know, the nerdy community that would definitely go to see.

Yeah. Obviously, they'd have a few opinions. Yes. You've got to go through that kind of thing. But still, this is a slam dunk. I know. That's why. Pair it over the right director who gets it.

Yes. And apparently that, yeah, they were the problems. They'd get paired up. Like Sam Ramey was attached to one point. And, yeah, they really didn't see a while to order to what was happening. And it sort of fell apart. But I think it fell apart. And not because of Pratchett, but Pratch was like, maybe for the best.

That was going in a direction that, wasn't really. Yeah. You tried to get trolls in the episode. Yeah. But yeah, so in the end, the much simpler thing was having, like, basically TV movies in the UK done, and there was a handful of those made, including the Hogfather. But, yeah, that guy, you just said who's name?

I can never remember. Who's a touch of frost? David Jason. David Jason. It's a name that's hiding in plain sight. Yeah. I mean, you're looking at Dave, and you can't think of the name David. He was in a couple of them as different characters.

Oh, yeah. Um, but yeah, um, Hogs, I don't know, I haven't seen any of them. I'd love to probably watch one. But yeah, it does feel like it would probably benefit from a bigger budget. Yeah, okay. Yep, yep. Um, but Pratchett cameoed in them and he was really happy with how they went. And he's part sort of part of the process. Apparently, he was there a lot and he sat in on the productions and he would give notes and they'd work them in. And you, he's not a guy afraid to give notes by the sound of him. Like at one point he was like, like, I think that'd be funnier if, after they called Cut,

I think that'd be funny if someone else blew his nose. And the director's like, yeah, that is a good call. That's great. So that ended up in the final thing. As soon as he's leave, the director's like, get rid of that. Beyond not doing that. Delete that now, just in case. I don't want to accidentally get in there.

No, that, yeah, that example did get in there. Then another one I'll just quickly mention, because I know Jess loves when Australia comes up. 1998's The Last Continent Parody is Time Travel, but Wikiwrites it also parodies Australian people and aspects of Australian culture. Apparently it's called like Forex Land or something because of the beer. Shut up. That's good stuff. And it parodies things like Crocodile Dundee, the Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert,

Mad Max, Vegemite Thongs, Cork Hats, the Peach Melbourne dessert, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Bush Ranger Ned Kelly, and Australian songs such as Waltzing Matilda Down Under and The Man from Snowy River. And all of those things are the perfect encapsulation. of the Australian people. Wow. That's exciting. He got it. Yeah, he gets us.

Well, you know, they're the parodyable things. Yeah, that's fine. And this is in the 90s where... Oh, those are all great things. Yeah, no, I think they're all fun. They're all the things that people come here and buy postcards. Totally. And, I mean, to be honest, I loved Priscilla.

I love Australian beer. I love Vegermite. I wear thongs. I've never had a corked hat. Maybe say flip-flops. because Americans are laughing at you now. I love, oh sorry, I love wearing G-bangers. I love thongs.

I just love thongs. The silky, silks, I exclusively wear thongs. My favorite song, Cisco, that song about footwear? Fantastic. The man's foot obsessed. It's got a real thing.

Then another famous book of his was Good Omen's. I've heard of that one. Yeah, that was a, collaboration between him and Neil Gaiman. They became friends when Gaiman interviewed Pratchett for a magazine article in 1985, well before Gaiman was well known. Years later, they wrote Bad Omen's together, a book in which, according to Wilkins, the angel Azarafail and the demon Crowley get together to head off the end times, and in which lastingly important thoughts were set down about witches, prophecies, the four horsemen of the apocalypse and pets.

it became a huge sell. There was a bidding war when people, because I think Neil Gaiman had this, what do you call him, like graphic novel called The Sandman, which was very popular. And there was a bidding war on this, and it got out into the millions.

And Pratch apparently was always like, that's too much, to the point that his agent had to call up sometimes and say, yeah, he wants to negotiate you down a bit. Mainly because advances were, like, you had to sell to make up the advance and then you get into profit. So it didn't really.

matter. It was just how much money you're getting up front. But he's like, I don't want to be in debt to you that much. Yeah, that's a really big target. Yes.

But they always, always covered the targets. After those, once he started breaking, he would always. But anyway, yeah, it more recently became a TV show

with the two main characters played by Michael Sheen and David Tennant. That was in 2019. That must be I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that one. I haven't seen the show, but that's, okay.

Yeah, apparently it's quite good. Yeah. Unfortunately, it turns out Neil Gaiman is no good in 2024. Multiple women publicly accused him of sexual assault and abuse. And he is a guy who apparently made a fair bit of his personality about being one of the good ones. So, uh, boo. It's funny how often it is the good ones, the self-proclaimed good ones.

Grim, yes. So Dave Loring was at the book launch last one, uh, the other week. Are you using him as an example of a self-proclaimed good one? No, I'm, I'm just saying he, I told a few people there that this is what I was this, and that's So I bought the book and I was saying, this is what I was doing. And I'm like, these are book people asking him if that any tip. Pete Holburton was there who read a lot of the books. He recommended I get more.

We should say these are podcasts. Podcast listeners. Sorry, yes. Lovely people. But I was asking about it. And Lauren goes, and he's not as round as I remember either. He said he laughed really loud when I was telling you how he's becoming an inhuman shape. his weightlifting so much

and he's becoming. I'm like, I'm glad you found that funny. Anyway, he's the guy lifted Dave above his head. That's right. With ease.

When he heard I was doing Terry Pratchett, he's like, you're going to talk about bad omens? And he's like, and I guess that means you're going to have to talk about how Neil Gaiman's a bad guy. I'm like, I'll quickly mention it and move on.

Anyway, let's move on. Great. So here's a bit of a fun thing. Pratchett, predicted how the internet would be a hotbed for fake news. In 1995, he interviewed Bill Gates. If you don't know him, he's like the Microsoft guy.

He's like a tech billionaire. Oh. I think he was, he went to Epstein Island. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about here. This was for GQ. And Pratchett put it to Gates. Let's say I call myself, but this is him talking about how he was why the internet was going to lead to legitimizing fake news.

say I call myself the Institute of something or other, and I decided to promote a spurious treaties saying, say, the Holocaust didn't happen. And it goes out there on the internet, it's available with the same terms as any piece of historical research that has gone under peer review and so on. There's a kind of parity of esteem of information on the internet. It's all there. There's no way of finding out whether this stuff has any bottom to it, or whether it's just been made up. And for the Guardian, Alison, Flood writes, Gates didn't believe him telling Pratchett that electronics gives us a way of classifying things and you will have authorities on the net and because an article is contained in their index it will mean something.

The whole way you can check someone's reputation will be so much more sophisticated on the net than just in print predicted Gates. But Mark Burroughs, who's also written a biography for Pratchett, said, Pratchett was someone who really understood human nature. Gates is an optimist and an idealist, but Pratchett was a, but Pratchett was a realist, if not necessarily a cynic, and he was absolutely bang on, because that is 1995 he was calling that is wild. Do you think it's possible that he gave Bill Gates and other billionaires of the idea to do that? Oh, we could actually control a lot of society.

We did that. Good. Thank you, Terry. I'll write that down. It's funny. I think recently Gates is, like, he's always late on these things. He's always an optimist, and apparently he was the same with AI. It's like, it's going to be fantastic.

And he's like, I'm just don't worry a bit about AI. I was like, Bill. Bill. Bill. Catch up, babe. You're talking about this, like you've got no control over it. I've just seen a fantastic James Cameron film from the late 80s, and it's really, my goodness, it's changed my whole world view on this.

Bill. Bill. Baby, Bill. Baby Bill. But, yeah, so he's huge. Everywhere in America, we'll talk about in a second. But the critics never really loved him. They were always sort of like, well, I mean, critics inside of the fandom inside.

of geekdom or whatever, got it. But in the mainstream literati, they were like sort of sneering at fantasy, scoffing at it. BBC writes, he fought a running battle against critics who said fantasy could never be considered as literature.

But he was always good with a withering repost saying, stories of imagination tend to upset those without one. That's good. Suck a fuck. Yeah, maybe read between the lines. lines? Matt's holding up three fingers.

He was actually holding up six fingers. I was like, where are the lines and where's what's in between the line? I just got it. No. No, you can't know. He was known for being very gracious with his fans as well, doing regular marathon meet and greets and book signings to the point that often the book shops he'd be there at.

would pre-organise frozen peas because his hand would like freeze. Like he'd sign autographs to like six plus hours at times. Like he was very, very generous. A bookshop has to go get a freezer to keep peas cold for Terry Pratchett. Oh, I mean, we've got a little fridge out of the back with the staff room, but it doesn't have a freezer next. We don't really have a free things. But he's actually pretty good for business because every one of those people just bought a book from us.

