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Marking. Camera one. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:03 | |
Can we go back to the beginning? | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
I'm aware of that. | 0:00:08 | 0:00:09 | |
I can see my father every time I see myself in the... | 0:00:09 | 0:00:15 | |
-What, every time you look in the mirror...? -In the mirror, yeah, yeah. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:22 | |
The anecdote I'm specifically thinking of is the... | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
I know what the anecdote is. I'm trying to remember... | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
He was in Karachi... | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
-in the war. In the air force. -Ah. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
-Burma. -Ah, OK. | 0:00:42 | 0:00:44 | |
And he turned and... | 0:00:45 | 0:00:48 | |
He was a... | 0:00:48 | 0:00:51 | |
Air like... Air lang... | 0:00:51 | 0:00:55 | |
-Erm... -'So sad. A man of words, a man who created so many words,' | 0:00:55 | 0:01:01 | |
and I think we probably left this six months too late. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:04 | |
Today at five, the author Sir Terry Pratchett has died, aged 66. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:10 | |
Lasted for over 40 years, | 0:01:10 | 0:01:12 | |
Terry Pratchett wrote 70 books which sold more than 75 million copies. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:17 | |
He is one of the greatest satirists since Swift. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
He skewers his intended victims. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
Terry is actually talking about the human condition in a way | 0:01:22 | 0:01:26 | |
that is going to break your heart. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:28 | |
He was brilliant at those lightbulb moments to get across complex, | 0:01:29 | 0:01:34 | |
highbrow concepts in a book about witches and tea. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
He should be here, he's not here, that's the biggest thing. | 0:01:42 | 0:01:45 | |
He's here in spirit, but we want him here in body. | 0:01:45 | 0:01:48 | |
We really do. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:50 | |
We miss him. | 0:01:50 | 0:01:51 | |
So, if it's all right with you, I am going to tell you my final tale. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:06 | |
The story of my own life in my own words. Well, mostly. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:14 | |
I chose a wicker casket to be laid to rest in, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:27 | |
because I always thought coffins were a bit morbid really, | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
not to mention claustrophobic. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
Plus the fact it looks a little bit like a Weetabix. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
They say your life flashes in front of your eyes before you die. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:42 | |
This is true. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
It is called living. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:45 | |
But nobody's really dead until all the ripples they have created on | 0:02:47 | 0:02:51 | |
Earth have completely died away, | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
so as long as my words and my stories are still sploshing | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
around the planet, there's life in the old dog yet. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:02 | |
Walking back into Terry's office, | 0:03:30 | 0:03:32 | |
all the books were created for the first time after Terry had died. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:36 | |
So I feel him all the time. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:40 | |
Terry always said that you see cats out the corner of your eye. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
If you've lost a cat, you will always see it, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:44 | |
it will always come back and it was | 0:03:44 | 0:03:46 | |
just almost slightly, just slightly beyond your peripheral vision, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
but Terry's closer than that. He's here all the time. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:52 | |
I was Terry's PA. It's still a multi-million pound business | 0:03:54 | 0:03:58 | |
and it's all run from this desk. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
At least for the last couple of years of his life, we talked | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
about Terry's memorial and we talked about what he would want from it. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:07 | |
He would want the rock concert of memorials. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:11 | |
That's what we've got to give him. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:14 | |
My life on the whole has been that of a ping-pong ball | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
in a hurricane - I just went where the winds blew me. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
and thank you from myself, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
from Terry's family, for being here tonight. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
I asked Terry, "What is the one thing you want from your memorial service?" | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
-And he said, "To be there." -LAUGHTER | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
"Spread joy whenever possible. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:46 | |
"Make puns and bugger the embuggerances. Read books, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
"read my books, you might like them." | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
There is a fury to Terry Pratchett's writing. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:56 | |
It's the fury that was the engine that powered Discworld | 0:04:56 | 0:05:00 | |
and you'll discover it here. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
It's the anger at the headmaster who would decide that six-year-old | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
Terry Pratchett would never be smart enough for the 11+. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:09 | |
Anger at pompous critics and at those who think that serious is the | 0:05:09 | 0:05:14 | |
opposite of funny. And I think, | 0:05:14 | 0:05:16 | |
"What would Terry do with this anger?" | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
Then I pick up my pen and I start to write. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:25 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:05:25 | 0:05:27 | |
Well, this is all very nice, I'm sure, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
but I was never the sentimental type, | 0:05:30 | 0:05:33 | |
so that's quite enough of that nonsense. | 0:05:33 | 0:05:35 | |
Let me tell you how it all began. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
I left school in 1965 at the age of 17 with barely | 0:05:48 | 0:05:53 | |
a qualification to my name, but I had one burning ambition in my mind. | 0:05:53 | 0:06:00 | |
I knew I wanted to be a writer. | 0:06:00 | 0:06:01 | |
But with a father who was a mechanic and a mother who was | 0:06:03 | 0:06:06 | |
a secretary, I realised that the odds of me actually making | 0:06:06 | 0:06:10 | |
a living from writing were about as likely as a hen growing teeth, | 0:06:10 | 0:06:13 | |
or the Earth being flat. HE GASPS | 0:06:13 | 0:06:17 | |
Whilst I was still at school, I wrote a letter to the editor | 0:06:25 | 0:06:29 | |
of my local newspaper, the Bucks Free Press, asking for a job. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:33 | |
"I like the cut of your jib, young man," he said, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:37 | |
