The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - E70: Hogfather Pt. 3 (I'm Glad We Got There)

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 3 of our recap of “Hogfather”. Snow! Blood! Existential Crises!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Bros., Lecce: We Eat at The Worst Michelin Starred Restaurant, Ever - EverywhereistAnd Geraldine’s follow-up article: What We Talk About When We Talk About Food.Behind the Bastards: The Nazi Pedophile Cult Leader who Murdered Santa - Apple PodcastsNice Try! Episode 4: Oneida, the 'free love' utopia - CurbedThe History of Father Christmas - English HeritageA Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union PropagandaThe 19th-Century Book of Horrors That Scared German Kids - Atlas ObscuraProject Gutenberg's Cautionary Tales for Children, by Hilaire Belloc [Pronounced “Hillary”, my bad - F]Terry Pratchett in conversation with Brian Sibley on the publication of 'The Hogfather' - SoundCloud (originally BBC Meridian, 1996)Maltese folklore (Folktales) - WikipediaKrampus | Definition, History, & Facts | BritannicaSapiens - Yuval Noah HarariMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Do you have a spice mix for mulled wine, like a recipe or do you use little pouches? I am lazy and buy the bags a lot. If I am going to do it myself, then like cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg. But I'll like sort of crack, I'll like crack one and put half of that in. So it's infusing rather than like. Right. Yeah. All spice berries are good if you can get them, but usually you can only get it powdered. I don't like putting anything powdered.

Yeah, I did that with some just some quick mulled apple. Do you see other week and that was a bit grainy at the bottom? But you can buy empty teabags. Yeah, you can actually buy those teabag things. And we're getting very fiddly now, aren't we? It's just by the fucking pouches. If you think that's pretty much as good, I'll do that. I'm not going to lie, it's one of those things like it's only semi worth making

your own mulled wine at home because bought stuff I find tend does tend to be too sweet. I'm doing it with apple juice. So yeah, it's not even like I'm looking for subtlety. Is it with the apple juice? I just want it to taste like Christmas. Yeah, with the apple juice stuff, extra cinnamon is always good. And like I said, do like half apple juice, half low alcohol cider. Yes, I'm going to do that. And I've had to bet the list.

Even now, so many years on from when it was a thing, I hesitate before saying the word Christmas because our local pub used to have a Christmas swerve box. And during the month of December, you could not say what was it Christmas? Christmas was a pound, Xmas. Oh, yeah, you had to pay five pounds if you said Crimbo. Yeah, I was like, I need those one fire fiver. Yeah, we went and decorated the pub a couple weeks ago. There was also a strict rule against festive decorations, but then we made a thing of doing it.

And now we do it in honour of a friend who passed away. And I nearly stopped myself saying Christmas while literally covering the place in fucking tinsel. And Paul noticed. So then when I finally did say it, he demanded a quid from me. I am considering whether or not to fashion a small Santa hat for my cuddly toy wolf. Oh, why? I because I have too many things to do. And therefore I want to make a small Santa hat for a cuddly toy wolf.

My living room is just a fucking catastrophe of half finished products. Yeah, it's I've got half a stitched triceratops. I've got Christmas cards, half painted. That won't be finished by the time I should post them. Oh, God, I managed to wrap about a third of my I mean, you have ADHD. I feel like that's contributing factor. Also, it's a demanding job and a full time job. All right, the ADHD might for the like constraints on my time.

Don't explain why I keep starting the project. You know, I think that's the ADHD. Yeah, but yes, I've managed to I've managed to wrap about a third of my presence on Saturday night and then gave up and then did a few more on Sunday and then gave up. And now I just have the last lurking pile of not yet wrapped presents judging me. Tomorrow lunch break is my schedule wrapping time. Well, I decided to be a wanker and fucking wax seal them and shit. I had such such high hopes for myself this year, but everything is

pretty much just going in normal paper again. I've stuck to the wax seal brown paper ribbon thing. It's just the amount of cellotape I need to make everything hold in place before I pull wax on means they look shit. Double sided. Yeah, if I'd thought about it, I didn't even remember to buy proper cellotape. So I've got a role rather than a disuncer. Also, the command hooks that have been up in my flat for like a year

since I did the lights last year and I've had it hanging on them. I've suddenly decided they don't want to be attached to the wall. Eat. So my wall of fairy lights is now a dangling net of fairy lights. I need to order some more hooks. Nice. I did put my tree up. Yay. I didn't send you a picture today, but oh, that's one project I started and I might finish, but honestly, it's really got to go down the list.

Because I want to make myself a little death of rats to go on top. Death of rats disguised as fairy. But with a little of safe. With a little of safe. Just remember, there are other things I keep looking at my list of things to do this week and then I haven't got enough time. And then, you know, actually, I've got plenty of time. Why am I panicking about not having enough time?

And then I start overthinking what cheese I'm bringing. Yeah, make sure you've got lots of snacks. I always ever order on snacks anyway. That's OK. I need to make sure I get twiglet buckets. No one needs twiglet buckets. No, it's the most specific thing I will be a dick about when it comes to ordering my Christmas snacks is that at Christmas, they have to be the twiglets

that come in tubs and not big bags of twiglets. I can't explain why I cannot taste the difference, but they have to be tubs of twiglets and not bags. OK, they all taste terrible to me, but that's fine. Now I really want twiglets. I've already gone through a couple of cylinders of mini-cheaders, so I do understand the benefit of buying things in festive shapes. The cylinder, of course, is an inherently festive shape.

It is. I've got to get a quality street again purely for its octagonal purposes. I don't actually really like quality street. No, that does seem like quite a sacrifice, but people will eat it on Christmas. It will get fed to people. It will be fine. So we're recording this the week before it comes out on the day that episode two came out. Yes, yeah, which is the 13th of December. Currently not in a lockdown, but there's all kinds of panic.

And I just got another text through telling me to book my booster shot. I tried this morning, but now I have a link, not just a phone number. So I'll try that during the break. I haven't. I think I'll get a message on Wednesday because I'm in the 18th to 29th range. You're young and full of life, not like me. Elderly decrepit an entire 11 months older than you. If it turns out the side effects aren't too bad from the booster,

and most people I've spoken to haven't had particularly bad side effects, then I might aim for Christmas Eve. So G Javid was supposed to address the nation a quarter past four. So for all I know, since we started recording, we've gone into a lockdown. Queen's not dead yet, as far as we know. Again, haven't confirmed firsthand. But my favourite thing I've learned. So this might become a prophecy is a friend of mine's friend.

So friend of a friend is a dog sitter for a politician. And apparently we're going into lockdown on the 27th of December. So if that turns out to be the case, then. Is that a prophecy or gossip? Gossip. Gossip. Friend of a friend of a dog sitter of a politician. Uh-huh. Cool. Cool. So can I can I leave that in? Oh, yeah, totally. Not fair enough.

OK. I haven't named anyone, but if it turns out it's true, then we know all the big leaks coming from Parliament are via some politician's dog sitter or dog walker or dog sitter. I don't know. Don't specify. This makes it safer. Protect yourself. So it's Joanna. Protect your dog sitters. Yes. I mean, I don't have one. For goodness sake. OK, good.

So everything is distressing again. Yeah, which means I've gone back to the. Well, actually, I had a nice break from doom scrolling today, because I'm starting off Twitter because the succession finale aired last night and I haven't seen it yet. Oh. Which does mean I nearly forgot to do a new episode time tweet. And then you remembered like half an hour before we start recording. I didn't even look today.

We need to. This is an admin thing. I'm going to get us a little list, a checklist for the weekly thing set up. Yeah. So that we remember to do things like add them to the guide. And yeah. Yes, I'll add that to my list of things. I'll never do make a list. I need to make a letter making a list and making it twice. Making it once wasn't good enough because I lost it. I need to literally do a to-do list for planning the Christmas episode.

Yeah. I won't go into details about which channel if I think might work best for us. But listeners, give us to-do list recommendations because I always like those. And I won't use them. Address them to me. Yeah. I have tried so many to-do list apps

and I found my best way of writing a to-do list is the notes app on my phone or the magnets on my fridge. Yeah. But then I have to remind you. Yeah, but that's not because I don't have a to-do list app. It's just who I am as a person. I have known since I woke up at seven o'clock this morning that I needed to do that tweet today. It just took me until quarter to four.