That's wild. We wear our beak a little bit for me, Shannon. What? I just love the term wet our beak, and I really want to squeeze our beak. But everyone's sharing one beak? Every, the way each bookstore is a bird. It makes sense. It's trickle-down beekonomics.

It makes sense. I mean, this is the kind of thing where I'm not going to laugh, but I'm going to say, that's really good. You're not going to laugh. Like, laugh is it like you don't choose when you laugh? No, you can't. And unfortunately, I didn't laugh there, but I'm not. I really do one underline.

That was really good stuff. That was funny as. Thank you. But yeah, so he, and also his con, what do you call him? His cons? Yeah, conventions. Discworld conventions, aka the DW cons. And there were multiple international ones as well as the main international one was held in the UK, but there were ones in Ireland.

Yeah, so awesome. Just the thing about how he, like his big thing as a kid was going to that one with 150 people. Yes. And not knowing that in a few decades, you'll have entire worldwide conventions dedicated to stuff you've just thought of and typed out. Yes. That's cool. Really cool. And he made sure he went to all of them through his life.

All the UK ones, he went every time. And he went and he tried to go to the international ones as well. And, yeah, they were held biannually. the UK ones, as in every second year. I know that can sometimes mean twice a year. The first one was running in 1996. It was set up by members of an online fan club, which you can picture some of it's in the way back machine.

It's like real early message board sort of stuff. And he was the guest of honor at all of those. The most recent one, they're still holding him. Yeah, they still hold him in his absence. Rob Wilkins, his PA still goes. There's footage of him on one of the docos, like they're asking him to sign autographs. He's like, oh, this doesn't feel right, but okay.

That's nice. Get the peace. He's like, oh no, that's why he's like, I'd love to do it, but I've seen what it does to your grip. The carpal tunnel. Ruin Terry's hand. And the most recent one was held in August of this year, and I was looking on the website,

It was sold out. And the schedule, like, I'm looking at all the things on the schedule. There's multiple stages and stuff. It all sounds like gibberish to me. I can't quite understand it, but there's lots of things going on. What, like, live performance? I think there's meet and greets like with contemporaries and some of his collaborators, illustrators.

David Jason. David Jason might be there. Do you reckon? Jason Satham could play David Jason. He could. David Jatham. No. If you look, David Jason, I think he's gone bald now, like he's sort of in the middle of his hair, but I'm imagining him correctly.

Same as Pratchett. Jason Statham could play Terry Pratchett and David Jason. Oh my God. If I'm, if I ever have to have a tism like pseudonym, I think it's going to be David, Jason Staten. I like it. But I'm keeping your name of the group chat as Charlie at the fuck factory. Yeah. That's not quite enough to bump it.

And it's also a harder suit in him to sort of cruise along. Yeah, so known for being very, very generous with his fandom. He would always reply to fan mail as well. There were a couple of rules that they came up with over the time. One of them was don't eat any food that's sent to them. Yep. Which I think is a rule to have. It's a good rule.

Straight away, but no, they had the rule after one time. A beautiful fruit cake was delivered And they tucked in And both realized later on When they started seeing things That it was spike With some sort of hallucinogen Oh my God

So they're like, all right Well that's got it That's a crime, right? Like you can't, yeah Oh yeah 100% You can't send Yeah, you can't lace things No

Yeah Yeah I think that is definitely Yeah, I think that's a crime A problem I think that's a crime What's our policy? Even in the hippie UK Yeah.

Yeah. We live in a nanny stage. He's not part of the 250 that would have enjoyed that. What's our policy on cake, fruit cake, blazed with something? I think, I mean... I just don't like fruit cake. Yeah, I don't like fruit cake. Yeah.

It would have to be a pretty good drug to make fruit cake worth it. Yeah. When I think of fruit cake, I think of Andy Matthews' classic old joke that if he was stranded on a desert island with a gun and a piece of fruit cake, he'd eat the gun and kill himself with the fruit game. That's so funny. I'll probably butcher it, but that's how good it was. Still, even my butchering was good. So, yeah, that was one of his rules.

The other rule was that, and Rob Wilkins, the PA would read the letters to him, and he'd sort of like take down the replies. But any mail that starts, with something like, I've got an idea for you, or have you thought about doing a story about this? He wouldn't even read him. He'd get Rob to just scrunch him up straight away. And this was to protect him from accusations of stealing ideas or having people ask for royalties. And again, this is because someone sent him such a letter that vaguely seemed similar,

might have even been to the Australian-based one, and sued him for royalties. but unfortunately for the would-be co-writer Pratchett never read the letter and as it turned out he'd already submitted his manuscript for that book before the letter had been sent. I was hoping you were about to say and actually the person had forgotten to send the letter. But also you don't have a copy of the letter you send. Yeah, maybe it was an email or maybe it was, yeah, but it's so funny to be like, here's an idea for a book.

How dare you use that idea? Oh, God, you can't even send people ideas anymore. Yeah, but he's like, you're so prolific. You're like, oh, I had an idea that you do some sort of mythical thing in Australia. Yeah. You're like, every, he's done everything. He's done it all. Oh, you should do an idea about it's like Christmas only weird.

Weirder. That happens often with like songwriters, too, people being like, you ripped off my song, it sounds like this. It's like, and often it's with one of the greatest songwriters of their generation. It's like, why would they rip off your song? which yeah usually I think it's the case and then sometimes it's like well you know it is pretty similar who knows there was a thing where one of his regular characters called Rincewald I've only ever read the book so I don't know how a lot of the characters

are pronounced but he thought it was a character who came up with and he found out he was like annoyed that he later found out that it was someone else had already used that name that really specifically weird name and he must have accidentally taken it in So he was a thief. Okay. So, yeah, as I've been saying, never broke into the American market, even though he's huge across the world. In 2000, the Chicago Tribune read a headline saying,

Discworld enchanced the globe, but not the US. So, like, he had a cult following there, but you want to be on that New York's bestseller list. You think they just don't have enough whimsy? I think so. As a nation. One of the arguments about why maybe he couldn't break through there, Wilkins' rights, was that the books, and in particular the humour of the books, was in the end just too British for American ears.

But Wilkins says, being British didn't seem to have stopped these same books getting into the years of Estonians, Spaniards, Australians, Russians, Finns, Bulgaria, etc., etc. Then there was the other theory that Terry's books had simply been the repeat victims of bungled publishing, which seemed more plausible. And it was like he was sort of pigeonholed and stuff. The American publishers didn't really know what to do with him.

They didn't know how to market him and whatnot. And that was probably more part of it. But as a quick aside, and I heard about this from a Who Newark question a while ago. But, yeah, he talks about if they bungled it, they were nowhere near the worst bunglers of my publishing. That was Germany. Wilkin summarise some of the worst examples of his German publisher, Hain Verlag.

They used the same jacket illustration on both Mort and Weird Sisters. Two different books just had the same covers, which obviously would be very confusing for prospective buyers. Don't I already have that one? They touted The Light Fantastic as the first book in the Discworld series, even though it was the colour of magic, but they didn't have the rights to the colour of magic. So they're like, nah, this is where it begins,

which was again confusing to listeners there, read it, sorry. When they eventually put out, they got the rights and put out an edition of the cover of magic together with sorcery, a double book. They used a cover illustration by Josh Kirby, who was his sort of, if you know his book covers from back then, that is his illustrator.

But this picture depicted a flying Morris Minor, British cops and a gosometer. And this illustration bore absolutely, no relation to events depicted in either book. And Wilkins writes, this quintessentially British image might have graced the front of Robert Rankin's comic novel, The Sprouts of Wrath. That's how it looked more appropriate for that. And that was for good reason.

It had already done so, having originally been commissioned for exactly that job, a book that all those things were relevant for. Okay. So they're just like doing, I don't know, they're just doing stuff random. but probably the thing that's most famously hectic from, and just showing out what loose units they were at Hain, they produced an edition of Pratchez's 989 book Pyramids with an advert, for instance, soup inserted into the body of the text.

And they put that in on purpose? Yeah, without asking permission, it was sort of like, you could believe it's almost in the book, like Pratchett's been paid to work an advert for Maggie Soup into, or as, wait, we say Maggie or we say Magi? We say Magi. We say Magi, they say Maggie. Because when I, on Who Knewit, I'd mention it.

They, a lot of people are like, why are you saying that weird? Right. And they've obviously fixed it in my brain. Now I'm saying Maggie. We say Magi noodles. That's so funny. And I remember that, I've seen the clip of the question on who knew it. And I was, out of all the options, it seems like the most crazy one.

It is actually true. Without his permission, they put in an ad. That's right. Yeah, and permission or knowledge. So he had about it later. And so Wilkins writes, Terry was understandably indignant. He hadn't taken up writing because he wanted to be an instant soup salesman.