which I believe is the last recorded use of that phrase | 0:06:37 | 0:06:40 | |
in Britain. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:41 | |
This was a real newspaper with 96 pages of classified ads. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:50 | |
It was here I learnt all the rudiments, tricks, dirty jokes, | 0:06:50 | 0:06:54 | |
suspicious folklore and cliche of local newspaper journalism. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:58 | |
It was an education. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:00 | |
When you're a journalist, you're taught very quickly that | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
there's no such thing as writer's block, | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
because there will be some unsympathetic bloke screaming | 0:07:08 | 0:07:10 | |
in your earhole to get the bloody thing written. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
It was while working at the Bucks Free Press that I came up | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
with the idea for my first-ever novel. | 0:07:27 | 0:07:29 | |
Ooh! The Carpet People. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:34 | |
I was sent to do an interview with a small press publisher. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:40 | |
While I was there, I thought I'd be a little cheeky sod. "Here! | 0:07:40 | 0:07:45 | |
"I've got a manuscript in my satchel, mate. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
"Would you like to have a peek?" | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
And there was no way it could not be published. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
I mean, this had been written by a 17-year-old | 0:07:54 | 0:07:56 | |
and it was brilliant and that is the result. | 0:07:56 | 0:07:59 | |
Terry painted this picture and even hand-coloured pictures, | 0:08:01 | 0:08:06 | |
which we pasted up. | 0:08:06 | 0:08:10 | |
There's the hymetors, the honeybees of the carpet. | 0:08:10 | 0:08:14 | |
Imagine beings who are so small, who look on the threads of carpet | 0:08:15 | 0:08:20 | |
as being towering trees of 60-100 feet high. | 0:08:20 | 0:08:26 | |
This one's inscribed, by the way, "To Colin Smythe, | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
"and may this book make him lots of money." | 0:08:29 | 0:08:33 | |
"There was beauty but none to see. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
"There was life but none to live it. Yet in the dust, | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
"the mother carpet wovers, the first of us, the carpet people. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:44 | |
"Then the web was woven complete. Though Fray, who hates life in | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
"the carpet, may tread on us, those shadows grow over us, | 0:08:49 | 0:08:54 | |
"we are the lords of the carpet and that is a mighty thing. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:58 | |
"We are the fruit of the loom." | 0:08:58 | 0:08:59 | |
I mean, if you can do that at 17 | 0:09:02 | 0:09:04 | |
and if there was any, you know, development, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:07 | |
my God, what was he going to be like later? | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
How great we, of course, had no idea. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:14 | |
There is an ancient myth that the world is travelling through | 0:09:19 | 0:09:23 | |
space on the back of a giant turtle. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
There is a version of that myth | 0:09:27 | 0:09:29 | |
that claims there are four giant elephants set on the top of it. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:34 | |
I remember reading about it in a book on astronomy. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:38 | |
I filched it and ran away before the alarms went off. | 0:09:38 | 0:09:41 | |
This world began as an antidote to fantasy. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:50 | |
There are so many cliches in the fairy-tale view of fantasy - | 0:09:50 | 0:09:55 | |
with the wizards and the witches and so forth - that it may be fun just | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
to treat them as if they were real life. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:00 | |
This world even has a condom factory in it and why not? | 0:10:06 | 0:10:10 | |
You couldn't do that in Middle-earth. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:12 | |
You couldn't even think about doing it in Narnia. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
Being a fantasy writer is a bit like that kid you envied at school. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:19 | |
We all had a box of paints, | 0:10:19 | 0:10:20 | |
but he had a posh box that included tubes of gold and silver. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:26 | |
"In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that | 0:10:29 | 0:10:33 | |
"was never meant to fly, the curling star mists waiver and part. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:37 | |
"See, Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the | 0:10:37 | 0:10:41 | |
"interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
"His huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters." | 0:10:45 | 0:10:49 | |
Classic Terry. There it is. The Colour Of Magic | 0:10:49 | 0:10:51 | |
and immediately he draws you in. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:53 | |
I want to know more about that. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
As it was read, it had had more reactions, | 0:10:56 | 0:11:00 | |
positive and negatives, than any other book they'd done for years. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:04 | |
On some saying, "What trash!" | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
And others saying, "This is brilliant, let's have some more." | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
In those days, I wasn't earning much money from writing. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:15 | |
I was just happy to get a free meal, to be honest. | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
The only journalist who was interested in me was | 0:11:18 | 0:11:21 | |
a snotty 24-year-old from an obscure sci-fi magazine, | 0:11:21 | 0:11:25 | |
but he ended up becoming one of the biggest-selling fantasy authors. | 0:11:25 | 0:11:31 | |
Behind me, of course. | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
Terry and I met in a Chinese restaurant. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:37 | |
I was the first interview that Terry Pratchett had ever done. | 0:11:37 | 0:11:41 | |
The interview is in this, in this magazine, which I haven't seen | 0:11:41 | 0:11:47 | |
for about 30 years and it ran one page. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:51 | |
GLASS SHATTERS | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
He is looking pretty rock and roll, he's got an argyle sweater, | 0:11:55 | 0:12:00 | |
he's got an anorak and he has a little leather sort of beret cap. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:04 | |
Part of the problem with Terry's fiction is a lot of | 0:12:05 | 0:12:09 | |
people wind up starting there. | 0:12:09 | 0:12:11 | |
So this is The Colour Of Magic. It's a romp | 0:12:11 | 0:12:14 | |
and it's a terrible place to start. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:16 | |
It's like trying to understand PG Wodehouse by beginning with | 0:12:16 | 0:12:21 | |
his school stories, and it's a collection of jokes and in The Colour Of Magic, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:24 | |
they aren't even very good jokes. | 0:12:24 | 0:12:26 | |
The Terry Pratchett of fine and beautiful plots built like | 0:12:26 | 0:12:31 | |
Swiss watches was a long way from turning up. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:34 | |