That's why you need something that reminds you. Yes. If I have a list, it ceases to exist after a couple of minutes. Oh, yeah. I forgot you were- I need it to yell at me. I forgot you gave up object permanence. Yeah. How's that working out for you?

Who knows? Who are you? Does that ever exist? What? I love how you stuck to the hat. I'm doing hats all year, Francine. It's 50 years of Terry Bratchett. There's going to be a different hat each month. But you wear headphones.

Look, I haven't thought it through. OK, OK. Doesn't we need to get you some aloves? You've got quite a lot of berries. They'll probably be OK. I'm concerned for your hats, that's all. How am I going to get the headphones over the top hat? I'm not sure.

It may be perched jointly above the headphones. Yeah, blue tack. Yeah, that'll be fine in my hair. I think it's your- Do you have a top hat? Yeah, I've got a nice red one. Of course you do. Fascinators might be your friend as well.

I'm also- I'm not going to buy any new hats for the purpose. I might buy a new hat because I want to buy a new hat. But we'll see if we can do a month of a year of hats for the podcast without at any point me needing to wear a new hat. At an estimate, do you know how many hats you own? No.

Cool. I don't want to try and think about it, Francie. Oh, OK. I'm sorry. Do you want to never ask a lady if I have any hats she owns? Quite right. Because I can't imagine why you would, apart from in this really specific context.

Shall we have a go at making a podcast? Let's make a podcast that sounds fun. Just one of the funniest bits of news reporting I've read for a while. The conservative MP, Marcus Fish, told the BBC earlier today he would not be voting for introduction of COVID passport for large venues in England because he did not

want to live in a paper's pleased society. Displaying a cavalier disregard for Godwin's law, Fish told Radio 5 Live, this is not Nazi Germany. It's the thin edge of an authoritarian wedge. Fantastic. Who's that from? That was from The Guardian. Right.

Podcast. Let's do a podcast. We could do that, couldn't we? Well, it is the season. It is the season to do podcasts. It is the season for podcasting. And other things ending in Olly. Podcast.

No, OK. I forgot to try and think of these things. I could bring up the rhyming dictionary and see what we bring up. Let's not. Clearly I'm doing it anyway, but OK. Well, yeah, no, that's fair. Shall I intro us while you look that up?

Yeah, yeah. Hello, and welcome to the Tushar Mickey Frat podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Ted Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And it's part three of our discussion of The Hogfather.

Part three, the concluding section. Glingle, glingle, glingle, et cetera. I remember to get my Glingle Bells out right off the gate this time. Note on spoilers. Before we crack on, we are a spoiler light podcast. Heavy spoilers for The Book Hogfather. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events

in the Discworld series. And we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Clinging on for dear life on the back of a boar, which is actually the anthropomorphic personification of the festive season.

Exactly. Don't think about it too much. It'll just hurt your brain. Got anything to follow up on, Francine? Yes. I listened to part three from the new audiobook, which I mentioned was available for pre-order last week. I think it literally came out the next day.

And it's good. I enjoyed it. I've seen mixed reviews, but I always see mixed reviews whenever a woman narrates anything. So I'm just going to put it largely down to that. I do agree that the little noise they make between the normal narration and the footnote is a bit odd. They make kind of bleep bleep bleep bleep thing.

I don't like that. And they have Bill Nye doing the footnotes. And that's good choice, though, because it's nice having it in a different voice. God, I love Bill Nye. Yeah, yeah, he's good. Quick other bits of follow-up as episode two came out on the day we're recording this, which

means I have Twitter in front of me. Andy and Brum suggest a tissue left in pocket in the wash goblin, which having had a cold recently, I can attest that that exists. PD is very upset that he brought up the shark-infested custard joke as he's recovering from panto season. So I'm sorry. Not that sorry, but sorry.

Not at all sorry. But I do feel that it's been a long time since I've been forced into the environment, sucking dabble as I wish, and I do. But not, obviously, in shark-infested custard, though, incredibly responsible and unhygienic. Very unhygienic and not very tasty. Oh, and Rianne on Twitter has found us some Raven

and some Crow wrapping paper. I knew someone would. So that's a joy. That's an absolute treat. On the Reddit, Dungeon Master has confirmed that in Maidstone Kent, he knew a few people who refused to cross three drains. And not only that, would insist on crossing two drains on the rare occasion that that was a thing.

Ah. I forgot to do a bit more research on that. My research anywhere was just going to consist of me texting a few people who I knew went to school in different areas, but I forgot to say. Perfect. It's not that interesting. No.

Vague curiosity rather than serious research. Right. Well, we've talked about what happened previously on the hod... Right, I'm going to try that sentence again. We've talked about what happened previously on the podcast. Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on the Hogfather? I would.

Previously on Hogfather. On the only night of Hogswatch, my true love gave to me. Hogfather missing criminal, smoking castles, collapsing beings, manifesting hangovers, curing hex, calculating socks, disappearing. Nobby gets a crossbow. Hogswatch Miracles, kidnap, includes cheerful fairy teals. Tears, damn it.

Cheerful fairy tears. And death learns to hate society. That's not at all useful, but it is festive. So I'm just going to have to rely on the fact that the rest of you have read the book, sorry. No, that was beautiful. My summary is, is less musical. Good, because yours is going to be much longer.

Not that far over a page. How many lines? Is it shorter or longer than last week's? Oh, it's longer than last week's. Okay. That's what she said. In this section of the Hogfather, Susan Binky and Billious land in a child's painting.

There's Nova Heskai, physics-defying fish in a simple house with curling smoke. In the White Tower, chicken wire and Dave fight over profits and tea time threatens them and reminds Bando of his loyalty before offering them all the money. Sydney works on the locks at the top of the tower with Mr. Brown, who takes against the job and gets thrown down the stairs for his trouble,

disappearing as he lands. Dave and his fellow businessmen resort to revert to childlike rhetoric as Brown's body falls and shadows spread through the stone. Susan enters the tower to find a powerful pile of children's teeth surrounded by strange writings and comes to conclusions about the control of children's belief.

Tea time dispatches chicken wire and Dave to deal with Desk Granddaughter, but chicken wire is brought down by threats of his childhood wardrobe as their younger fears manifest. As a fine dining restaurant finds itself full of old boots, the waiting wizards Hogswatch wishes come true. The skeletal version of the Hogfather arrives to answer a few questions.

While back in Death's library, glass shifts with the smell of sharp snow. Susan and Billius find Violet, the missing tooth fairy and romance ensues before Violet panics and Billius bullshits about his employment status. The businessmen attempt to chase down Susan, but their fears get the best of them and begin to bring them down.

At the university, Death explains the auditors and the plot of the book to Ridcully and the bursar finds a dead chicken wire, teeth in pocket, in his wardrobe. Death meets Hex, who confirms that if belief in the Hogfather does not continue, the son will not come up, and Death encourages the thinking engine

to believe with all its might. Susan meets Teetime, who claims her sharp sword, and Sydney runs as he finishes the locks, but doesn't get far before childhood bully Ronnie faces him down. Susan realizes she's just too normal here and Teetime tries to place the blame on Susan for the Hogfather's inhumation as Banjo gets upset.

Susan and Teetime face off as an apparition of Marlily White arrives and Medium Dave dies, press F5. Banjo doesn't hit girls and Teetime... That was a sniper to make me laugh in the middle of it. Banjo doesn't hit girls and Teetime finds himself defenceless as Susan kicks him down the tower. Past the magical door, she finds the original, now somewhat faded, bogeyman.

She leaves Banjo in charge of the Tooth Fairy's domain and asks Violet and Billyist to help him out before she heads home. Death, having kept her space for the Hogfather, joins Susan and the auditors decide to take a risk, leaving it up to Susan to do the human thing and bring the Hogfather back. At the university, Hogswatch dinner carries on

and the senior wrangler considers seducing the cheerful fairy, but Teetime, still holding Death's sword, crashes in and concusses the bursar. Susan and Death head to the earliest times of the Hogfather and Susan takes the boar by the tusks and rides it away from the chasing dogs of the auditors. The sun comes up, the Hogfather shifts and takes back his sleigh and glingles glingle

as the cheerful fairy takes her leave and Susan really heads home. Death stays for a cup of cocoa and the kids watch on as Susan confronts Teetime one final time. The monster cannot stand up to the poker, as it should be. Death heads home, fire a rocking horse from the past, the raven finds a dead sheep, Gawain gets a marble,

Ridcully closes the bathroom once more after the incident with an organ, Hex lays claim to a teddy bear and the beggars visit a fine restaurant. Fantastic, God blesses everyone. Well, some of us maybe. God of your choice, you know, deity, brackets assorted. Deleter is appropriate.