And he moved his German publishing elsewhere as soon as he could. But yeah, so the American publishers didn't do anything like that. But they just probably didn't quite get what they had, which is wild to me. It's like, they're obviously going. Yeah, maybe it's big everywhere, but America's different, you know. We know how to deal with it in America, but they really didn't. In the last five years, we've sold 15 million copies of this stuff.

So, okay. Yeah. People like it. Exactly. All around the world. It's been translated into all sorts of language. It translates. And you speak the language and he wrote it in initially.

So, like a lot of Americans who were popular were fans, you know? Like, it just, anyway. So things started to change when he signed with the literary agent Ralph Vichananza, who also had writers on his books such as Stephen King, Frank Herbert and George R.R. Martin. He was also assigned to an editor at Harper Collins in New York named Jennifer Briel. And Briel got it. She was sort of the one that apparently all the weird books got sent to her. And she read and she's like, well, this isn't just some weird.

weird niche thing. This has got broad appeal saying this was social satire. It had things to say about the ways in which people behaved and interrelated. So now with someone on the inside of the US publisher who understood what they had on their hands, things started to improve. The fifth elephant, the 24th book in the Discworld series, was released in 2000, which in part follows the investigation into the theft of the replica, scone of stone, a parody of the real life stone of scone, which we did an episode on Degone about years ago. which was stolen from the Ankhore pork dwarf bread museum and things that started getting a bit more popular

because they knew how to market a bit better. Americans, you know, the Stone of Stone. Yeah. Come on. And so it was just changed on different lists. Wilkin writes was no longer unhelpfully shoved into a sci-fi corner. Terry was now getting published on the mainstream HarperCollins fiction list and it enabled a kind of reset.

5,000 copies of that was a special edition with a 16-page appendix introducing the world of Terry Pratchett, a beginner's guide of the series. And it still took time, but slowly from there, the momentum built with each book. Reviews increasing, interest accumulating, readership growing on through books like The Truth. Also in 2000, which explored the Discworld newspaper, the first newspaper. He obviously was like, I don't know a book about newspaper. starting up, she had a history of. I'm going to, newspapers didn't exist in this world. I'm going to start the first one there.

And I'm also going to invent investigative journalism on the disc world. Thief of Time in 2001, where the auditors attempt to build a perfect clock that will stop time. Not watching 2002, Sam Vines, another one of his classic characters, who's the commander of the Angmore Pork City Watch. He's sent back in time during a lightning storm. Like, these are all, you can sort of see why previous editors would be like, What the fuck is this? Yeah, chug it in the niche little niche thing.

Monstrous Regiment, 2003, where Polly Perks disguises herself as a boy to join the army in search of a missing brother. When she's there, she realizes a lot of the other soldiers are girls pretending to be boys. Going Postal, 2004, following Conardust, and this is one of the great names, Oregon. Moist von Lipwig, who was given a second chance at life by becoming the postmaster of Ankhore Pork's failing, Postal Service. And then finally, and that were only some of them. There were more and more books coming out. Then finally, the big breakthrough came in the autumn of 2005, and Harper Collins published

Thud. And soon Terry was getting a call from his editor, Jennifer Brill, telling him he was finally a New York Times bestseller. Wow. So fine. So, you know, he did it. Yeah. What year was that so?

2005. Wow. So he's been writing for decades. Yes. And he's finally done it. And with that, you know, people discovering the new books now have a whole back catalog to jump into and they did. And all the older books, even, you know, way back to carpet people all, you know,

getting republished and reruns and everything. Yeah. Now we get to the, you know, all good things must come to an end section, which is kind of sad. I mean, it's kind of sad, but it's great that he was able to do that. because only a couple years later, he received awful news. He thought he had a stroke, but he had tests, and he ended up being diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease called

posterior cordial atrophy, or is he termed the diagnosis when he announced it publicly? He called it an embuggerence, and he was just 59 years old. Wow. But amazingly, if anything, after the news, he started working even harder, at least just as hard with all these ideas because he just had a head full of ideas and now he knew that his brain was going to start letting him down bit by bit. So he had this bank of ideas in his head and he would work, pick one and then smash it out. And he released something like a dozen bestsellers in the final years of his life.

Wow. So I think he, from diagnosis to passing away, it was seven years. Shit. And as well as that, he made TV documentaries, and I think some of those versions of his books were made in that time as well. And he was still doing speaking tours and all sorts of stuff. Yeah, so in the end, the final tally of Discworld novels was 41. Wow. Which sounds very intimidating, but like I say, you don't have to read them through in chronological order.

You can just go and jump in. and you might go, I feel like one that's exploring death and mortality. I'll read this one. I want to, you know, you can pick where you want to get in there. And at this stage, he's sold over a million books, but they're still counting. He's still selling over a million a year, even after his death. The books did get harder to write, obviously, as a condition,

his condition worsened. He ended up having, it couldn't type, and he couldn't read, and then he couldn't type, you know, just pictures were hard. It was like his brain was getting foggier and foggier, which is brutal for a guy whose whole world is being, you know, having an imagination. Each day Wilkins would, the place where he wrote, like his office was separate from his house. And each day, Wilkins would go down to his house. He'd have to walk, tarry up to the office to do his right.

sessions. Some days were better than others. Yeah. But, you know, they kept working. But then one day, due to a new medicine and a different dose, he just had this one single day where the old Terry was back. It's really interesting, I think, and really sweet, but also kind of heartbreaking, because it did go away the next day. But it was like he could come back and report on what he was going through.

Wow. Wilkins has come to think of it as Miracle Drug Day. This day, he writes, I was waiting for the call to go and get him. Instead, there was a bang on the door, and it flies open, and in comes Terry at speed. So he was having to help him walk. And now this day, Terry opens the door saying,

Honey, I'm home. Wilkins continues, I jump out of my chair and propel myself across the room towards him. I'm gobsmacked. It's unbelievable. and utter transformation. There has recently been an adjustment to his dose of Arescept, and there seems to be a miraculous result.

A Terry who can get himself to the chapel unassisted. Do I say chapel's what he called the writing place? No, but... That would say in the same then. No, we got it from context. A Terry with a buzz of energy about him, who has clearly been readying that opening line on his way up to the house. A Terry, who seems to have been to the other side of Alzheimer's

and has now returned to issue his first-hand report from behind the curtain. He talks mostly about the fog. He sits there in the chapel, in his chair, and tells me that it was like what it was like these past few months. It felt like a fog. And he was trying to punch and claw his way through that fog, but not making any progress. He knew there was something wrong, but the fog blew up and overcame him and he couldn't pull himself beyond it. And then obviously, he wants back to work because work is what Terry Pratchett does, and workers who Terry Pratchett is. I open up the file and the words come flowing freely in a way

that they haven't done for months. And we do a full on day writing towards the novel that would become raising steam where trains came to disquiled. But yeah, I found that so, I mean, moving and heartwarming and sad. Really beautiful, yeah. Because the very next day, he says how he waited for the bang on the door again and it didn't come and the phone call rang saying,

hey Terry's ready for you to walk him back up and each day sort of slipped back again. Wow. But I think it's really beautiful. It's really beautiful and he got to have a chance to go, this is how I feel. This is what I'm going through. But yeah, absolutely heartbreaking for those close to him especially. Through his illness, he became a prominent donor and spokesperson for dementia, much like how he said it's got to be 100 miles an hour for this train to hit the thing to get noticed.

He's like, I'm donating a million dollars, exactly, because that's what will get attention. It can't be half a million or a hundred thousand. It's got to be a million pounds. Wow. And Alzheimer's Research UK wrote, Sir Terry Pratchett, well, he's just became a serial.

I'll talk about that in a second. Bit of a spoiler again. He triggered a societal shift in attitudes towards dementia. Terry himself said, it would appear to me that me getting up and saying, I've got Alzheimer's, it did shake people. The thing about Alzheimer's is, there are few families that haven't been touched by the disease.

People come up to me and talk about it and burst into tears. There's far more awareness about it, and that was really what I hope was going to happen. Let's talk about his noddle. I mean, he got a lot of awards and recognitions and whatever. Over the years, in 2001, he won the Carnegie Medal for his book, The Amazing Morris and his educated rodents, sorry, among heaps of other literary awards.

Yeah, Ronans, that would sound ridiculous. Well, yeah, but I was also just like with the Terry Pratchett book, so yeah, Ronents or something. I don't know what a roanant is, but I'm sure if I read the book, I'd understand. And then you're like, sorry, I misspoke, rodent. This is one of his few words that's the same in both worlds. He's also the recipient of 10 honorary doctorates, which is from a guy who didn't.