But he's building something. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
If you're a writer, journalist or whatever, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
everybody you've ever known - loved ones, hated ones - | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
they've all gone into the dark mill of your mind, | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
so that when the time came for me to write my books, they were all there. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:55 | |
Years ago, I watched a rather large lady struggling down | 0:12:55 | 0:13:00 | |
cobblestones with a suitcase on wheels. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
The suitcase was bouncing all over the shop. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
It had a life of its own, | 0:13:06 | 0:13:09 | |
so I bunged it in a book and the character of The Luggage was born. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:14 | |
I have to tell you, at that time, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
characters were coming out of my brain left, right and centre | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
and I was finding it extremely difficult to keep track of them all. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
Thankfully fate intervened. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:26 | |
I met a mild-mannered civil servant who came up with a hi-tech solution. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:31 | |
And this is it. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:33 | |
The Discworld Companion. Still accessible after all these years. | 0:13:33 | 0:13:38 | |
Genetics. Geoffrey. Gimmick. Ginger. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
Samuel or Vimes. Dislikes a lot of things - | 0:13:43 | 0:13:47 | |
kings, the undead and assassins. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
A skinny unshaven collection of bad habits marinated in alcohol. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:54 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:13:54 | 0:13:55 | |
So what we've got here is the first complete card index of | 0:13:55 | 0:14:00 | |
everything to do with all the books - | 0:14:00 | 0:14:02 | |
every character, every place, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
every street name, every country, every river, every stream, | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
every Ford is all in here on bits of paper. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
Terry found it highly amusing, because Terry was very | 0:14:11 | 0:14:15 | |
electronically literate and I was still working in the 19th century. | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
See how accessible these are? | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
Unlike anything you'd have on computer. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
Granny Weatherwax. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
Famous throughout the mountains for special potions for | 0:14:26 | 0:14:28 | |
illnesses that village women just hinted at with raised eyebrows | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
and lowered voices. | 0:14:32 | 0:14:34 | |
Granny Weatherwax is somebody who has total self-belief. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:39 | |
She is intolerant of fools, | 0:14:39 | 0:14:40 | |
she's not very tolerant of anyone really. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
Hard, driven, and very powerful | 0:14:43 | 0:14:45 | |
and very, very, very good at understanding people. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
There's a lot of that in Terry, that kind of being driven and, yes, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
a certain anger about injustice and stupidity. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
There's always a kind of anger about him and Granny Weatherwax | 0:14:58 | 0:15:00 | |
is somebody who's permanently angry. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:02 | |
Unlike most fantasy worlds, Discworld is based strongly on reality. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:08 | |
He wants to have a map of his city. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:12 | |
And then this is the final version, the map of Ankh-Morpork. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:17 | |
The last thing we did was to turn it around like this, | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
so that it looks less like the opening credits of EastEnders. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
It's the Isle Of Gods, which has the Opera House, | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
the theatre district, and then round here into Elm Street, which is where | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
a lot of the undead tend to stay when they stay in the city. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:34 | |
The thing that fascinated Terry was how cities work. | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
When I first came across Discworld, when Terry and I first met, I was | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
a civil servant working, effectively, for the Ministry of Agriculture. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
He knew I'd know what figures there were for the per capita | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
consumption of beef. That sort of thing fascinated both him and me. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:51 | |
He was firing on all cylinders, writing about three books a year. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:55 | |
It was just crazy, because he would have two or three books on | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
the go at once, in his head. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:00 | |
This next gentleman has sold over 35 million books. Can he get a, "Boo!"? | 0:16:01 | 0:16:07 | |
Terry's audience was growing with every book and people were | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
talking about Terry. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:13 | |
And they knew that something was happening, | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
something exciting was happening. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:16 | |
Terry Pratchett. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
Discworld series of books have an amazing following. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:23 | |
Are you surprised at the way they've taken off? | 0:16:23 | 0:16:25 | |
I've been in a state of shock for the last eight years, in fact, yeah. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:28 | |
Do you get upset if people say, "Are you a bit like Tolkien, then? | 0:16:28 | 0:16:31 | |
"Or that kind of writer?" Is that fair or not? | 0:16:31 | 0:16:34 | |
-He's more dead than I am. -Yeah. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
Terry was writing two novels a year, | 0:16:39 | 0:16:42 | |
editing two novels a year and touring two novels a year. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:46 | |
That didn't leave a lot of time. | 0:16:46 | 0:16:48 | |
Terry's writing became the most important thing at the | 0:16:50 | 0:16:54 | |
expense of everything. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:55 | |
Haven't been this way for a very long time. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
I do remember Dad | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
picking me up from the little school I went to | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
and it had snowed very heavily and my dad turned up to pick me | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
up with a sledge. | 0:17:18 | 0:17:20 | |
Dad embraced the narrative of the moment | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