Yes. I'm not sure we'll mention this, but Susan killing Teetime with a poker, that's gotta be the first time she's killed someone, right? Yes. I guess because he is such a monster, there's not much made of the fact that, you know, as a young person, she's just...

Ended someone with a poker, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like at that point, Teetime had sort of left humanity a bit behind. Yeah, it's not that I think it's morally ambiguous or anything, it's just, you know, there's might be some trauma there. I suppose you don't really want to unpack the trauma at the end of a Christmas book, but...

No, I feel like... It's traumatic as the entire book is. I feel like Susan's got her head screwed on well enough to cope with that trauma in her own time. Yeah. What about therapists that like on the discard? I mean, we know... That's a headcan of Wednesday for us.

We know we've got phrenology and retro-phrenology, so I feel like therapists are probably going to land in a similar boat. Yeah. Anyway. Sorry. I tangent to this before we'd even started there. A helicopter and loincloth watch.

I'm going to take the leaping boar as our helicopter of the week. Sure. Definitely getting in some flight there. Yep. I'm trying to think of a loincloth now. There was a literal loincloth again, Joanna. Fuck, did I miss one? Yes.

When the hogfather appears, he's wearing one. Oh, yeah, of course he is. There you go. There's a loincloth. We have a loincloth. Oh, I didn't make a note of the page, because again, it was the audiobook. This has been a problem. I think if I listen to the audiobook again for the next one,

I'll have to get the Kindle, because then you can set bookmarks on both, I think. Yeah. I can't be bothered to find the page. The word loincloth appears. I'm sorry. I missed that one. I was very tired when I did my notes. So, quotes.

Would you like to go first? Nice short one. She had a good memory for small details. It was another family trait. And a small detail stirred in her memory like a sleepy bee. No. Which I noted down in the first instance, because it was just a very cute simile,

and because we call the dog a little bee, because Jack got his phrases mixed up once, the mild purpose, I suppose, and said, oh, she's as happy as a bee, instead of as busy as a bee or as happy as a whatever. And so now, dear, it's my sweet little bee, a sleepy little bee, quite often. And then I realized it was probably

a little callback to Hex being full of bees, and Hex is good for like calculations and good memory and small details and everything, she'd just done a bunch of maths. Oh, yeah, of course. And yeah, so small detail and memory like a sleepy bee. I love it. Just sort of pleasant.

I wish I got a fun bee fact handy, but I don't. No, that doesn't rhyme anyway, irrelevant bee. Yeah, we'll work on that. Anyway, mine is longer, because there's so many good bits. I figured you'd pick something a bit more meaningful. Down in the deepest kingdoms of the sea, where there is no light, there lives a type of creature with no brain and no eyes and no mouth.

It does nothing but live and put forth petals of perfect crimson where none are there to see. It is nothing except a tiny yes in the night. And yet it has enemies that bear on it a vicious unbending malice who wish not only for its tiny life to be over, but also that it had never had existed. Are you with me so far?

Now imagine what they think of humanity. God, that's good. That is very good. A tiny yes in the night. I love that line so much. I mean, it's a really lovely callback to the little flower at the beginning as well. When you see death go through the creepy underwater,

that's it. And you know I love me, my deep sea nonsense. Oh yeah, we both like that. But just a really chilling summary of how terrifying the auditors are, how villainous they are. Yeah, as we were saying last week, you don't have to a bread reefer man to enjoy this, but it definitely helps.

You get that extra edge of anger behind it all. Because you're already kind of geared up and ready to hate the auditors a little bit. Yeah, and you know that death is as well. Right, shall we talk about the characters? Yeah. Some we've met already, some we haven't. Thought we'd start with the businessmen.

Oh, poor businessmen. Poor businessmen, all dead. Not Banjo. Not Banjo. Banjo gets a happy ending and I'm very happy for Banjo. I'm so pleased he got his puppy. Yes. I think it looks after him.

The way as their fears start to manifest, they start acting like little kids. It's a great bit of writing. A, because it's just subtle. You sort of start getting a bit of gang up on him and it sort of builds up to this proper, yeah, and yeah, it was you, it was you. But also all of these childhood fears and monsters

have kind of been built up elsewhere. Less so with the wardrobe. I think that's the one that gets the least build up. But like we've heard talk of the Scissor Monster way back in section one because the little kids are afraid of something similar. So when it finally appears, Susan can very much sort of go, I've seen you off once.

I'll do it again. Mr. Shiny. Also just thinking logically about an ostrich made of scissors is really quite funny. How far did your imagination get with that before it just shut down? Oh, really vivid. Oh, nice.

But like, I wouldn't, I'd be doing it be wrong. I wouldn't want to give it a hug, but it was a really funny mental image. I think because I have boxes of scissors and piles of fabric scissors and everything around. So the thought of a lot of scissors isn't very intimidating to me. Plus I never sucked my thumb.

So I don't have a fear of my thumb being cut off. Now I had a dummy pacifier for our American friends. Because Mum didn't want me sucking my thumb. And Sydney's Chartered Bully as well gets mentioned right in section one. It's page 97. You get this sort of little history of Sydney being bullied by Ronnie.

Yeah, oh. So when it's terrifying, like I always forget how good the like horror aspects of this book are. I mean, the wardrobe is creepy because I think that's the fear of all of them that I found the most relatable. I think we've all had that thing

where you can kind of half see a creepy face in the night and your mind builds it up. Yeah, there's a word for that, isn't there? Seeing the human propensity to see faces in things. And in the half dark with a child's imagination, it's a lot easier that you can convince yourself that things are moving. I didn't actually have a terrifying wardrobe,

but it's a relatable fear for me. Yeah, for sure. Whereas Scissor Monster, less so. Yeah. And very specifically Ronnie, not scary. What, the seven-year-old? Yes. Yeah.

I reckon I could take a seven-year-old and a fight. How about just the dark? That was quite a difficult one for him to make into an avatar, wasn't it, but it... Yeah, I've never been particularly freaked out by the dark. I was as a child, not by the dark exactly, but when it is dark, even now, I will suddenly skitter from one room to the next

because shadow corners, what are they hiding? I wouldn't go and put my hand in a corner bit of ceiling in the dark because I'm so scared of spiders. Yeah, but that's like a named fear, isn't it? I think the unnamed dread of what is in the dark is why... Yeah, I used to run up stairs because the light switch was at the top, not at the bottom, in the dark.

It's never really bothered me so much, but also, I've never lived in a particularly creaky old house, and I think that has some bits to do with it, so I've never really had to worry. I know we joke about my house being vaguely haunted, but that's mostly because of how the wind catches the letterbox. There's less of a problem since I invested in some Blu-Tac. I've always been able to creep myself out in the dark, basically.

My mind likes to latch on to being a, whoa, but windows, dark windows are a definite one. Yeah, I don't get it wrong. I don't like being outside in the dark on my own, but I feel like that's less a childhood fear of the dark and more a very reasonable fear of being an adult woman. I deal with that better than I do of being inside in a safe place. Honestly, I do. It's bizarre.

I don't, obviously, seek out such opportunities. Yeah, interesting. But also, yeah, the stuff I already talked about, Marlily White kind of being built up as this terrifying character. And even before the kind of apparition of her appears, you have this whole thing of not hitting girls because that's what Marlily White said. And these sort of horrifying memories of her

that make the huge apparition of her so terrifying. That was a particularly well bit of building up to it, yeah. Especially as it became clearer and clearer how abusive she was over the book, like. Yeah. And the way the book never says anything like that outright. The bit where medium Dave was confronted with her and like she was yelling at him for not looking up to Bando

and he was terrified, made me cry a bit. It was a bit of a whole minute book. Yeah, but we're talking of you wanted to talk about how much you think they deserved their fates or didn't. Yeah. But before I get into that, before I forget, I just wanted to note that the line when Mr. Brown dies, which was, he got chucked on the stairs basically.

It says, Mr. Brown, his body fell fast and not at all neatly, which is just a really nice inversion of how he was described when he came in. Yes. Walked slowly and neatly. I think I found Mr. Brown's death somehow, one of the more upsetting ones just because he was, innocence, not the right word.