He's never going to amount to anything. Yeah, yeah. Tan, do they cancel each other out, though? I think so, yeah. It's even numbers. He needed one more. Jess, again, they include this for you. This includes one from the University of South Australia.

Yes. And he's got an ongoing thing for... He's a doctor of wine making. I don't know what they do on South Australia. They make big reds. World famous big reds in the barossa. But he also donated, like, what do you call it, in perpetuity, a scholarship in his name,

there every year. Wow. He also has the, was recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. He was appointed officer for the Order of the British Empire, the OBA in 1998, and knighted for services to literature in 2009. This was after his diagnosis. Wow. And so there's photos of Queen Lizzie, our current monarch in Australia and the UK and elsewhere

doing the bow before me thing. Yep. So that's right. He's now Sir Terry, which is. fantastic. In 2010, he was granted his own coat of arms, which I think is part of what happens if you're at knighted. You have to pay for it, but you can

get a coat of arms, son. That's cool. Something that Shakespeare did, apparently. Later in the year, he celebrated his knighthood by forging his own sword. Hell yeah. That's fun. Yeah, real fun for the independent Christopher Hootin writes, So Terry gathered deposits of iron ore he found in a field near his home

in Wiltshire and smelted it himself in the grounds. Most of life I've been producing stuff which is intangible and so it's amazing the achievement you feel when you have made something which is really real he said of the sword the author dug up about 81 or just got a photo of it which will well when i was looking at photos of him before there was one with the sword and i thought nothing of it and now i'm like oh that's probably the sword of course he's a sword guy yeah he would strike me he's got a big hat of a sword so yeah he dug up 81 kilos of or to produce it.

A few one kilo. Smelting it using a makeshift kiln, how he built out of clay and hay on his property. What? To add a trademark element of fantasy to it, he threw in several pieces of meteorites. Thunderbolt iron, you see. Highly magical, he said,

you've got to chuck that stuff in whenever, whether you believe it or not. You got to. Yeah, got to. Because he's sort of, he's quite famously an atheist as well. Not like Ricky Jervais's level, but he does. Not down your throat level.

Comes up you. Not cut me on throat level. So not posing with it written on your chest in a Jesus Christ pose level. You've seen that? No, but not at a level where you have to say, we get it, man. Get a personality. The metal was then shaped into a sword by a local blacksmith, finished with silver work and stored by Pratchett in a secret location,

apparently because he feared it might peak the interests of the authorities, saying, I'll try and finally do exactly. It annoys me that knights aren't allowed to carry their own swords, he said. That would be knife crime. No, couldn't do it. I forgot to do the English accent bit. Yeah. I did the sort of the rest of it, I reckon.

Again, we haven't heard him. Yeah, absolutely. So they could have been spot on. Him saying, knife crime. Noff crime. That's weird, perfect. When asked in 2010, if he had any advice for his youngest self, quickly replied, get more sex while you can.

Get more sex. Is that what you're expecting? He quickly replied, well, just, I've thought about this before. Well, I'd get more sex, that's for sure. Why, you can't. He's like, ah, it's not something your kids invented, by the way. Us old folks don't. He'll still do it.

You're not half more sex. Very regular. He kind of, like, he took a moment to think of a real answer. He said, I wish I'd started writing for a living earlier. I could probably have started right full time about 10 years before I did. And thinking about how prolific he was, Wilkins, ponder's,

what were those 10 extra years of amounted to in Pratchett terms? Another 20 books probably. And he wasn't, how old would he have been? He died at 66. No, but when he went pro. Oh, he was in his 30s, I guess.

Oh, okay. I thought he was maybe on his 20s. He was trying to say, like, I should have gone pro at 18. I mean, he went pro as in was a paid publisher. Yeah, so full time. Full time and just pursued that, like, and did more hours of that than most people do with their regular. Yes.

9 to 5. Certainly more than I do. Along with death, as I mentioned before, one of his most beloved characters is the librarian, an orangutan. This led to his long-term support of the orangutan Foundation, a UK charity, of which he's a trustee. And in 2012, it was like, it's still right in the 12 bestsellers. During his final years, with the diagnosis, he, he, traveled to make a few documentaries, including in 2012, which was released in 2013. He went to the jungles of Borneo to film a documentary called Terry Pratchett Facing Extinction for the BBC

2, where he explored not only the fate of the endangered orangutans, but also his own fate as he battled with Alzheimer's. He also became somewhat of a spokesperson for assisted dying in his final years. He fronted another BBC 2 documentary called Choosing to Die, where he flew to Switzerland to witness the assisted suicide of a British man with motor neurone disease. Apparently, the Swiss person who was overseeing it just after he died, he went over and opened the window, and they were like, why did you do that? And he said, oh, I believe the soul escape is able to get out through the window. That's a symbolic thing. And he was like, oh, it's kind of sweet, even though I don't really believe in it. You know, sort of a nice idea.

And apparently this docker really opened up the national conversation about the topic. He was a bit worried about it. He was like, I don't want my reputation to become Dr. Death, but people saw it for what it was, you know, a discussion starter. In the end, though, he and people weren't sure when it was announced that he died. People were like, oh, was it, did he choose? And as I know, he died of natural causes, surrounded by his family, wife, daughter, assistant and cat at the age of 66, eight years after his diagnosis.

Apparently, Rob Wilkins went and opened the window. That's nice. His official social media statement announced it to the world. It's something about the way death is written in his books. It's all caps. So in all caps, it wrote, at last, Sir Terry, we must walk together. And then it says, Terry took death's arm and followed him. through the doors and onto the black desert under the endless night the end his daughter

riana later wrote many thanks for all the kind words about my dad those last few tweets were sent with shaking hands and tear-filled eyes actor so tony robertson who is he's the his baldric yeah black gotta yeah he just described his friend he voiced a lot uh some of those uh radio great voice great voice yeah and um he uh pratchett did a speech about like a four TV. It was like recorded live and then aired that night. But by that stage, he couldn't do an oral presentation. So the last minute, it was going to be his assistant. And then just Tony Robinson happened to visit. And so Wilkins got like a master class from Robinson on how to speak. And he's like, I learned so much. But also we were like, how about you do it?

And he ended up doing it, which is really sweet. Thanks for the lesson, but could we just put the microphone in front of me? Yeah. Because when you're doing it, you're doing it really well. I want to do it like that, but maybe you could just do it exactly like that. Save me doing an impression of you. They had a big celebration for his life in a theatre, and Robinson was there, and Eric Idol sang, always on the bright side of life.

And it was sort of a celebration, which Pratchett wanted it to be. It was exactly what Pratchett asked it to be, apart from he said that ideally he, be in attendance as well, which unfortunately was the only thing that wasn't possible. Right. Yeah. So Robinson described his friend as a bit of a contradiction saying he was incredibly flamboyant with his black hat and urban cowboy clothes, but he was also very shy and happiest with his family.

Everybody who reads his work would agree death was one of his finest creations. Terry, in some way now, has shaken hands with one of his greatest ever creations. This is something that came up a bit He still makes the news sporadically For different things And a few years after he died He was sort of trying to be co-opted by transphobes You know, J.K. Rowling-Tops

Oh A few people were saying like, yeah, If you've read Pratchett's work They're saying that's in post And a few articles and stuff You'll know that he knows boys are boys And girls were girls And yet Rihanna, his daughter,

took to social media to rebuft these turfs slash gender critical that's what they're known as in England I think saying this is horrifying my father would most definitely not be a GC gender critical if he was still alive read the books she wrote if you're desperately trying to recruit the dead to your cause

then you should probably have a big think about just what you're supporting yeah so they're like we're talking about before there are like he's even like uh forget what which species but one of the things that there's they're not gendered they all have beers and stuff and there's a story about one of them being like you know changing like changing their uh what do you call it identity or whatever to be you know female gendered terms or whatever i feel like i shouldn't be reading off script but anyway they're

his daughter and a lot of his fandom including a lot of uh trans fans came out and said he we met him many times and he was the sweetest and it's absolutely he was absolutely not a transphobic guy and what a hectic thing and it's the great point with the daughter it's like you're in trouble if you're trying to go there's dead guys one of us yeah yeah the guy can't speak from stuff you're clutching at straws there um in terms of whether more disc world novels will be written i know that happens with some classic authors someone will take up the mantle that's happened with the bond books is that right dave maybe yeah i think they they still come out and there's a few others that that will keep happening. But answering that question, his daughter replied, I'll work on

adaptation, spin-offs, maybe tie-ins, but the books are sacred to that. That's it. Disque World is his legacy. I shall make my own, adding to reiterate. No, I don't intend on writing more Discworld novels or giving anyone else permission to do so. Then, to really hammer it home, because he had the pit, right, and he had a bunch of started novels, he requested that all of that work be destroyed by steamroller. In 2017, that's what happened. After his death, it was revealed that he had 10 books that were left unfinished. Instead of being finished by others, the hard drive containing said works was crushed

by a steamroller in August of 2017. According to the BBC, Richard Henry, curator of Salisbury Museum, said, the steamroller totally annihilated the stone blocks underneath, but the hard draft survived better than expected. So he put it in a stone crusher afterwards, which I think probably finally did it in. He said Pratchett did not want his unpublished works to be completed by someone else and released. He added, it's something you've got to follow. And it's really nice that they have followed his request so specifically.