rather more than the practicality. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
Mum and Dad had a happy marriage, | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
I think, living in a little cottage with goats and chickens and just | 0:17:28 | 0:17:32 | |
trying to get by in a sort of Tom and Barbara in The Good Life experience. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:37 | |
-Hello. -Hello. -Hi. Good to meet you. I'm Rhianna Pratchett. | 0:17:37 | 0:17:43 | |
And this room hasn't changed very much. | 0:17:43 | 0:17:45 | |
So this is where I'd sit in front of the fire and Dad | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
would read me The Hobbit. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:51 | |
That's one of my... That's one of my core Dad memories, I think. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:56 | |
There was definitely a bit of big brotherness to Dad as much | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
as the kind of, you know, he was part dad, part big brother, I think. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:05 | |
The first book I remember was probably Equal Rites. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:12 | |
Equal Rites has a character called Esk | 0:18:12 | 0:18:16 | |
who he, he based on me. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
"Nothing much happened for seven years except one of the apple | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
"trees in the smithy orchard grew perceptibly taller than the others | 0:18:25 | 0:18:29 | |
"and was frequently climbed by a small girl with brown hair and | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
"a gap in her front teeth. | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
"The sort of features that promise to become, if not beautiful, | 0:18:34 | 0:18:38 | |
"then at least attractively interesting." | 0:18:38 | 0:18:40 | |
Thank you, Dad. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:41 | |
Well, I think the success took him away from home more | 0:18:46 | 0:18:50 | |
and I was always very... | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
independent, I think, | 0:18:52 | 0:18:53 | |
and I sort of kept myself away from the fame aspect of Dad. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:58 | |
Fame can kind of twist things and sort of twist relationships | 0:19:00 | 0:19:05 | |
and time and commitment and family life and work and things like that | 0:19:05 | 0:19:10 | |
and so, you know, the dad that I grieve for most was the dad I knew here. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
We didn't have much back then, | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
but I wasn't used to much. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
My own childhood was... Well, it was a humble one. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
I was brought up on this lane, | 0:19:33 | 0:19:35 | |
in a little village called Forty Green in Bucks. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
I lived in a cottage which had a roof, | 0:19:40 | 0:19:42 | |
one cold water tap and a mum and dad. | 0:19:42 | 0:19:46 | |
In post-war Britain, that was a little bit like winning the lottery. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
I was an only, not a lonely child. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:53 | |
In fact, I had no hang-ups whatsoever, | 0:19:53 | 0:19:57 | |
so I had to invent them all myself. | 0:19:57 | 0:20:01 | |
I was a pretty average young lad really. | 0:20:01 | 0:20:04 | |
I liked climbing trees and playing outdoors, | 0:20:04 | 0:20:08 | |
but then something happened that changed my small world for ever. | 0:20:08 | 0:20:13 | |
A family friend gave me a copy of Wind In The Willows. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:18 | |
Nobody had bothered telling me that books could be that much fun. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:22 | |
There was this mole who had a friend who was a rat who had | 0:20:22 | 0:20:25 | |
a friend who was a badger and they all had a friend who was | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
a toad, but not just any toad. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
This toad could drive a car and represent himself in court. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:34 | |
It was all so...utterly weird and entirely unexplained. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:40 | |
So I got myself a Saturday job at the local library. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
It was a bit like giving a monkey the keys to | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
a banana factory and they paid me handsomely in library tickets. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
I started with the fantasy and once I'd read all the fantasy, | 0:20:53 | 0:20:56 | |
I moved on to mythology, because it was still blokes with helmets, | 0:20:56 | 0:21:00 | |
bashing each other on the head with swords. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
When I'd read all the mythology, I moved on to ancient history, | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
more blokes with helmets bashing each other over the head with | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
swords and on it went. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
I read for pleasure every single copy of Punch magazine from | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
the 1840s to the mid-1960s. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
I was reading Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor at the same | 0:21:18 | 0:21:21 | |
time as I was reading Tove Jansson's Moomintroll books | 0:21:21 | 0:21:25 | |
and contained within all this literature | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
were all the friends I would ever need. | 0:21:29 | 0:21:31 | |
Thinking about it now, | 0:21:35 | 0:21:36 | |
I was probably at my happiest in that library. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:40 | |
All I ever tried to do from that time on was to pass on all the | 0:21:40 | 0:21:43 | |
fun I'd had with words. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:45 | |
-Right. It's Terry. -Most words ending in fu | 0:21:45 | 0:21:49 | |
refer to some kind of martial art. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
As in deja fu, which is the feeling that you have been kicked | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
in the head before. LAUGHTER | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
'I've had plenty of practice making up funny stuff. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:03 | |
'I've been doing it since I was 14 years old.' | 0:22:03 | 0:22:06 | |
The first short story that I ever wrote was called The Hades Business | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
and my teacher gave me 20 out of 20 and put it in the school magazine. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:20 | |
All the other kids loved it. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:22 | |
It made them laugh and I've been popular ever since. | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
These days, of course, people from all over the planet go to | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
Discworld conventions just to talk about my books. | 0:22:37 | 0:22:42 | |
I used to be guest of honour, but I'm currently indisposed, | 0:22:42 | 0:22:47 | |
so I send Rob instead. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
Morning. | 0:22:50 | 0:22:52 | |
Welcome to the Discworld Convention, | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
a gathering of about 800 fans. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:57 | |
It's the first UK convention where everybody knew that Terry | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
wouldn't be here. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:02 | |