He was the least violent of all the criminal ones to be because, you know, all he ever did was get to people into places. Yeah. Do you think T-Time would have let him go if he hadn't asked for pay? No. No. Not even slightly. Even if he had, the tower might have taken him down mightn't he?

Because Sidney looked like he was getting out of there until. Yeah. I think T-Time was always going to do some kind of making an example type thing. And at that moment, it wasn't so much about him wanting his pay and wanting to leave. I think it was about T-Time practicing his control over Banjo. Yes.

Yes, I'd forgotten Banjo was the one to actually throw him. Banjo is such a tool of T-Times that I genuinely forgot it was him who'd done it physically. I kind of don't give him that autonomy in my memory of it. But so, yeah, the kind of, I suppose it's another version of what I was on about in the first section in that Pratchett writes the types of violence very differently. And this is showing up my reverse classism. Is that a thing? Yeah.

I find it a lot easier to forgive this lot. They're humorously into that violence than I do Lord Downey's. Well, I think it is kind of because it's such a class thing. If these boys had done, they'd done, but had assassins guild robes. Yeah. And that manner of carrying themselves, then they wouldn't, in the World of Ant-More-Pork, I'm not saying we would view them differently, but yeah, it's a weird one. And I suppose they, there was more necessity behind theirs, wasn't it?

And it was specified that they'd never do more cruelty than they had to. And, but I guess just because it's such a cruel way to die, it was what made me think about whether they deserved it or not if they died just as collateral, which Pratchett rarely does. Well, this is the thing, Pratchett doesn't kill a lot of characters. No, not generally, yeah. And there's a weird bit of callousness around them. It's not immediately clear that you can wise died until Bursa finds the body in the wardrobe.

Because they don't die in the tower, because they just disappear, because there's no death there, it's a very weird sort of, all right, well, they're gone now. And it feels like it was in a writing way more the easiest way to tie up the loose end of these characters was to kill them. I'm not sure. I don't think that's the only reason they're killed off. But it felt more like loose end tying up. I don't know.

It was, I think it was a lot harder to write that than it would have been to just have them go back to like More-Pork right away from it all. Well true. I think it was callous almost on purpose in that this is such a horrible place because of it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting because it's kind of it's a comedic premise, but very horrifically

done. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I think it's the fact this book, I always forget how much horror there is to this book. Yeah. Because I think of it as the Christmassy one and I know it gets a bit dark and I know it gets a bit weird, but I forget that it does get just get that dark and that over the

course of about 50 pages, about five characters get killed off. Yeah. You remember the blood on the snow bit. This bit doesn't stand out as much in the memory. No. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, I don't really have an answer to whether they deserve it or not. I think probably no.

I don't think they do. They don't have to deserve it for it to be a good book. No, true. Yes. Moving on to happier thoughts, Ridicully in the Wizards. Yay. Mostly just Ridicully, his conversation when death turns up as the hogfather was one of the bits that made me full on belly laugh.

Yeah. Which was the Ridicully explaining that they can have pencils as soon as they proof that they've used up their last one. Oh my God. I got cross. No one can tell you I'm an unreasonable chap. Death check the list carefully. That is precisely correct.

Well, I tell you, except for the bananas, of course, I wouldn't keep fish in my death. Death looked at the town at the list and back up at Ridicully. Good. You said? Good. Just the right response. Just the sentence, except for the bananas, of course, I wouldn't keep fish in my desk. I know it was.

I know it's been set up from the last section. Yeah. Fully made me laugh. Poor Bursa. Finally getting to feel a little bit normal and nervous anticipation of the roast pork followed immediately by concussion. And Dean being a prick in a very funny way. Dean always manages to be a prick in a very funny way, but hot hot.

We got more hot hot. The Bursa receives a dried frog pill tin containing his own dried frog pills. The Dean is that guy in the office secret centre, the one who does not go a penny over the limit or a penny under. Yeah. And definitely makes it known who it was. Yeah. And expects a very, very thorough thank you.

Oh, yes. A nice thank you note, in fact. Well, I bet Ridicully gets his thank you notes done before dinner. I bet he fucking does, Dickhead. Thank you, Tex all round from me. Thank you very much. I love paper correspondence. I love paper correspondence.

I just hate obligation. My grandmother gets a thank you card. Yeah. Well, my grandmother gets a Christmas card. Yeah. That's about as much effort as I'm willing to go to. Yes. We discover why the bathroom was nailed up in the first place as well, which is

somewhat linked to Bloody Stupid Johnson's organ. Bloody Stupid Johnson's massive complex organ. That was a very interesting noise listeners because Joanna was trying not to open mouth laugh into the mic and squeaked through a closed lips instead. I used to get called squeaky at school. I'm sorry. Why? My voice gets really high pitched when I get particularly angry about

something. Mine does too. So I guess I've never noticed it in you. Yeah. Sorry listeners. I hope we don't get indignant at the same time too often. You don't never get me to full squeak indignance, but obviously they learned how to get me to full squeak for the purpose of calling me

squeaky. Oh, mean, mean and cruel. Anyway, that was a random tangent. Shout out to Modo as well, who has learned his lesson enough to leave the nails sticking out of it when he nails up the bathroom. So it's easier to unlock it again next time. Someone finds it. I don't know how many art chancellors Modo's outlived.

Probably a lot. I mean, we haven't had that many since the series started because the dead man shoes thing got gotten rid of when Ridcully came in. Yeah. How long did Wars live in this? I'm thinking Lord of the Rings timescales where they live longer than men, but I don't know if that's the case. Yeah, I think you get some Dwarfs that are pretty old.

Yeah. We'll find out later probably, won't we? Yeah, we'll hang out with some more Dwarfs. Yeah. And then also Bless Senior Angler. Yeah. His little brief attempt to seduce. Kind of.

I felt bad when they said he was crying afterwards. It's really sweet. It is very sad. I mean, it could have never worked out between them because she's the anthropomorphic personification of a cheerful rainy Wednesday and wizards. Well, I don't know. They are rainy Wednesday.

Some of them I'd say Senior Angler is getting close, but yes, no, Ridcully would have never stood for it. Well, no, I meant more the celibacy of wizards. Oh, sure. Sure. Maybe it could have worked though. I'm not sure if she would have ever. All right.

Let's not go into that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. No, that's right. We don't need to. I just think it's potential sex lives of men. It's potential sex lives of now non-existent characters.

Yes. Well, I mean, technically, they're all somewhat non-existent because this is a fictional book, Francine. Shut your mouth. No, I'll do the weird squeaky laugh again. Violet. Violet. I can see your cursor in the document.

Look, this is what happens if we both have the digits on their heads up. Violet. Violet. I nearly got a bit purple post it and then realised I couldn't be purple post. Yeah, same. The point of her character is to be a silly girl that needs rescuing.

Her name's Violet. We really should have purple post it noted it. I mean, there is a literal purple post it note in the book. Oh, that's all right. The point she says. Horrid. Horrid. No one fucking says that.

No. I just said that in a proper kids voice, but it will be in the grown woman pretending to be a kid. Horrid. That's perfectly horrid. That's perfectly horrid. Yes. I don't see it.

It's a very posh, posh girl thing though. I would say not a working class girl trying to be cute. Yeah. It was perfectly horrid, daddy. Yeah. There's a hint of horse girl to it. Yes. Minty rode off into the sunset with his skeletal horse.

Poor Minty. Poor Minty. Minty. Right. Minty, the new official mascot of the true show, Mickey Fred. The imaginary horrid posh girls force. But yeah. Anyway, the whole thing smacked a little bit of, I don't know,

maybe Susan was being well written there as, I think we all went through the phase as well. Didn't we have been young women judging other young women for being closer aligned with society's ideals? Yeah. I'm not like other girls. Yes. I'm a cool girl.

I'm not like other girls. I'm cool. Yeah. I'm not like other girls say things like horrid and get together with random deities. I'm the granddaughter of death and I have a fancy hood. You know, that common meme. Yeah.

Yeah. We've all been that. We've all been through that phase of losing out to a minor deity from a much girlier tooth fairy. And then we have. Tea time. The more major characters. We have tea time.

Who is less of a concern. No, he's not less of a concern in this one, is he? But he's not the focus of this part as he's. Considering we bet he's built up as a villain and he's really not the big villain of the piece. No. He is a tool. He is a tool.

No. He is the tool of the auditors. Yeah. Yeah. We learned his first name. His name is Jonathan Tea Time. Yes. I found it very impressive how Susan wound him up.