Very literally. Yeah, I think that is great as I'm. It's like, oh, you'd love to just say, but yeah, it's also you appreciate why he would want to, you know, he wants to have control of the quality and whatnot. Yeah. It's surprisingly difficult to find somebody to. to run over a hard drive with a steamroller, he said. Imagine making that call.

You'd be like, this is a prank. Well, that's what he said. I think a few people thought we were kidding when I first started putting out fearless to see if it was possible. The piece of the hard drive then went on display in the Terry Pratchett, his world exhibition at the museum. Yeah, talking about no more stories will be written, but his daughter has formed a company, like a production company,

with the eye to maybe finally make some of these bigger budget. I really hope it happens. Yeah. And then, yeah, finally, finally, I think it was Pete Holbe. I was talking to Steli-eyed Missal Man at the bookshop. And he said he is a fan, but he said the biggest do-go-on listener fan he knows is Rose Ward, who just moved to, from England, but moved to Melbourne recently, works in a bookshop. It's starting to add up.

And so I messaged her to see if there was anything. I'm like, I'm nervous about leaving things out that the fandom would be like, you've got to leave. And she said, she said, you've got to mention the sword. I'm like, great. The orangutan campaign, I'm like great. But she also said, and GnU Terry Pratchett. And I'm like, I'm going to have to look up what that means. Like Ganoo?

Gano. I think it's, yeah, see the animal? Yeah, so I looked up, I found a Reddit post by MS 21993 that reads Pratchett's 303rd disc world novel going postal tells of the creation of an internet-like system of communication towers called the clacks. There's another, fear I heard me say the clacks. Sorry, the internet. No, no, he calls it the clacks. The clacks. When John Deerhart, the son of its inventor, is murdered, a piece of code is written into their system, G and you, John Deerhart to echo his name up and down the lines. G means that the message must be passed on, N means not logged,

and U means that the message should be turned around at the end of the line. The code causes Deerhart's name to be repeated indefinitely throughout the system because, as Terry writes in the book, a man is not dead while his name is still spoken. So what better way to remember the beloved inventor of this fictional system than with G&U Terry Pratchett? And you'll see that online a bit when people are writing about them and code has apparently put it into their system secretly,

their workplaces and stuff. Nice. His name is always spoken. Yeah, that's right. It's kind of sweet. That's really nice. But yeah, so that's my attempt at the story of Terry Pratchett to kick off this block, 2026.

Oh, it has begun. We're in it now, baby. The cauldron has been lit. That's right. Ceremonial. Oh, that's great. I knew nothing really about him, apart from maybe yet that I've seen a photo of him before

and that people say on bookcheet, the book podcast I do on this network, that, yeah, you've got to do some Terry Pratchett. But like anything where it's so prolific, like a musician or like a filmmaker or something, it's like, where do I break in? I found it hard. But it's good to know that of the, what, 40 odd, 42 books. Yeah, 41 books in Discworld. That they are.

And then there's other. There are standalone ones. So I think I should do a Discworld one. Do you have any thoughts after doing all that research? and having read a couple of that, which one I should do. Because I know I'll probably get listener suggestions, but by the time you're hearing this,

I will have started reading. I believe... Just to make it for the next week's episode. I believe the night watch is seen as his best book. I think that's... I mean, there'd be other people thinking it, but... Like, critically, I think that's seen as his sort of masterpiece.

But, oh, even saying that now, that's going to... But anyway, we'll look. Look it up before you do that. The first one I read, and it was just in a book swap at a hostel back in the mid-2000s, it was masquerade. And I absolutely loved it. It's like it is really funny, which is, and I'm not like, I've never necessarily been. Never found the British funny. You famously said that.

But yeah, I just, I know, it's got me. Thinking that maybe the British could be funny. Occasionally finish with a few recommendations. Any new listeners who are book chooks, Dave's got a great podcast called Book Cheat, which has had 100 plus classic novels. Almost 140, yeah, novels, sometimes short stories, plays. I've done poetry and an opera.

Yeah, stuff that I sort of give you a bit of, I'll give two guests a summary and we sort of riff along. A bit like this, instead of the report being about history, it's about a book. Yes. And if you want to hear other do-go-on episodes, we've got a long list, I didn't even realize, like, probably 15-20 literature-based topics, but some that I think may be irrelevant. Episode 83 with J.R. Tolkien, 104's Roll Dahl. 4-4-1, June, the unfilmable novel. Yeah, that's right, which I also covered with you and AJ, our fantastic editor, who did that report on BookChate, we did Frank Herbert's June. 480, Dave told us about the history of...

of Dracula. 517, the history of Frankenstein. I've done both of those on bookcheat, too, so that's just sort of a pair. 5, 4, 3, Stephen King. There was a story at one point where he was like second on the best,

his Lynn came out and said, you're second on the best seller list, Dahl, whatever. And he goes, who's number one? She goes, Stephen King. And he said, apparently he said something like, bet Stephen King isn't out the back fixing his daughter's bike puncture.

That's good stuff, Terry. Just enjoy. Terry, enjoy the win, mate. And then most recently, probably our oldest bit of literature, episode 567, Homer, with historian Greg Jenner. Yeah, that's right.

Talking about the Odyssey and the Iliot. That was really interesting. And don't sell yourself short, Matt, because I think that you might have covered a book on primates, Sir Terry Pratchett. Oh, true, yeah. Me and Grace Jarvis talked about, obviously, the librarian.

and orangutan. I've fired, forgotten about that. Grace Jarvis is a massive Pratchett head as well. Oh, nice. Yeah. Well done, Maddie. A great story. I knew nothing about Terry Pratchett. He sounds like a delight.

And what a way to kick off Block. Yeah. The most magical time of year. It definitely, it's a bigger episode because it's Block. I definitely felt the pressure of both the Discworld fandom, but also of the Blockheads. Yeah. They don't want you to half-ass episode one. No, they don't.

This is the opening ceremony. Exactly. It's a slightly... Nick Webster's here. What's she doing? What's she doing? Kathy Freeman's, lighting Dave's pubs on fire. As is tradition.

And hopefully thawing out my beard. Dave has another, like, 11 months to grow back all these pubs. And then we'll lie it up here. Honestly, he grows surprising amount in 11 months. as is tradition, as was foretold. Well, that brings us to everyone's favorite section of the show where we get to thank some of our fantastic Patreon supporters who are, this is no secret, I don't think,

the hottest people in the world. Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know how we manage to corner the market of hotties, but we've got them. We've collected them all. They're Pokemon to us. I keep them in a little bowl. Yeah, you would say the average.

Dave, unflapped by that. Unflapped. Unflapped. You can't flap that man. I just keep all of our listeners at a ball and he just moves on. Well, you've done that for years. Yeah. Great.

Is rain wet? Last time I checked, yes. Fair enough. Well, actually. Yeah, people, I'm actually the water is wet thing. Yeah. A bit of fun. So, Dave, can you please explain what's going on?

This is the second half of the show, some would say, but some would say the better half of the show. Everyone's favourite section where we thank a few people have been supporting the show on our Patreon, which we've been doing for many, many years, at patreon.com slash do go on pod, where you will get rewards, gifts, good vibes, prizes.

Yeah, treasure. If you support the show, treasure. Treasure. You will also be kept in a little ball. You'll be in your own ball. Actually, we're running out of ball. So there'll be six people to a ball. Cause some treasure, mister.

Because we've been on Patreon now for almost 10 years, we've got 10 years of bonus episodes that you can unlock instantly, which is now well over 300, as well as one coming out nearly every Sunday, four Sundays a month. And we do bonus episodes just like this where we report on topics, but also there's a monthly D&D show they've been doing for a few years now with Adam Carnivalet. We do quizzes.

We do remembering our trips, which is way more fun than it sounds. We do remembering our trips. Why people support us is unclear, but they do. Well, what about also the ad-free listing, the video feed, being part of the Facebook group? They're getting to live inside a ball. They're getting to live inside a ball. And once you're in that ball, you get to vote for topics. What more could you possibly want?

So, but it's mostly about the ball. It's like you get to live. You have to live, you know, like an adult semen. Little bit of jizz. Because you're living in a bowl. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. It's a semen experience. That's what they do.