I feel as if I'm shouldering the burden of having to carry him | 0:23:02 | 0:23:06 | |
and his memory and then realised that when you're here with all of | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
the fans and everyone's enjoying themselves, | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
that isn't a burden, everybody wants to throw their love at you. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
This is all very strange, because I'm just me. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:19 | |
Have you just seen what I've got to sign? | 0:23:20 | 0:23:22 | |
Somewhere Terry is looking down and he either highly approves of this | 0:23:22 | 0:23:26 | |
or he's shaking his head in dismay. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
-Done. -Thank you so much. -Thank you. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
I'd attended the first Discworld convention just as a fan, | 0:23:34 | 0:23:37 | |
just as an attendee. | 0:23:37 | 0:23:38 | |
Terry asked me what my favourite electronic component was and | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
I think he was actually trying to catch me out and I said, | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
"Well, Terry, it's the NE555 timer," | 0:23:44 | 0:23:46 | |
and he stood up and punched the air and he looked me up and down | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
and said, "Good God, it's Captain Capacitor," | 0:23:49 | 0:23:51 | |
so Terry noticed in me a kindred spirit. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:53 | |
There we were, geeks and nerds united. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE -Welcome to the 2016 Masquerade. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:01 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
You may think that my fans are a little odd, | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
but one of them could be the next Terry Pratchett. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:13 | |
Well, maybe not him. | 0:24:13 | 0:24:15 | |
I started going to science fiction conventions as | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
a spotty teenager back in 1964. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:25 | |
I was in the gents having a piss when I heard somebody in the | 0:24:25 | 0:24:29 | |
cubicle having a rather loud poo. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
When the door finally opened, I was absolutely staggered to | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
discover it was none other than Arthur C Clarke. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
And I thought, "Bloody hell! | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
"You're a human being, I'm a human being. Your poo stinks, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
"my poo stinks. You're a writer and I want to be a writer." | 0:24:50 | 0:24:55 | |
I discovered the commonality of humankind. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
I am a little old lady who lives with her daughter, | 0:25:08 | 0:25:14 | |
but when I come to Discworld, I am an assassin. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:19 | |
This is a Christmas card that was sent to me by Terry, so it was | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
a really lovely gift to get through the post and totally unexpected. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
Pratchett fans have that shared core, | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
kernel of Pratchettness that he's left with us. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:38 | |
"Be more Terry," I think is what they say. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
If you meet someone who also likes Pratchett, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:43 | |
you almost have this knowing smile of, "Ah, great! | 0:25:43 | 0:25:47 | |
"You have a wider worldview and a sense of humour that I | 0:25:47 | 0:25:52 | |
"instantly hope that we'll be better friends because of." | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
It had already been dedicated, so I turned up to | 0:25:55 | 0:25:58 | |
a signing in Bradford with this book and | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
a bottle of Tippex and Terry whited out the original dedication | 0:26:01 | 0:26:06 | |
and wrote underneath, "Officially unsigned by Terry Pratchett, 1997." | 0:26:06 | 0:26:13 | |
Terry was a great feminist writer, but that was not his mission. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:18 | |
It's character before anything and I loved that! | 0:26:18 | 0:26:23 | |
Yes! He gets this. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:25 | |
One of my favourite characters from my books is the Librarian. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:35 | |
He is an orangutan, because when I was a small boy, | 0:26:35 | 0:26:39 | |
I couldn't reach the books on the top shelf, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:43 | |
so I figured that an orangutan could get up as high as he liked | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
and discover all sorts of treats. | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
One of my fans turned up at a book signing one day with an | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
armload of the most incredible drawings of my characters. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:02 | |
And I thought, "Well, | 0:27:02 | 0:27:04 | |
"I might give this young whippersnapper his big break." | 0:27:04 | 0:27:08 | |
I like the Feegles, a cross between Braveheart and Trainspotting. | 0:27:08 | 0:27:13 | |
The sort of character that you don't want to meet down a dark alley, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
even if they're six inches tall. | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
I think Terry was doing something like The Borrowers, but with | 0:27:20 | 0:27:26 | |
an edge, an edge to it that made you think about the realities | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
of being six inches tall. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:32 | |
It makes you think about things and see things differently. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:37 | |
There's so many characters. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:39 | |
My interpretation of Terry's creation was try and make it real. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:46 | |
It's a fantasy scenario, but it's peopled by people that you know. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:53 | |
So this is Death. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 | |
He's not the Grim Reaper. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
He's... He just does a job and he's trying to understand humanity. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:10 | |
You're challenging yourself to try and make... | 0:28:10 | 0:28:14 | |
a skull look friendly. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
The most popular character in my books is Death, | 0:28:20 | 0:28:23 | |
your genuine, bona fide, seven-foot tall hooded skeletal figure | 0:28:23 | 0:28:28 | |
with a horse called Binky. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:30 | |
I simply ask the question, if Death were a real person, | 0:28:30 | 0:28:34 | |
what will he do on his afternoons off? | 0:28:34 | 0:28:37 | |
"He looked down and saw the landscape spread out below him, | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
"the night etched with moonlight silver. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:47 | |
"Vast streamers of light shimmered and glittered across the night. | 0:28:48 | 0:28:52 | |
"Great golden walls surrounded the world. | 0:28:52 | 0:28:55 | |
" 'It's beautiful,' said Mort, softly. 'What is it?' | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
" 'The sun is under the disc,' said Death. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