I did. She just manages to pick exactly the right spot. Similar to the way all the other businessmen and Sydney and everything had their childhood fears found it. She found that one sort of weak spot he's got from childhood. Yeah. I didn't. I never did.

But then he kind of gets over that fairly quickly. And then, yeah, the bit at the end is very. The poker through him. Yeah. It's a good, it's a good, it's a good scene. It's a very good scene. Very exciting. Do you think?

I like the point the book makes about tea time sort of sending, saying, you know, come in, come in, curly head tots. Yeah. He called them little bastards. He'd have had him completely on his side. Yes. I liked Twyla's kind of matter of fact. I'll come back and watch you be beaten by the poker when I have

delivered this stocking to Grey. Yes. And then when he's trying to sort of get them to be scared of the skeleton, he's a nasty, creepy, horrible skeleton. He's eating a biscuit. To pick it. It's a good scene. It's a good end to tea time because of them.

I think he does deserve to die the most. Yes. And I'm glad he had the moment of noticing his mortality. Yeah. He had just enough time to be aware of it before he went out. Fuck. Yeah. Hmm.

It's interesting that there was a kind of scene like that with death involved because usually if death is involved in any kind of uncertainty as to his fate, it's all very supernatural. And tea time is a human villain. He is a human villain. But I think death is... I mean, death has had a rough night. Oh, he has.

Yeah. I mean, he's not on his best game. And I think it's more he wants to really look at Susan's metal and know that Susan would throw the poker even if he's done his way. If that's... If the poker needs to be thrown. Was metal a deliberate peon or play on words, sir? I'm going to say yes.

Nice. So I sound clever. Nice. I like it. Thank you. I'm proud of it. Next. Ah, not the tooth fairy.

Not the tooth fairy. Grandma. Grandma. Grandma. We've gone that fairy again. Susan's not grandmother. It's a really good reveal because it's such a central character of this piece that isn't... It's not at the forefront of anyone's mind.

Obviously, tea time wants the door open because tea time wants to know what's in there and can he kill it? Yeah. But it's not at the forefront of Susan's mind. There's just this lingering question going on. What do they do with the teeth and where do they get the money and why? I think the teeth... Yes.

What is the infrastructure behind this bizarre exercise? Yeah. And find out that it started as the bogeyman. And it's as motives were really sweet. Yeah. It's actually really lovely to go from... I was the dark in the cave, the primal scream, and then you brought in more and more light. And I started taking care of them.

I mean, it's sweet, but also obviously he's preserving them for their purity of fear. But at the same time, he does enjoy them being happy. Yes. It's a really good reveal to the end of the book. Yeah, it is. It is. The final thing clinking into place and the ways it was hinted at right from the beginning with meeting the bogeyman that Susan has to deal with.

So we remember that bogeymen exist and the way the children's drawing was kind of built up. And just the fact that in the middle of all this complicated infrastructure was pretty much a senile old creature. It was very vague about everything at the end, but he'd managed to build such an intricate structure that it'll... Kept running. And it held up. Yeah. Yeah. So that was an excellent, excellent big reveal.

And then, of course, death himself. Death himself? Death himself. We get to see angry death again. We only really get to see angry death when the auditors are happening. Yeah, he doesn't care for them. He's screaming at them, how dare you, at the auditors, once the dogs have been cowled. So to speak.

Sorry. I'm not even sure cowled was the word I meant to use there, but I'm going with it. No, no. It's a perfectly cromulent word. There's also a nice really small payoff to Reaper Man. Susan asks him, why did you do all this? And he says, I think it's something to do with harvests. And because humans are so interesting, they've even invented dullness.

And it ties it in as well, because they've talked about the harvest time being the kind of trigger for the Solstice Festival as well. Yeah. So it ties the two books together. It's a really nice thread running through them. And a bless, I love that he goes back for the rocking horse. That was very sweet. I do wonder how Albert reacts to it.

I think it's he's been told he can't do the impossible and, you know, don't mess with the causality of time and what he's been told so much throughout this book of all the things he can't do. He wants to do one more miracle. Yeah. And the fact that he does it for the person who has been keeping him death and not human and who has had enough of a human understanding of what's needed to keep death on where he needs to be going.

Yeah. So for death to perform that one last miracle and to do it for Albert. Hmm. It's very sweet. It is. It is very sweet. And then again, the lovely emotional scene and at the end, and maybe it go on freezing, but a warm water will do the trick.

Cheers. But also just the mental image of Albert sitting on the rocking horse with the boner out and Quoth probably sitting on the rocking horse's head. Very sweet. That's just, it's a nice thought, isn't it? Trying to peck its eyeballs out. Well, obviously. And the final, final big payoff of the book is that there was a, it was a Glingal Fairy

all along. Ha! Of course. As Ridgely goes to have a shower and finds a small gnome who's been wandering around with a set of little handbells making the Glingal, Glingal, Glingal noise. As is correct. Yep. I am taking on the role of Glingal Fairy.

It's another one of these books with like a million full sendings. Yeah. Very Return of the King. Yes, it is very Return of the King, but there's been another Discord one like this that I noted and I can't remember which it was. Well, you sort of, you have Susan. It was Reaper Man. Oh yeah, of course it was.

So of course it was this one. Yeah. You have Susan wrapping things up at the tower and giving Banjo the job and asking Violet and Billius to help him out. Then you have the chasing through the snow with the auditor dogs and the hogfather getting on the sleigh. And then you have going back to the nursery and the final showdown with Tea Time and then the rocking horse and then Rid Cully's ending and then the final ending with the beggars.

And he said through the snow there, my brain immediately started to try and do a dashing through the snow with the unnatural pack of wolves after us. It doesn't quite scan. I feel like we need to do a little, we'll polish it. We'll polish it. Yeah. We'll polish it. And then locations obviously we actually go to the place that has been or we get more

of a description. We really see the place that has been built up creepily. Yeah. The Tooth Fairy's Domain, which looks like a child's painting. It has blue sky at the top and green grass and a blue pond with fish on top. Because it runs off what children believe to be. And the house with the curly smoke and then obviously inside the house is actually a massive fucking tower.

One of the things I was going to look into and decided not to because it wouldn't be particularly interesting in context is the kind of child development of why all children draw this like this. Yeah. Until like, there's got to be something about being able to perceive that the sky goes all the way down to the floor. In my case it was Mum going, fucking, this is perspective, this is a horizon and here's an art book.

Yeah. I might have got a bit further if I'd had that early on. Well, Mum was a painter and an arty person and she was very... What did she paint her? Yeah, she painted. I've got some of her old paintings. She drew really nice stuff with charcoal as well. Oh, yeah.

Show me next time I move her. Yeah. So she started taking me to art galleries from a really young age and pointing at stuff and explaining like, this is a perspective and this is a horizon and this is why you don't just do a line of blue at top. Hmm. You want your chair for a second there? At top.

At top? Line of blue at top. I think I just forgot how to use prepositions but yes, let's call it Yorkshire. Anyway, yeah. Again, a very interesting juxtaposition of creepy and light-hearted. Yeah. This is a sweet concept and terrifying in reality. Well, the big reveal as well when you finally realise it is literally a pile of teeth that

is being used to control what children believe in. And I know it's been built up and we know and there's a tooth fairy. We're going to the tooth fairy's land. The one little line about the wet, what is it, wet, slippery little crunch or something when she's still on one. I was like. Yeah. It is the most horrific thing I can think.

Because you can hear it from you. Yeah, you can. It's like, oh, why are we able to describe that so well? Yeah. Why are we so capable of picturing a pile of teeth? Right, yeah. There's got to be some horrible species memory, hasn't there? I don't know.

Yeah. Piles of teeth, gross. Gross. Let's just make sure we've really traumatised the listeners before we move on to the little bits that we liked. Yes. Piles of teeth. Oh, my God.

My eyes are closed for a second. I didn't see you getting closer to the microphone. Now I'm going to have nightmares. Can we do some horror ASMR? Yes. Piles of teeth. Oh, no. Oh, my God.

There's probably a lot more intelligent things I could say about the location of the tooth ferrisome, but I'm stuck on piles of teeth now. Yeah, yeah. I think we're glitching a bit, aren't we? If anything occurs to us later, we can come back to it, but... Yes. Okay, yeah. It's kind of stuck on it like a scratch on a CD there.

Teeth, teeth, teeth. No. It's like the clown eggs. Piles of teeth and clown eggs for... Clown eggs with teeth. Somehow not as bad as you... Give me a second. Yeah, honestly, it's one of the...