Yeah. Yes. In got a full semen experience. That's right. We offer that for you. That's a new level. But also, the higher you got up the tears, the more you get in reward, including being part of the fact quote or question section,

which is what we're about to get into now and Matt usually has an intro that goes a little something like this. Back word or question ding. I always remember the thing. I always remember the ding. I thought that you were going to say

you were going to throw it a Jess. I was sorry to you to throw to Jess there, but that's fine. That's fine. You just ignore a segue and just fucking take it over yourself. I thought you were mixing it up. Well, I didn't want to take away your bit. I didn't want to say he's got a little jess. like this because you'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's my bit.

Instead he took my bit. Yeah. And that's okay. And my bit. All right. Great. Do you need me at all, or can I go get a coffee or something? No, you need to be here. So in this part of the show, people on the Sydney-Shaelberg level or above get to give us a fact to quite a question or a bragger or a suggestion or really, whatever they like, then I'll read them out. Simple as that. We've got three this week. And, yeah, I don't read them out until I read them out, if you know what I mean.

I mean, that almost sounds like it goes without saying, but I'm just trying to say I don't pre-read them in case I fumble on anything or they say, they've written anything that is crook. Yeah. Legally ambiguous. Ron Burgundy. I'm just, I read whatever the teleprompter says. Today, the teleprompter says the first fact quota question comes from Muz,

and they also get to give themselves a title, and Muz's title is exec. Executor. Oh no. Executor of humble thankies. Am I saying that right? Executor? Executor.

You've turned it into... Executor sounds like a transformer or something. Or a Pokemon. I'll try to remember it that way when I'm acting as the executor of my parents' wills. Executor! Executor! Activate. My parents are dead.

You know, Yeah, give a fun, make it fun. Engaging divvying up of assets. Engaging hard conversation with brother. Sorry, you have been left out. Sorry, I am the favourite. So, Maltz has a thanks. That's what he's listed under fact quote or question.

Okay. Writing, hey team, just want to say a huge thank you to you all. Seeing photos from the Canadian tour with my illustration filling the screen. Oh, this is Murray Somerville, Maus. Oh, of course. Seeing photos from the Canadian tour with my illustration filling the screen behind you was a bit surreal. It also gave me an excellent view of every tiny mistake I made. So thank you for the wonderful opportunity and for giving me the largest possible format in which to question my own work.

Ha ha. Love you guys heaps, Maas. Oh, Maas. I love you too, Matt. Oh, Murray, thank you so much. So for people who don't know, we've just come back from Canada. This is the first thing we're recording since we got back. Yeah.

Just this section of the show was pre-Canada. This episode is straddling Canada. And I reckon they can feel it. I think we sound post-Canada now. Yeah. I think. Sound post-Canada A. Big time.

I've changed. Canada changed me. Well, I think that's why I said executor? That was probably more North American. But some of the venues, so Murray, first of all, you don't know, he's designed our posters for the last few tours. He's the best artists which share a bunch of his work on our Instagram too. And we thank you so much for that. But because of a couple of the venues...

Post or design or... Thank you for translating. And because a couple of the venues were also their theatre slash cinemas, they had these massive screens. So, yeah, Murray, we've got to project your fantastic. artwork onto the some cinema-sized screens and every time we did the venues praised your work i got to say they thought it was awesome as we do too so much and the the posters that we printed off sold out before or like during the second last show i think um yep people love it mus so much as they should

as they should it's fantastic work i love the colors and everything it's so good beautiful thank you for making me a hockey player Thank you for making me a beaver. Closer style gap. He had to jump in because, you know, Jess was about to. Yeah. Thanks a much buzz. We didn't get to see a beaver and that's my biggest regret of the trip.

Yeah, but one day, buddy. You ate a beaver tail. That's right. True, we ate a beaver tail. Together, which sounds full on. We did it, Lady in the Tramp style too. Yeah, it was full on. Yeah.

Sorry about that. After the fact, it was like three hours later, I went, oh, we could have just broke it at half. But, yeah, didn't do that at a time. Where's the cutlery? Did your lips connected on the beaver? Yeah. So the next one comes from Adam Kripinski,

aka that guy in the corner. Did we all just check the corner? I genuinely just check the corners. I'm in a new room here. New room. New room. I hadn't checked out all the corners. I'm here at Quizmasters in Brisbane.

been while Dave and Jess are in our office back at Humdinger in Melbourne. Yeah. In case anyone's going, geez, it seems like Matt's on delay. No. He's just an hour behind. It's, yes. That's not true yet. That's only once daylight savings starts, Jess, okay?

All right. I'll just go fuck myself. Thank you. Finally. I'll see that you do. So Adam, okay. I think the corner. Under fact, quote a question, listed appreciation writing.

Hey, podcast family, Matt, Dave and Shelby. I guess that'd make more sense in a second. I'm sure you guys will get hundreds of messages about the recent Canada tour and how great it was. But I'm here to break your spirit. Open bracket or parentheses. Just kidding. Close bracket or parentheses. My wife and I made the trip up to Toronto from.

Harry, Illinois to see you guys, and it was awesome. This was the first time my wife heard anything to do with DoGo on and outside of random clips I showed her from Instagram. She was very interested in learning about you guys on love of the show. You may have noticed I mentioned Shelby at the beginning. Yes! I'm so glad you. I'm like, it may well be that you just didn't know Jess's real.

Yeah, that's okay. I could look like a Shelby, I reckon. Especially if you lived in North America, I reckon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's probably, Jess is probably Australian Shelby. I agree. Because that's what we call those muscle cars, the Ford Jessica's.

You may have noticed I mentioned Shelby at the beginning. I've introduced the gang to my wife multiple times as Matt, Jess and Dave. And for whatever reason, she would remember Matt and Dave, but kept calling Jess Shelby. She eventually got it. Ha-ha. I like it. Shelby, it's just the new net, you knew you. Someone else, do you remember someone after one of the Canada shows came up to me

and said that their partner referred to us as, me as the guy and Dave is the smart guy. Thank you so much. You're the guy. And what was I? I like how it starts. Oh, you would, you would Jess. Nick with Shelby. Anyway, once again, it was great to see you guys,

and it's awesome how you interact with the people that come see your show, and it makes it super easy to support you guys. Can't wait until you would be able to do a show in Chicago land area. All the best and waiting for the call to be on who knew it. Bye. That's so nice. Chicago is top of the list. If America does reopen its borders to Australians,

we are... If they make it less than tens of thousands of dollars for us to do some shows there. And I don't threaten to check five years of our social media and... Yeah. What's going on over there? It really sounds like something from...

You're setting us back even further now. Yeah, stop commenting. The five years start to get in now. Okay? Five years. All I want to say is I think everything they're doing sounds very reasonable. Thank you so much, Adam. It's a great message.

What a lovely message. Thank you, Adam. And I fricking love Chicago. I think it's maybe my, well, one of my favorite cities over in America that I've been to, obviously apart from Gary, which is a short train ride away. We were. Two of the best. Side by side.

We were amazed at how many people had traveled. Yeah. To see us in Canada. So thank you very much to anyone who did that. And even if you just traveled one. on-stop on the train. That doesn't matter. You still, yeah.

That's a lot of effort. Every time we'd be like, who's from out of town? Like, more than half the room erupts. You go, okay. Yeah, very cool. Thank you so much. Man, I had the best time. Me too.

Frick and how. So good. The final one comes from Paul Meller, okay, bringer of new things for Matt's repertoire. Okay. What would repertoire be as a transformer, Dave? Probably repertoire. Repeture.

Rapporteur. He likes to change things up. He has so many feathers in his cap. I think the executor riff is probably one of our best riffs ever. I actually think that. Matt was just like, so anyway. I thought that was fantastic stuff. I think the listeners will agree.

I think the list is will agree. I think they'll say Jess was. Right. That was a fantastic riff. It was a bit dark and I liked it. And if my parents or my brother were listening, yeah, that's how I'm going to approach it. That's how I'm going to grieve. Yes.

My brother's not listening. Paul has a fact writing. Hey, guys, hope you're all doing well, question mark. So do you want to respond to that? I am actually, yeah, thanks. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate it. Yes.

Yeah, question of you, Paul. How good is it to be alive? If you can get that in writing and on my desk by morning. Post-paced. Paul goes on. Paul, by the way, Paul Meller, very transformer ready. Paul Mellor. Melor, activate.

He's like a real mellow robot. I'm just chilling. Activate, Amic. Activate Pina Collada. Paul goes on. As my title this time describes, I have a little known fact to give you guys that, until very recently,

I did not know. And yes, it is Oldham related. Paul is from Oldham. Go the owls, if I'm saying that right. Who toot? That's this one.