" 'Is it like this every night?' | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
" 'Every night,' said Death. 'Nature's like that.' | 0:29:07 | 0:29:10 | |
" 'Doesn't anyone know?' 'Me! You! The gods! | 0:29:10 | 0:29:14 | |
" 'Good, is it?' 'Gosh.' | 0:29:14 | 0:29:17 | |
"Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms | 0:29:17 | 0:29:20 | |
"of the world. | 0:29:20 | 0:29:22 | |
" 'I don't know about you,' he said, 'but I could murder a curry.' " | 0:29:22 | 0:29:26 | |
I've received letters about him from convents, ecclesiastical palaces, | 0:29:29 | 0:29:35 | |
funeral parlours and not least hospices. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
He is, in short, a kindly death. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:43 | |
Utterly fascinated by human beings and their capacity to find a bother | 0:29:45 | 0:29:52 | |
in the short time that they spend on Earth. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
I brought Death to life, so with the help of my old friend | 0:29:59 | 0:30:05 | |
Bernard, I thought why not bring my fantasy city Ankh-Morpork into the real world too? | 0:30:05 | 0:30:11 | |
Conveniently located just off the A303. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:15 | |
Welcome to Wincanton. | 0:30:15 | 0:30:17 | |
The only town that is twinned with a totally unreal place. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:23 | |
Twinned with Ankh-Morpork. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:25 | |
Wincanton is a town of blow-ins, good breakfasts, | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
funny little hotels and lots of pubs and Ankh-Morpork, | 0:30:29 | 0:30:33 | |
of course, is the same, but writ much larger. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
We spoke to the Foreign Office, | 0:30:36 | 0:30:38 | |
the Home Office and all the other offices of the Government in | 0:30:38 | 0:30:40 | |
London and then, of course, we spoke to the local council. | 0:30:40 | 0:30:43 | |
Of course, once the whole town had been twinned with Ankh-Morpork, | 0:30:52 | 0:30:56 | |
things started to go in their own way. | 0:30:56 | 0:30:59 | |
Wimpey were putting up houses and they thought, | 0:30:59 | 0:31:01 | |
wouldn't it be a jolly good idea if they took some of the names from the | 0:31:01 | 0:31:04 | |
Discworld book, from Ankh-Morpork, and used them as street signs? | 0:31:04 | 0:31:08 | |
And now we have Treacle Mine Road and Peach Pie Street and | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
Hen and Chicken Field and Terry was chuffed as hell. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:15 | |
Well, what you see here in this strange little shop | 0:31:26 | 0:31:29 | |
we create what Terry has written and we turn them into pieces | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
that people can take away with them. | 0:31:32 | 0:31:33 | |
It's the soft edge of a dream. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:38 | |
This is the description of Sergeant Jack Jackrum. | 0:31:40 | 0:31:45 | |
Terry did tell me the character was based in some part on me. | 0:31:46 | 0:31:52 | |
"The sergeant turned to Polly. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:54 | |
"The word fat could not honestly be applied to him, | 0:31:54 | 0:31:58 | |
"not when the word gross was lumbering up forward to catch | 0:31:58 | 0:32:02 | |
"your attention. He was one of those people who didn't have a waist. | 0:32:02 | 0:32:06 | |
"He had an equator. He had gravity. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
"And if he fell over in any direction, he would rock." | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
Terry understood the human condition. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
He was a man that had been bullied at school, | 0:32:19 | 0:32:23 | |
so he grew up understanding what it was to be the underdog. | 0:32:23 | 0:32:30 | |
Good old Bernard. He knows me better than almost anyone. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:34 | |
I wouldn't say I was an underdog, but as a child, | 0:32:34 | 0:32:39 | |
I did always feel different. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:41 | |
On the count of a bicycle accident | 0:32:42 | 0:32:44 | |
I had when I was, oh, five years old, | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
I have a mouthful of speech impediments which has left me | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
with a voice that sounds like David Bellamy with his hand | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
caught in an electric fire. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:33:01 | 0:33:03 | |
BICYCLE RATTLES | 0:33:06 | 0:33:08 | |
Ooh. | 0:33:08 | 0:33:10 | |
I'm having a flashback. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:12 | |
I was a bit of a twit at school. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:14 | |
Easily distracted. | 0:33:14 | 0:33:16 | |
And I st-stuttered. | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
Kids can be quite cruel. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:21 | |
Ow! | 0:33:21 | 0:33:22 | |
But it wasn't the kids that really got to me. | 0:33:22 | 0:33:26 | |
It was the crushing of my boyhood dreams by someone three feet taller. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:33 | |
Mr Tame, my headmaster, thought he could tell | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
how successful we were going to be in later life | 0:33:36 | 0:33:38 | |
by how well we could read or write at the age of six. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:42 | |
At six years old, I was far more interested in climbing the desks | 0:33:42 | 0:33:46 | |
than working at them. | 0:33:46 | 0:33:47 | |
Pratchett! | 0:33:49 | 0:33:51 | |
TERRY GASPS | 0:33:51 | 0:33:52 | |
Mr Tame had taken a rather vicious disliking to me. | 0:33:55 | 0:34:00 | |
But I subsequently discovered that he'd had a very bad war. | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
Seen lots of men blown to pieces. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:06 | |
"It may help to understand human affairs to be clear | 0:34:08 | 0:34:12 | |
"that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
"not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, | 0:34:16 | 0:34:20 | |
"but by people being fundamentally people." | 0:34:20 | 0:34:24 | |
'Young Terry Pratchett is told he'll never amount to anything.' | 0:34:24 | 0:34:27 | |
It really got under his skin, it really, it did affect him. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:31 | |
There were pictures of Terry smiling, | 0:34:33 | 0:34:38 | |
and there were pictures of Terry fierce. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:42 | |
The fierce Terry was the more accurate. | 0:34:44 | 0:34:48 | |
'The feeling of being somehow inferior was hard to shake off. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:52 | |
'The critics, bless 'em, could be utter bastards!' | 0:34:52 | 0:34:57 | |
Tom Paulin, Terry Pratchett has been one of the literary | 0:34:57 | 0:34:59 | |
sensations of recent years | 0:34:59 | 0:35:01 | |
read by millions of people. Are they stupid? Why do they read him? | 0:35:01 | 0:35:04 | |
For me, it was like lifting up a stone. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:05 | |
You see all these insects scurrying around and you think, | 0:35:05 | 0:35:08 | |
what on earth are they up to? And you put the stone back and go away. | 0:35:08 | 0:35:11 | |
That was my attitude. | 0:35:11 | 0:35:12 | |
'The London literary clique were quite unabashed.' | 0:35:12 | 0:35:17 | |
The snobbery that was going on. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
I got to about page 151 and I actually wrote | 0:35:20 | 0:35:22 | |
across the centre of the page, you know, I just can't go on. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:25 | |
It's nerdy, real-ale stuff. Very Boy's Own stuff. | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