No, it's one of those things. It doesn't get worse when you combine them. I'm the same amount of upset. That's all right. Okay. That's surprising. Yeah. Well, I'm glad we got there.

Yes. I've reached my plateau. That's good. Good, good. Right. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked.

Your first. His best Mrs. Whitlow voice. Fine dining. Fine... Stining. Fine... Dining. No, that just sounds like I'm talking.

Fine. There we go. Fine. Well done. You got there. You got it. You got it. Fine dining.

The restaurant bit. Yeah. The restaurant bit just makes me giggle. Right, we've got nothing but old boots. If you get the sauce right and you'll be all right. I like that the restaurant manager is the next chef. An unusual term of events. I support it.

Broad account, quality, facon en boi. Soldiers' boots done in the shades fashion. Did you check the veracity of the French? No, I didn't check the French. I did not check the veracity of the French. Is it true that restaurant French is different from French French? To an extent, less so in France. Right, yeah.

You've read like weird English menu descriptions from pub to fine dining descriptions. Yeah. And fine dining descriptions will sometimes be things like lambrest, pee, wist. And that is the entire description you get of a dish. Delicious. My favorite. That'll be the wist vegetarian. There's another one we never had, wistful slash wistless.

Yeah. We haven't added to the list for a while, but there it is. We have a shared list for that. And we ought. We ought to have a shared list. I know we've got the bad words list and the band names list. Yes, no. It makes me giggle.

Good. Having occasionally, I've never really worked somewhere fine dining, but I've occasionally wondered enough to discover that fine dining is just the same shit with nicer presentation and sauce. Obviously, I've never cooked fine dining, but I was a waitress in a hotel that had a fine dining restaurant. It is fine. I don't know.

I enjoy like a nice fine dining restaurant on rare occasions. There's a couple of very, very good restaurants in our town and like done well. I like a tasting menu thing. I don't like wank for wank sake. And I recommend all the listeners up at the link in the show notes. The amazing Geraldine everywhere is tea is her Twitter handle did this incredible review of this ridiculous fucking Michelin star place that involved things. I sent you guys the link to this in the group chat.

You did. You did. I think most people will have read about it by now because it went viral and involved things like a plaster cast of the chef's mouth with a lemony foam in that wasn't served with any utensils. It sounds absolutely appalling, doesn't it? And then the chef responded to this review with a series of pictures of horses. I mean, I respect the man.

I feel like if you're going to go in and... Do you know I'm assuming it's a man. I think it's a man. It is a man. Yeah. A man would have given you something to eat. I'll stick to the 1921 in our town has a very, very good tasting menu that I've enjoyed every time I have done it.

And it has been just the right side of wanky and amount of food. It does involve food, doesn't it? Which is a... But it's not... Although it is ridiculously small portions, 12 courses of ridiculously small portions is more than enough food. And it is all very, very well done and very tasty. But yeah, I couldn't be doing with that, even if I don't want 12 fucking...

Oh, I'm appreciating this conversations and plates being taken away and... Oh, no. Stressful. Give me a bowl of something and a fork, please. Thank you. Yeah. When I worked... One of the pubs I worked in with the arsehole chef when it first opened up after a reverb.

We've been slandering the people in our past quite a lot this month, haven't we? We really have. Tis the season. Tis the season for slander. He had this genius idea of we'd have like a special fine dining menu in the evenings. Oh my fucking god. And it was literally just the same shit from the main menu plated differently. Like identical sources, identical everything.

He just was a wanker about the plating and would somehow find a way to get cost. Not the customer, the business, twice as much. God, I don't know about the end of it, Lola. The thing is we did some really good quality stuff on the specials before the place was refurbed. Yeah. I mean, it did good food. Yeah. It just didn't need to be all piled up in a fucking tower.

Yeah. Things in Towers is one of my favourite slash least favourite pretensions. And I also recommend everyone watches the Black Books episode where they try and open a restaurant. How about Teeth in Towers? Teeth in Towers. Ah, you got us back on track. Thank you. I've got where we were to be honest.

Apparently on violent deaths, Francine. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's a little bit. I like violent deaths. I just really like Sidney's quote of there's not going to be any more violent deaths. Are there? He said, I just can't stand the sight of violent deaths. Like that was a peculiarity in his.

Violent death will be the last thing that ever happens to you. Yes. I just can't stand violent deaths. I fucking love them. Yeah. Oh, you delicate flower. Oh, you little delicate flower, not liking violent deaths. You poor thing.

The other ones I liked was the handcuffs on existence, which is Ponder Stibbins sort of worrying about himself as a wizard awaiting the arrival of the hogfather. Oh, yes. And there's a nice little, it's very rare there are around world references in these. So I really like when they come up and Pratchett trying to explain the way people put handcuffs on their existence and then a surprise by the things the universe throws at them. It's like a mere wholesale fishmonger at the controls of a giant airliner because all the crew had the correlation chicken.

A perfectly ordinary hockey player suddenly realizes he's the son of God, starts a cult. Happens to best. And a housewife went out to bank the proceeds of the playgroup's car boot sale and suddenly finds her run on the run with one million in stolen cash and a rather handsome man from the Battery Chickens Liberation Organization. Oddly specific. I'm assuming the one million wasn't all from the car boot sale because I can't imagine the playgroup's car boot sale did that well.

Must have been a very exciting car boot sale. But yes. I should have looked it up for the obscure reference. The cult surely has grounding in reality and I wonder if that one does as well. I feel it is probably quite a lot of groundings in reality based on someone realizing they're the son of God and ending up with 500,000 followers. You'll never guess what turns out I'm the Messiah. Really?

Gosh. I mean, Christianity. Lots of everyone it could have been. Do you know what? At a cult story I could have tied into Christmas. Which is? Are you going to tell the story now or are you just going to leave that there as a mystery? No.

I can't remember enough of the details. And also it's really depressing with a lot of child murder. Let's leave that one then. But basically the leader of this cult pretends to kill Santa Claus as a lesson to the children for loving someone else more. It was on a behind the pastors episode. I'll link it in the show notes. My favorite cult story will always be the weird sex cult that then got eugenicsy and is somehow

the foundation of America's biggest cutlery company. I'll link to that as well. That was a very good eugenics slash cutlery. Okay. I'll know what I mean. This won't baffle me tomorrow. It's fine. Oh, and my last little bit was death in the nursery wondering about the wallpaper with

rabbits wearing waistcoats and dancing pigs. I'm late. As well as I'm late, I'm late for a very important date. We'll put a pin in that because I feel like a seed is planted there that will get paid off in a book next year. Oh, Beatrix Potter as well, isn't it? The rabbits. Yes, Peter Rabbit and pals.

Why does everyone put rabbits in waistcoats? Gosh. I mean, the paws is fiddly. Yeah. They don't have thumbs. Yeah. Maybe they've got poppers. I am aware you mean the fastenings on the waistcoats, also known as snaps.

Oh, yes. My brain immediately just... Well, maybe they've got those as well. I don't know. I don't know a lot about rabbit club culture. Right. Let's go on to the biggest stuff. Shall we talk about the Hogfather?

Sure. Oh, that's me. And evolution thereof. I was just doing my normal settling down if you'd tell me a story, but it's my go. I already talked about the eugenics, sex, cult, cutlery thing. What do you want from me? I mean, more of that, obviously, but no. So I remember hearing, said Susan, distantly, that the idea of the Hogfather wearing a

red and white outfit was invented quite recently. No, it was remembered. And that sent me down a little side rabbit hole, which to be honest, I am going to go into in more depth in our actual rabbit hole episode in the Patreon this month because this got me such a lot of research. And I've tried to just put a couple of bullet points in here. But I had it in my head that it was a myth that it was Coca-Cola's fault that Santa dresses in red and white.

And that's true. It is a myth. They didn't start using him and ads until the 1920s or 30s. But it is reasonably modern, but with ties back a long way, if that makes sense. So the modern red and white image probably comes from an illustration from the poem, The Night Before Christmas, which isn't what it's called. It's called a visit from St Nick or something, which is from 1822. But Father Christmas, of course, was around a lot longer in England.

It was more of a symbol and an allegorical figure, if you will. More so than a deity or like a magical being. So I think more like Britannia than the Trees Fairy. In a poem from 1616, though, Ben Johnson... No, I'm sorry. I've gotten this wrong. I've got my timeline mixed up. Please forgive me.