So the Oldham athletic football, club, they often have a tangerine colored away kit, which is very popular with supporters. The usual kit is blue with white. So we often sing the song, we all play in blue and tangerine to the tune of yellow submarine by the Beatles. I wish that you needed to give me that information first, Paul, because... Now try. We all play in blue and tangerine.

Yeah. Blue and tangerine, blue and tangerine. That was really nice. We all, oh. Paul goes on. What I didn't realize is that the tangerine kit was introduced in 1966. Oh. Good year.

The original tangerine home kit was worn for the first time on August the 20th, 1996 when Oldham secured a 3-1 home win against Leighton Orient in the third division. The Tangerine kit marked a unique era in Oldham's history with the color remaining the Lattix home kit for six seasons before reverting to blue in 1972. The club have just released a new Away kit, which has 1966 on the back of it, hence I just found out. I'm sure I will end up buying it soon. Thought I would share that one with you all. I hope you all have a brilliant time in Canada, and I can't wait to hear all about it on future. episodes. All the best, Paul. Paul, what a gentleman.

Thanks, Paul. Am I wearing tangerine now? I was honestly thinking that, too. I think that might be too dark for a tangerine. I think a tangerine is slightly lighter. Okay, with apologies. No, don't you do apologize? When I hear the word tangerine, it gets that cue a song in my head. Lime green, lime green and tangerine. You know that one?

Sne his ideas. Maybe. Old ice saying lime grain, Tangerine. Is this ringing any bells? It's sickly sweet. One of the fathers of got there. Sorry, wrong number.

That one. Sorry, wrong number. I've Googled tangerine. Is that song coming? Yes. I reckon, yeah, I reckon you could almost say that's a tangerine. Thank you. And I'm sitting on the blue couch, so maybe I am.

Whoa. I'm representing 1966 Alden after all these years. Hoot hoot. Thank you so much for Paul, Adam and Muz. Now, the next thing we do is shout out to a few other

of our other fantastic supporters. Hey, by the way, were you remembering this is Block? This is Block. We started this is Block. So it's hard to remember. We're going to Block right now. Yeah, so do you want us to like bring up the energy

a little bit? Lift to little. Yeah. Bring up. I just wanted you to block it up a little bit. Okay, I did one of my best riffs ever, okay? I saved that for block.

That was block appropriate. Thank you. As then I will block you on social media now. Now, that's a good riff. See, that's blockish, AJ. Edit out all the duds. So it just looks like we're just firing on all cylinders and also tightening up this section significantly.

Now, just leaves a transform bit, I think, and you can cut the rest. So in this part We thank some of our newer supporters Who are on the shoutout level or above And we normally come up with a little game Jess Can I put one to you Jess Please

Or do you want to put one Or you can put one to me Let's put one to each other at the same time Okay Because it's about Terry Pratchett So I was thinking Yeah, tell us more Both of you at the same time

Maybe I could give give each of them a Terry Pratchett character. Yes. That's my thinking. What? I don't know. I don't know who said it first, but yes. You said it best when you said nothing at all.

Yeah. That's such a polite way to say, shut the fuck off. Can I quickly? Oh, here we fucking go. It's Terry related. Terry Pratchett. In the week since we started recording this, I have started reading the Terry Pratchett for book sheet.

so it's been chosen. Ooh. I did a lot of, I was on the Terry Pratchett Reddit where people have a lot of opinions about a good entry level disc world book, good one to kick things off. And then I went through the hat as well,

which I have for a book sheet for suggestions. And they came together, both these things to tell me that the first book I should read is guards, guards. Yes. Yes. How good is, have you got to the bit where,

he's trying to do the secret door code. Yeah, it's at the start. It's right at the start. It's so funny. Yeah, that really made me laugh. Can you read that full on the episode? And can I be on that episode? Yes.

I'm busy. Yes and yes. And we know. Just they've said the time he's recording it. I'm very busy. That one will hopefully come out if everything goes to plan. Obviously, everything's up of the year forever. Who knows?

Who knows? about life, but I'm hoping to put that one out on Tuesday, October 20. So it's a block worthy bookcheed to look out for. But please do go on. Maybe some of the characters you're about to read out will be from God's God's God's. Well, I've just found a list. So I googled funniest character names.

Great. No doubt. We'll let you decide. That's right. So do you two want to? put up the names and addresses. Yep. Julian, I'll do the names.

Sure. Should I do places? Okay. All right, first up, supporting us from Toronto. Spawning us. I'm like, that's just my voice.

You said suborning. Did I really? Yes. Well, they are supporting me. No, this person. What does that mean that? Well, I don't know. I just said it.

I can't be. Don't ask questions. How accountable for things I say? Hmm. This person's from Toronto, but not that one that we were just in. This one's in New South Wales, Australia, and it is Christy Bittley. Well, we've got our own Toronto. That's fun.

We went all the way to Canada and we could have just gone to New South Wales. God, we're stupid. Now, how do you like this one? Windle Poon's, an ancient wizard. Matt, how do I like that? Yes. I love it. Windlepoons.

Windlepoons. That's great. Windlepoons. That's beautiful name. Boy, that's gorgeous. That's Terry at his finest. I agree. You're laughing at the type of when you, you know, you see that back on the page.

Yeah. Windlepoons. God, I've done it again. Yeah, old wizard. Christy Bintley, that's a pretty good name, but Windle Poon's. We've just upgraded you. Next up from Groton or Groton. I'm sure that's a Groton.

and I'm sure that's a Groton, Groton, South Dakota in the United States. Or transformer name. Yeah. Griltern, activate. It's... Let it go, Matt. It's Elizabeth Varon.

I think some of his best ones I mentioned earlier in the episode. Can I reuse them or should I... Well, I've forgotten them because it was ages ago for us, so you need to go for it. Well, cut my own throat dibler. Of course. Yes, an absolute classic, yes. Oh, I can't cut my own throat. Whatever.

At any time, someone's trying to bargain him down, oh, I can't go any lower than that or I have to cut my own throat. Seymot Dibbler for short, which is also beautiful. Beautiful. Thanks, Elizabeth. Beautiful. Next up from a location that is unknown to us, so we can only presume they're listening right now,

maybe appropriately for Terry. Deep within the Fortress of the Moles, it's... Claire Brooks. Claire Brooks, aka Moist von Lipwig. A gold tongue to Conman. Moist von Lipwig. Oh, that's really good.

That's fantastic. That's really good. How does he do it? I don't know. Why does he do it? These are great questions. He's like, because he's a con man. The name is sort of like a nod to a false mustache, you know,

that old school disguises, lip wig. Oh, that's really good. Oh, my God. I didn't even get that. Me. Yeah. It's really good. It's really good.

It's really good. Next. Thanks, Claire. Next up from... I love it. I love Claire. Next up from Nunn in South Australia. It's Kylie Stark.

Great names this week. Okay. Bloody stupid Johnson. An inventor. Whose inventions always end in. apocalyptic disasters. I like that. Bloody stupid Johnson.

Bloody stupid Johnson. That's great. Thank you, Kylie. And finally, from Wavel Heights North in Queensland. It's Lawrence Griffiths. You bastard. Experimental Campbell, apparently. What does that mean?

What does that mean? What does that mean? Oh, you bastard. What an experimental camel. That's good fun. Man, I love his work. I haven't read the vast majority of his books, but I'm so inspired to do so now. That's great.

Love when you find an author you really like. The sole remaining camel. Okay. Soul remaining camel. Soul remaining camel in the royal stables of the. Jellibia, boy. Oh, well, I regret trying that. Anyway, Jess, I jell out and you say the thing you're saying that sounded really good.

No, it's just nice when you, like, you find an author you like, and they have, like, a fair bit in the back catalog. Absolutely. Because I read a lot, and sometimes you'll read a book and go, that was fucking great. What else have they done? And it's their debut, and you're like, God damn it! But when they've got, like, eight more books or more, you're like, yes. It's the best. Yeah.

When you come to do a TV show and you're like, oh, eight seasons of this? Heaven. I love it. Yeah. So good. Or if it's, you're like, it's okay. I could watch more, but eight seasons. I can't be.

Yeah. You know if you want it or not when you see the. That's how people feel when they start listening to our podcast and we have 570 episodes. They're like, oh, I'm okay. Or they go, hooray. They're like, that's too long to find out of the twist. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

How long are they going to do this? Will they work out? all along. Obviously, it's thrilling, but then at some point you just sort of like, just make them fuck already. Just do it. Just do it. Come on. Thank you to Lawrence, Kylie, Claire, Elizabeth Christie.

And what's the next thing we have to do, Maddie? Next thing we have to do is open up the Trip Ditch Club, which is a bit of theater of the mind, but it's for people who've been supporting us on the shout-out level or above for the last three is straight and there's one inductee this week. The way this works is, like I say, Theorettae, I'm the doorman. I've got the clipboard out, doorless, only one name on it this week. Jess is behind the bar. She normally comes up with a cocktail based on the topic.