I'll be surprised if any woman would want to read this book. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:29 | |
He's selling thousands of copies, a complete amateur, | 0:35:29 | 0:35:32 | |
he doesn't even write in chapters. | 0:35:32 | 0:35:33 | |
THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER | 0:35:33 | 0:35:35 | |
'Anger, for Terry, was an engine. Anger drove him.' | 0:35:35 | 0:35:40 | |
Always taking that anger and using it as fuel. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:45 | |
He will take something. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
Take an idea, take something big and obvious, like newspapers | 0:35:48 | 0:35:54 | |
or steam trains | 0:35:54 | 0:35:56 | |
or movies, the movie industry, | 0:35:56 | 0:35:58 | |
use the Discworld to reflect it. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:02 | |
'I wrote a lot of words, and I made a lot of money. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:09 | |
'Anger can carry you quite a long way, it turns out, | 0:36:09 | 0:36:14 | |
'if you learn to channel it properly.' | 0:36:14 | 0:36:16 | |
The thing is, I would have written the books anyway | 0:36:16 | 0:36:19 | |
whether they paid me or not. Shush. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:24 | |
'It only took 20 years and three dozen novels | 0:36:24 | 0:36:28 | |
'before the critics finally caved in.' | 0:36:28 | 0:36:31 | |
'Terry Pratchett matches Charles Dickens book for book, | 0:36:31 | 0:36:36 | |
'as Britain's best-loved novelist.' | 0:36:36 | 0:36:38 | |
I mean, compare Pratchett with Tolkien, the use of language, | 0:36:38 | 0:36:42 | |
Tolkien, completely dead as far as I can see, linguistically. | 0:36:42 | 0:36:45 | |
Pratchett is very alive. I mean, very funny. Highly satirical. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
As for Terry's best book, | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
Night Watch is the deepest, the darkest, and the most human. | 0:36:54 | 0:37:00 | |
'For a crime writer like me, there's a great appeal in Sam Vimes | 0:37:16 | 0:37:18 | |
'because he's the cop.' | 0:37:18 | 0:37:20 | |
In Night Watch, what's not to like about Sam Vimes? | 0:37:20 | 0:37:24 | |
You know, the boy from nowhere who goes on to run the world, basically. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:29 | |
And is essentially a good man trying to do the right thing. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:33 | |
"Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:37 | |
"Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:41 | |
"Everyone talking to a copper was secretly afraid you could see | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
"their guilty secret written on their forehead. | 0:37:44 | 0:37:47 | |
"You couldn't, of course. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:48 | |
"But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and | 0:37:48 | 0:37:51 | |
"smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was." | 0:37:51 | 0:37:54 | |
You'd have to say he could have been a crime writer | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
if he hadn't fallen by the wayside into fantasy. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:01 | |
'Just like Sam Vimes, I started out with very little, | 0:38:02 | 0:38:06 | |
'and ended up being made a knight of the realm. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:11 | |
'Do you know they don't give you your own sword? | 0:38:11 | 0:38:14 | |
'So I had to make my own. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:16 | |
'Not bad for a boy who was told he'd never amount to anything, eh?' | 0:38:16 | 0:38:21 | |
'One day, he called me down and said, | 0:38:39 | 0:38:40 | |
' "Come on, what have you done with it, what have you done with it?" | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
'I said, "Done with what, Terry?" | 0:38:43 | 0:38:45 | |
'He said, "The S on my keyboard's gone, where has it gone?" ' | 0:38:45 | 0:38:49 | |
I looked over his shoulder and there it was next to A where it always is. | 0:38:49 | 0:38:52 | |
And I said, "No, it's there," and I lent over and punched it. | 0:38:52 | 0:38:56 | |
And in that moment, we knew something strange had happened. | 0:38:56 | 0:38:59 | |
He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:03 | |
I'd like to show you something. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:10 | |
'Imagine you're in a very, very slow-motion car crash. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:22 | |
'Nothing seems to be happening at all. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
'There might be the odd banging noise possibly, | 0:39:25 | 0:39:29 | |
'a little crunching sound here and there. | 0:39:29 | 0:39:32 | |
'A screw might pop out and spin its way across the dashboard | 0:39:32 | 0:39:36 | |
'as if you were in Apollo 13. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
'But the radio's blasting rock and roll. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
'The heaters are on and it doesn't seem all that bad. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:47 | |
'Except for the certain knowledge that, at some point, | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
'your head is going to go smashing through that windscreen.' | 0:39:52 | 0:39:55 | |
I've heard myself called Mr Alzheimer's. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:05 | |
AUDIENCE LAUGHS GENTLY | 0:40:05 | 0:40:06 | |
What they're going to be calling me in the morning, I have no idea. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:40:10 | 0:40:11 | |
'Dad being so public about it was quite surreal. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
'In Discworld, there's a concept of second thought.' | 0:40:15 | 0:40:18 | |
So the idea of, you know, | 0:40:18 | 0:40:19 | |
there's always a part of you watching yourself, | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
and even a part of you watching the part of you watching yourself. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
'There was still a part of his brain that was processing | 0:40:24 | 0:40:27 | |
'what was happening to him with the Alzheimer's. | 0:40:27 | 0:40:30 | |
'I could see him watching himself.' | 0:40:30 | 0:40:32 | |
On the first day of my journalistic career, I saw my first corpse. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:41 | |
Some unfortunate chap had fallen down a hole on a farm | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
and had drowned in pig shit. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:49 | |
Would I swap my own death for his? | 0:40:49 | 0:40:52 | |
All I'll say is that, compared to that horrific demise, | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
Alzheimer's is a walk in the park. | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
HORN BEEPS | 0:41:00 | 0:41:02 | |
Except, with Alzheimer's, my park keeps changing. | 0:41:03 | 0:41:07 | |
The trees get up and walk over there. | 0:41:07 | 0:41:09 | |
The benches go missing. | 0:41:09 | 0:41:11 | |
And the paths seem to be unwinding | 0:41:11 | 0:41:15 | |
into particularly vindictive serpents. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
Terry got really angry at his disease | 0:41:19 | 0:41:21 | |
because now he could see how it was affecting him, | 0:41:21 | 0:41:24 | |
how it was tripping him up. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:26 | |
And I knew we were up against it for time. | 0:41:26 | 0:41:29 | |
We had to get these words down | 0:41:29 | 0:41:30 | |
with the white heat, that white anger driving him | 0:41:30 | 0:41:34 | |
to write seven more novels, through the haze of Alzheimer's. | 0:41:34 | 0:41:39 | |
I remember buying this and thinking, I don't want to read it. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
Because it was the last. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
And I felt that very much. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:50 | |