In 1616, Ben Johnson playwright, not poet, introduces Christmas as a character for one of the first times. He's definitely old and definitely a father, as the article from English Heritage puts it. And he brings with him several of his sons and daughters, each personifying a different tradition of the period with names like Miss Rule, Carol, Mince Pie, Mumming and Waseil. Hey, we're sailing.

Hey. We are sailing. No. The poem I meant was 1821, which was only two years before a visit from St Nicholas. And we're back in America here, I think, old Saint-Éclose, with much delight. And there's an illustration here that does happen in red and white, but it doesn't look much like the modern Saint-Éclose. So the colours are there, but the design.

Yeah. I know it's kind of... I based my searches around the colours because that's what Susan was talking about a few times, but obviously there's only so much you can look into red and white, really, because at the end of the day, red and green, it's very much like Holly has always been very associated with Christmas. And it's snow. It's like Fratchit said, it's red on the snow.

Yeah. Yeah. It's blood. A tiny little extract from old Saint-Éclose with much delight just because it's got one of those nice little primes, which was, old Saint-Éclose with much delight, his reindeer drives this frosty night, or chimney tops and tracks of snow to bring his yearly gifts to... Yo.

I just love reading those old poems. Like, was that just a weird accent, or did you massively force that in? Hard to say. And then 1881 was probably the closest we got to the earliest modern Santa depiction, which was Thomas Nast, who was a union propagandist. No. Union, as in Civil War Union, not Workers' Rights Union. Yeah.

And yeah, he drew Father Christmas slash Saint-Éclose with the big, big belly, and the red and white and the big beard, and the kind of weirdly big grin. And around this time, Victorian's kind of assimilated Santa into Father Christmas, and Father Christmas became Santa, basically, instead of a vague idea, he is now a person. As you can see on all the, like, early 1900s-paced cards by then, he's very much a character. And established with that kind of visual. But I just... It's one of those interesting ones where he does come from a million different places.

Yeah. And they're really easy to get mixed up, as I just shared. That was very terrible explanation. I'm so sorry, lessons. But... That was good. You covered all the bases. If I have my PowerPoint, Joanna.

Word document doesn't do the job. Yeah. The colours of Christmas always interested me as well, just as a general concept. I have a lot of different coloured baubles and decorations of things around. But I always end up defaulting to red and green and gold. Gold is an addition, isn't it? That's a... I don't know.

One could argue it's... Well... Firelight for reminiscent, but really, it's just... We like shiny things, don't we? We're magpies of species. Well, also, it's the only one of the gifts brought by the three wise men that has, like, a clear visual. Like, I know what gold looks like more than I know what frankincense or myrrh look like. That's a good point.

I wonder if gold was incorporated pre or post... Everything was christian-y. Yes, true. What I haven't done was go into the solstice origins, which, again, I might defy the rabbit hole. Yeah. When you start reading into... Because obviously, lots of people are like, oh, it's a Christian festival. He wasn't actually born there.

It was done to tie in with the solstice, blah, blah, blah. It's a lot messier and a lot more complicated and a lot to do with formal rits from... Yeah. Oh, well, actually. And then... No, well, actually, actually. And yeah. I went down a similar rabbit hole once looking at the origins of Easter and Eostra.

And yeah. Oh, I bet, yeah. Yeah. That's a lot bigger and more complicated. But basically, Eostra is one of those weird fucking neo-pagan things that then gets touted round as a Facebook meme. If this is the true meaning of Easter... Helped along by Neil Gaiman, I'm sure. Yeah.

Contributing factor. And playing Neil Gaiman for the neo-pagans. However, it's a nice myth. So why not add it to the mythology? Oh, yeah. Throw it in there. Mythology is basically just a big chaotic soup. Hmm.

The soup of mythology adds to the soup of the night. Tincture of the night. Tincture of the night. I'm sorry. The soup of the afternoon. Quite possibly. Yes. That sounds right, doesn't it?

Fuck, nice. Oh, veterinary. Shall we talk about... You so broke up. From Father Christmas onto other characters thereof of cautionary tales. Yes. Sorry, I'm trying to... You tell how flustered I was today trying to add notes into the plan.

What do I put here? Cautionary tales slash characters thereof. Right, yeah. So going from the scissor monster, I was thinking about the poem that that came from in this case. Yeah. Which was the... It was in German. And I'm not going to try and read out the German title, but it was by Heinrich Hoffmann.

And the English translation is known as the story of Little Sucker Thumb. There's one of many cautionary tales of this kind of era, of the Victorian era again. Germans went really into it. There's like a few different authors I found. Let's go to the second stanza, which was, The door flew open in Iran, the great long red-legged scissor man. Oh, children see the tailors come and caught out Little Sucker Thumb. Snip, snap, snip, the scissors go and Conrad cries out, oh, oh, oh.

Snip, snap, snip, they go so fast that both his thumbs are off at last. Mama comes home, there Conrad stands, and looks quite sad. Quite sad he is, and shows his hands. Ah, said Mama. I knew he'd come to naughty Little Sucker Thumb. Terrible parenting. Quite frankly. Yeah, I feel like I told you so.

Isn't the best response to your child losing its thumbs? But then I'm not a parent. What do I know? True, true. Another one I just wanted to highlight because he's so fantastic. Heller Beloch. Do you know what? I say he's so fantastic.

I did read he was quite a controversial figure, and I didn't look into his personal life. So I don't take that as any kind of indication. We're not endorsing anything here. Anything he did or did not do or whatever. I just like his poems. He did a lot of parodies of these caution retails. Right.

In the early 1900s. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing his name right, to be honest. So this is from the book Caution Retails for Children from 1907. And it's titled Jim, comma, who ran away from his nurse, comma, and was eaten by a lion. Beautiful. I'll just, again, just a little bit. Bang, with open jaws, a lion sprang and hungrily began to eat

the boy beginning at his feet. Now just imagine how it feels when first your toes and then your heels and then by gradual degrees, your shins and ankles, calves and knees are slowly eaten bit by bit. No wonder Jim detested it. That's beautiful. I love it. I thought so.

And it very much reminded me of a lot of Roald Dahl poems. Yeah. And so I think Roald Dahl probably drew some inspiration here. Got some inspiration. Yeah. And that was great, isn't it? Because we know practically true inspiration from Roald Dahl in certain places.

Like, he interviewed him, didn't he? Mark Boris told us. Oh, yeah. And yeah, just I like finding the chain going back. Speaking of actually, did you listen to that interview I sent you? Oh, no, I didn't. Yeah. I'll link it in the show notes.

In 1996, it's on Radio 4, Terry Pratchett was interviewed at the same time Hogfather was published. And there are little bits in there about the falling angel and the rising ape. And there are little bits about, what else did I say that was in there? Lots of good stuff. Yeah, lots of good stuff about faith and lies and fantasies. And he quotes GK Chesterton. And as we've talked about before, another inspiration.

Fairy tales can be beaten. So yes, I will link to that and you will enjoy it. You will enjoy it. You will. It's only half an hour. You will enjoy it. And a special mention for other cautionary tales. I liked a Maltese monster called, why do I do this to myself?

Did you? I know. I specifically know I can't pronounce Maltese. Il Blica, maybe. He lives in Wells. And this story probably came about to stop little kids from looking into Wells and falling into drowning. Timmy.

But he said to extend its foot covered in grabby toes and snatch it down. Beautiful. Snatch the child down. And it eats worms and eels. And then we have the crampus, obviously the relevant one. Got a love of a bit of crampus. A love of a bit of crampus who's horny anthropomorphic, who came from Eastern Europe, maybe, eventually. I feel like it was started as Eastern European folklore.

And then kind of we ended up in Switzerland and France and Germany and Holland, Netherlands. But anyway, he's like St Nick's shadow cells or whatever. He's all goat footed. He walks around with St Nick and he whips the children who were bad while St Nick gives them oranges or whatever it was. Yes. I know. I just, I find the whole concept of the characters and cautionary tales very interesting. Manifesting fears into these monsters.

Doing exactly what Susan was so annoyed at the previous governess for. We'll revisit this in another book actually, so I won't go on and on about it. But it's just an interesting concept. And one I must say, I do agree with Pratchett's insinuations here that what a terrible thing to do to children for goodness sake. Yes, maybe traumatise them. Might solidify their fears like that. Let's not start from a point of trauma. Speaking of teeth.