And Dave is the MC's hyping up the crowd, which is pushing over, it's over 1,200 people in there now because once you're in the Tribute Club, you can't leave. But why would you want to? it's heaven on earth. And Dave is also the booker, and he books a band for the after party. Now, Jess, first of all, have you come up with a cocktail this week?

Yeah, Terry Pratchett, TP. I thought my options are either. Toilet paper. And then I thought, how do I make that a cocktail? Yeah. But I had already bulk bought a lot of toilet paper. Well, that'll come in here, surely. Yeah.

Because the toilets are working again. And then I, yeah, well, for now. And not everyone in here as a gentleman. And then I thought, I'll make a, T.P. Cocktail, it's tequila and pineapple. Oh, that sounds all right. With a toilet paper garnish. Well, man, luckily I was already not going to drink it.

But that sounds great for those who are into that sort of thing. And Dave, have you booked a band? You'll never believe this. What? This is wild. What's happened? They've just RSVPed via management. If they ignored by DMs, so I had to go through management.

It's the Australian band, the Terrys are here. Whoa, like Terry Pratchett. Yeah, that's what I thought this is wild. That's crazy. What are the chances? Well, slim. Yeah. But they said yes.

Do you know who the Terry's are named after? Which Terry? We'll have to ask. We'll do a Q and A, they said actually. Yeah, great. That'll be number one Q. Yep. And hopefully the number one A.

Perfect. Do you, are you familiar? I don't know if I'm familiar with the. It looks like they're from Jarengong. Yeah. That's Jack Drus's. That's right. They're a big triple J band.

I know. Jess has probably hung out with them. No. Probably interviewed them. No. Probably been on their team. Yeah, I've been on their team. Worked as a roadie for them.

Yeah. Rode doesn't pay much. Apparently they took their name from their landlord, whose name was Terry. Wow. There you go. You can be inspired by anything. If you can believe of that. That's also the fact of our website called wicketpeachor.

Super Mario. Mario's named after their landlord. Oh, yeah. Huh. It's a classic naming convention. Just look up the Nintendo episode of our quiz show for more little nuggets like that. Anyway, we've got one person to welcome into the... I think my band would be called Andrew or something.

Yeah, is that your landlord? And Georgina. Oh, that's a good name. Andrew and Georgina. Yeah, I'm not on first name basis. I don't think I could have ever met it. Do you know, have you met him? Yeah.

I don't know if I've ever met. People just want to be in your orbit. I know. It's exciting. They're like, oh, I'm dropping, I'm dropping around, whatever you need. Yeah, I'll fix that mold. Man, you've got a good one. I'll tell you that, Jess.

You've got the one good one. I got the one good one. Last time I complained about mold, they kicked me out. Anyway, they were so worried about the mold. Yeah, they're like, oh, get out of them back. So, wait. I'm so worried they keep you out and then relisted it later without having addressed the problem. Yeah, that's exactly what.

Good on then. They said the official thing was that their daughter was moving in. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it was back available for rent, you know, that next week or whatever. That's absolutely what. Good stuff. Yeah, it's a good system. So, no complaints from me in case they're all.

listening. Yeah, that's right. We love everything that could affect us with the evil overlords. We love you all. So we got one name. Now, Dave, you're, like I said, you're emceeing this party. You're on stage. You're going to hype up the crowd. When I let everyone know the name of this person who we're inducting, you're going to hype up the crowd using some word play based on their name or where they're from. And the crowd just goes wild. They love it. I kind of wish we did a live version of this in Canada. The one time we did it, the people loved it. They loved it in Leeds.

We're in Leeds? Yeah, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds. Now, are you ready, Dave? I'm so ready. All right. Well, if you hear your name, come on in and get ready to party. From Harrodsburg in, I think, Kentucky in the United States. Welcome in, Zach Butler.

Some people say the best defense is attack, but I think the best defense is a Zach. It's not bad. Can I tell you what I was going to say? Yeah. No, please, Zach, let me get you a drink. Oh, Butler. That's a good. Yeah, that's good.

I was thinking the Butler did it, and by it, I mean winning loss. Yes, that's good. It was really good. Well, the Butler did it. Yeah, I went out. Yeah, I mean, yeah, he's a killer. Oh, he's killing it. He's killing hit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's really good. That's three for three for you, Zach. Yeah, three really good options. Zach, choose what you want you like. Probably all of them. Tough choice, yeah. Zach, obviously make yourself at home,

grab yourself a cocktail. You're not allowed to leave either way, so just get used to it, mate. Yeah, settle in. Just make the best of it. And the other thing we have to do, and this doesn't happen every week, but we've got a triple trip ditch inductee.

I want a little Kiwi there. Tropal, trop touch. And please, Dave, explain what I'm, because words are failing me. I'm too excited. These are people who have been on the shout at level or above for nine. I repeat nine consecutive years. They haven't dropped off.

They've been with us that whole time. So, you know, many years ago, they got enshrined, welcomed into the Triptage Club. They're some of the OGs, certainly. And they've been hanging out for a long, long time. And now it's time to enshrine them even further by welcoming these people once they hit nine years into the Behind the golden golden rope, there's a little golden

room. And inside there apparently is Leonardo DiCaprio. He's painting your portrait. He's on secondment from Hollywood.

Yep. We had him on a short-term contract, but yeah. I think he realized. And he can't get out unless we let him out. That's true. That is true.

Thank you. We just saw nothing right. We just don't let him out. And there's no clock in there. So he doesn't know that he's telling us out. He doesn't know. We'll set it up like a casino.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've told him it's been three days. There's no windows, no, but we feed him and water him and stuff. Like, he has a nice time. We water him, we hose him now. Time for the hose. He loves it. He loves it.

Anyway, these people up that powder on him to get rid of life. Yeah, he'll be right. All that stuff. It's prison. Yeah, it's prison. But it's a golden prison. It's a golden prison. Yeah.

It's golden prison. Yeah. Relax. Golden handcuffs. Yeah. All right. We'll let him bring his Oscar. Yeah.

That keeps him happy. And these people have been on the shadow level for so long. We like to enshrine them. And what happens here is Matt reads out their name. I give them a little salute because they've got access to the video feed as well as a little affirmation, a little compliment maybe. Yep. And then Jess will give them a little kiss. And then Matt will give them a classic episode of DoGo on for them to be the official custodian of.

So, please take it away, Matt. You said we've got one this week? So we're ready. We got one this week. And they are from Nyack, New York. At least I think that's, I mean, that's when they signed up. I believe we know that this person now lives in the UK. They have a name.

They've only given their first name. So I don't know if maybe I guess we normally try not to dox them if they don't want to be doxed. but I'm going to dox him I'll just give the second, the first letter I was going to say the second letter of his first name I mean first letter of his second. Oh my God. Please welcome into the triple

triptage club Gregory G. Gregory G. Like a map. May you always guide be home. Salute. For people who don't know Gregory G his name we do know, he's in the Facebook group and does fantastic work. he's creating a do-go-on map, which is an interactive map that you can go on Google Maps or Google Earth or whatever,

and he's logging every single topic we've ever done on there, including little things that we reference, and it is immense. Yeah. So Gregory G., salute. Okay, now I have to give a kiss. So just please have the reverence that it requires. Could you do a manual Zoom, Jess? No.

Because it... Just check him. She can't. I can't. Can't be done. Not the only one in Golden Cuffs, Leonardo DeCapria. Did I talk over the kiss? Yeah.

You're talking about fucking everything. I swear it's just to lay. Normally I'm really polite. No, I think I got it clean. Okay. I heard it. Not unclear. And Gregory,

you are now the official custodian of episode number 42. The shocking rivalry. of Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Remember when one of them, like, killed an elephant or something? Yeah, that was a full old story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, yeah, this is safe. And then they killed an elephant, a pretty big animal.

Yeah, if I'm remembering it, right? But it was a long time ago, episode 42, I guess that's 2016. Wow. Amazing to think. Thank you so much, Gregory G. Thanks, Gregory. Well, that brings the end of the episode. Jess, do we need to tell anyone anything at all?

That they can suggest a topic. Anybody can. There's a link in the show notes. It's also on our website, which is do go onpod.com. And you can find us on social media at do go on podcast on TikTok. Dave, boot this baby home. Beautifully said, well, firstly and lastly. Can we open the show by saying it?

We're going to end the show by saying, happy block everyone. Block to over has begun. We're so excited to be counting down the topics over the next few weeks. So thank you so much. And until next time, I will say thank you and goodbye. Later. Bye. Get your block off, get your blocks off.

Take your blocks off. Take your blocks off, block.