No, I've just gotten over it. I won't stay on teeth for too long, but obviously no listener will be surprised to know that I want to talk about the power of belief. Sure, sure. The concept of, so rather than talking about how it's being done, controlling children's belief and using that to destroy the hogfather is one of those brilliant corkscrew thoughts that I think only Pratchett and therefore T-Time could come up with. Not that Pratchett is like T-Time, but obviously it's his invention. And it's one of those things I love about books like this where there's a clever, not even really a mystery, but just an incredibly clever story. You sit back and you think, for all of these characters to have had those ideas, Pratchett had to have all of those ideas and really know the rules of the world he's created. Because a story in which the hog, you know, the Father Christmas equivalent is killed by convincing kids not to believe in him.

Without there being any obvious change in the world because kids do always do that and start telling each other that Santa's not real. I remember when I figured out the tooth fairy wasn't real, I went off telling everyone I fucking cared that I had proof. Mean. I was so smug. How old were you? I want to see how smug you should have been. I was in year four. No, that smug.

No, year three maybe. It was the first time we'd done like a residential trip away, like as a school trip. I think it was up in Yorkshire, it was definitely by the sea somewhere. And I had a loose tooth before I'd gone. So I left a note for the tooth fairy of if you found out I've lost a tooth and you look for me like I'm not here. I'm in Yorkshire. And then obviously the tooth wasn't taken from under the pillow and I went around showing everyone my teeth. I did my admin.

Clearly tooth fairy not real. So I just went around showing everyone my tooth. Grace. Yeah, no, I was a horrible child. I was appalling. I like it. Yeah, but this idea of controlling children in this way, having this idea, it nearly paying off. And then twisting around the way it is.

And just the fact that we've got a book that starts that sort of starts off with light hearted Christmas caper. What if the Grim Reaper was Santa? Yeah. Swings through the cheerful fairy and a subplot about a bathroom. All sorts of wizardly nonsense. Swings via some serious like childhood based horror and lands on what does it mean to be human anyway? Yes. And it just, I'm just somewhat in awe of it.

And obviously, you know, I like this power of belief idea. I like the fact that every time it gets used in a book, it gets taken to another logical step from the very obvious believing in some things to some extent makes it true to the small God's idea of the God needs belief to live. To hear where humans need belief to be human. There's the line, you know, literally, it's the things you believe that make you human. Yes. And it goes into obviously like the big speech, the big final thing of the book of Susan arguing with death and saying, what would have happened, you know, if I hadn't won, the sun would not have risen. And he keeps insisting and then he says a mere ball of flaming gas would have illuminated the world. Yeah.

It says, you're saying humans need fantasies to make life bearable. No, humans need fantasy to be human, to be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Which is like the most iconic line from this book. Yeah. Yeah. One of those ones, like, unless you've read it quite recently, you maybe couldn't pinpoint which book it's even from. It's one of the very deep disqueld concepts. And it gets followed up with this, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

So you can believe the big ones, justice, mercy, duty and that sort of thing. And it follows up with then take the universe, grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice. Yeah. Sorry, I really wanted to get that speech, but I love that bit so much. No, no, absolutely. Needs to be in there. And I always forget how good this book is. Yeah.

Because I always, because it's the one I reread at Christmas, I forget that it is one of the very best ones. It is. It's very, very funny and thought provoking and all the other emotions you meant to have. Yeah. Yeah. It is fantastically written. The plot is very intricate, but makes sense the whole way through. All of the characters are worth including.

Yeah, there's no, it's one of the longer ones as well. You know, we're clocking in at nearly 450 pages, but there's no fat to be trimmed. No. I wonder how long the first draft was. Yeah. I mean, if you compare it to Reaper Man, which is a very good book with a very weird subplot that doesn't really fit. Yeah. We talked before about Pratchett kind of wanting to redo stuff he's done in the past.

And this isn't like as obvious a one as him just like doing the same plot again. But you get the feeling that maybe it's a better tie-in of a wizard nonsense subplot with an overarching existential threat. Well, where he's written the wizards two works much better than they did in Reaper Man because they've got things like Hex to do a bit of exposition. Hex position. Hex position. With his little titty beer. But I'm just always so awestruck by how good a book this is and how incredible that speech is at the end of this book. Or even like before that when Susan captures up with Tea Time and it's just the two threads getting closer and closer.

I thought was really well done and like flicking between the two points of view until now they're in the same place. Yeah. It finally ties together. And then it's just such a beautiful concept because you read that and then you sort of go, I was reading a Christmas book and minor existential crisis. What is it that I believe in? What is truth, justice and freedom and hard boiled eggs? Sorry.

Hard boiled boots. Hard boiled boots. No, you want to slowly braise a boot. Yeah, of course. Sorry. With a hammer. With a hammer. Can one braise with a hammer?

Tenderize. That's what you do with a hammer. You tenderize with a hammer and then you braise it. Right. Off topic. Back to topic. The rising angel meets the falling ape. There is no better description of humanity.

Absolutely. It reminded me, as I was reading it this time, of have you read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari? There's a bit in that which stuck with me very much. And I wonder if it's just because in my head, in my subconscious, perhaps it always resides, where he's talking about the propensity of humans for this whole exerting power through belief but in a much less abstract way, obviously. Yeah. And I thought he put it really well.

He said, unlike lying and imagined reality is something that everyone believes in. And as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world. Wow. Ever since the cognitive revolution, Sapiens have thus been living in a dual reality. On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees and lions. And on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful so that today the very survival of rivers, trees and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as

the United States and Google. Jesus. Yeah, good, right? Fucking good book, mate, I would. It's been on my list for an incredibly long time. It's just never gotten to it. If it makes you more keen to read it, it's definitely one of those ones that is a very easy read. It's one of the ones you should read, but also one of the ones where you don't feel like you're, like,

slogging, even though it's not a serious subject matter. Yeah. It's a page turner, as they say. Yeah, I meant to sort of land on, isn't this beautiful? Isn't the whole power of belief concept cool and what a good book this is? And I've hit somewhere on existential crises, so clear the slate. Yeah. But for all that, it's a very beautiful existential crisis.

It is. It's an existential... Does it have to be a crisis in this case? No, it's not a crisis. What's the second one? It's an existential conversation. Yeah, an existential checkpoint. An existential question.

Musing, something like that. Yeah. We're definitely not whistless. And it's nice to think about why we... What makes us who we are and what we believe in that makes us that way. Yeah. I'm going to say something stupid to ruin it if we don't move on. Do you have an obscure reference for Neil for me?

I do. I do. But what I wanted to have for you was some kind of grounding in reality of Waddley's occult sequence, but I could find no such thing. I'm tragically bereft of such... Breast. Yes. I did notice that in sorcery, Waddley's occult primer is mentioned,

so he is at least a consistent... Presence. Yeah. Not even a side character background character. Yeah. So instead, I lifted an obscure reference straight from the annotated fracture file because I spent too long to look something here. I know.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But on page 443, right near the end, we have, as they say, Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a staldox and hatred therewith. From the Bible, Proverbs 15, 17. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a staldox and hatred therewith. Lovely. That's it.

I was expecting like a jokey inversion or something. It's like, no, no. Just the boots. Just the boots. Marvelous. Well, that brings us to the end of the book, The Hogfather. We will be back theoretically on Christmas Eve in your ears to talk to you about the Sky TV adaptation of The Hogfather.

Yay. And other festive matters. We will be recording that episode on the day this comes out. So at the point you're listening, if you're listening to it on the day it comes out, you have about two hours to get your emails for us, questions for us, and letters to The Hogfather in. You can contact us in a variety of ways. Why are you yelling random words?

Fuck knows. You can follow us on Instagram at the true shall make you fret on Twitter at make you fret pod on Facebook at the true shall make you fret. You can go to our subreddit community r slash t t s m y f. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, albatrosses, and of course for two hours, letters to The Hogfather, the true shall make you fret pod at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support us financially, head over to patreon.com forward slash the true shall make you fret.

And in the meantime, dear listener. And then there was only the snow. After a while, it began to melt in the sun. Things that rhyme with Olly. Yep. Brolly. Yep. Collie.

Folly. Ah, that's a good one. Dolly. And Mellon Collie. Ah, Mellon Collie, not very jolly though. No, bring it back to jolly. Let's go trolley. Marvelous.

Trolley said jolly. What a jolly trolley. With a brolly golly. Golly, I think we're done for on scene.