I didn't want to read this book because that would be it. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:55 | |
But one of the things I think is done very well in Terry's books | 0:41:57 | 0:42:01 | |
is that when people come to the end of the line, he lets them die. | 0:42:01 | 0:42:05 | |
And Granny Weatherwax, in The Shepherd's Crown, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:09 | |
comes to the end of her days. | 0:42:09 | 0:42:12 | |
There's a sort of pragmatic honesty to it | 0:42:12 | 0:42:14 | |
that really, it really touched me when I first read this, | 0:42:14 | 0:42:17 | |
it definitely brought a tear to my eye. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:19 | |
I don't know if I could write with that much joy if I knew I was dying. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:27 | |
"It was a strange night. | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
"The owls hooted almost nonstop and the wind outside, for some reason, | 0:42:31 | 0:42:36 | |
"made the wicks of the candles inside wobble with a vengeance, | 0:42:36 | 0:42:39 | |
"and then blow out." | 0:42:39 | 0:42:41 | |
"Then the darkness spoke. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
" 'Esmerelda Weatherwax, we have met so many times before, haven't we?' | 0:42:46 | 0:42:51 | |
" 'Too many to count, Mr Reaper. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
" 'Well, you've finally got me, you old bugger. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:56 | |
" 'I've had my season, no doubt about it, | 0:42:56 | 0:42:58 | |
" 'and I was never one for pushing myself forward or complaining.' | 0:42:58 | 0:43:03 | |
"There was no light. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
"No point of reference except for the two tiny blue pinpricks | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
"sparkling in the eye sockets of Death himself. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:13 | |
" 'Well, the journey was worth taking, | 0:43:13 | 0:43:15 | |
" 'and I saw many wonderful things on the way, | 0:43:15 | 0:43:18 | |
" 'including you, my reliable friend. Shall we go now?' | 0:43:18 | 0:43:22 | |
" 'Madame... | 0:43:22 | 0:43:24 | |
" 'We've already gone.' " | 0:43:26 | 0:43:27 | |
It was actually the 8th of December. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
We'd had a good day working on the biography. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:36 | |
And he said, "Rob, Terry Pratchett's dead." | 0:43:36 | 0:43:39 | |
Completely out of the blue. | 0:43:42 | 0:43:44 | |
"Terry. Look at the words we've written today, | 0:43:44 | 0:43:46 | |
"it's been fantastic." | 0:43:46 | 0:43:47 | |
And he said, "No. No. Terry Pratchett's dead." | 0:43:47 | 0:43:52 | |
He knew he was going to die. | 0:43:57 | 0:44:00 | |
Yeah, he was furious. It was unfair. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:03 | |
And if there was anything that really pissed off Terry Pratchett, | 0:44:03 | 0:44:06 | |
it was things being unfair. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
The last time we were together, I went down to see him, | 0:44:08 | 0:44:12 | |
and it was towards the end. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:14 | |
And I thought, I want to talk to my friend. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
And we said everything we had to say. | 0:44:29 | 0:44:32 | |
And he was there. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:36 | |
And then Rob turned up with scampi, and we sat and ate scampi. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:45 | |
I miss him so much. | 0:44:45 | 0:44:47 | |
'It doesn't feel like a world without Dad. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:03 | |
'He's still here, I think.' | 0:45:03 | 0:45:05 | |
When you lose someone close, you're sort of, they're always part of you, | 0:45:05 | 0:45:09 | |
and you're always taking...a piece of them with you, I think. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:14 | |
I mean, I'm always seeing things and aware, | 0:45:19 | 0:45:23 | |
"Oh, Dad would have loved that," or you can sort of hear him laughing. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:28 | |
'Life will never be the same again.' | 0:45:33 | 0:45:35 | |
You have to learn to live in a post-Terry world. | 0:45:35 | 0:45:39 | |
Yeah, that was really quite hard. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:41 | |
Please welcome Terry Pratchett! | 0:45:43 | 0:45:45 | |
CHEERING AND WHISTLING | 0:45:45 | 0:45:46 | |
'Terry was a human with all the good attributes turned up to 11.' | 0:45:48 | 0:45:52 | |
To Be More Terry is to be more caring, to be more human. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:57 | |
Death is a fact of life. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:02 | |
And it's how we react to that death that should take us forward. | 0:46:02 | 0:46:06 | |
And this, to me, is what Be More Terry means. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:11 | |
'Everybody here will always tell you what a great, amazing guy he was.' | 0:46:11 | 0:46:15 | |
But he was also a complete git! | 0:46:15 | 0:46:18 | |
But he did always make time for his fans. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:21 | |
I had a terrible time when I was, like, a young teenager. | 0:46:21 | 0:46:25 | |
And probably without Discworld books, I wouldn't be here. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:27 | |
I was very suicidal at that age. | 0:46:27 | 0:46:30 | |
And I don't think that's over-saying it, really. | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
And that's about the long and short of it, really. | 0:46:35 | 0:46:37 | |
BURST OF CHORAL MUSIC | 0:46:43 | 0:46:45 | |
I always dreamt that, when I die, I'll be sat in the deckchair | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
with a glass of brandy, listening to Thomas Tallis on the iPod. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:59 | |
But I had Alzheimer's. So I forgot all about that. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:03 | |
When I was a boy, all I ever wanted was my own observatory. | 0:47:05 | 0:47:10 | |
I knew even then that all the mysteries of life | 0:47:10 | 0:47:13 | |
lay hidden in the stars. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:15 | |
Having said that, stars aren't that important. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:26 | |
Whereas street lamps, they're very important. Why? | 0:47:26 | 0:47:31 | |
Because they're so rare. | 0:47:31 | 0:47:32 | |
As far as we know, there's only a few million of them in the universe. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
And they were built by monkeys | 0:47:36 | 0:47:39 | |
who also came up with philosophy, telescopes, | 0:47:39 | 0:47:43 | |
E=mc-squared. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:45 | |
And I have to say I'm very proud to have been one of them. | 0:47:45 | 0:47:52 | |
Well, I'm off now. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
You're in charge. | 0:47:57 | 0:47:59 | |
Oh, and one more thing. | 0:47:59 | 0:48:01 | |
Don't bugger it up. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:04 | |
# Some things in life are bad They can really make you mad | 0:48:05 | 0:48:11 | |
# Other things just make you swear and curse | 0:48:11 | 0:48:14 | |
# When you're chewing on life's gristle | 0:48:14 | 0:48:17 | |
# Don't grumble, give a whistle | 0:48:17 | 0:48:20 | |
# And this'll help things turn out for the best | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
# Ay... | 0:48:23 | 0:48:25 | |
-ALL: -# Always look on the bright side of death... # | 0:48:25 | 0:48:30 | |
WHISTLING | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
# Just before you draw your terminal breath... # | 0:48:33 | 0:48:39 | |
WHISTLING | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
# Life's a piece of shit When you look at it | 0:48:41 | 0:48:46 | |
# Life's a laugh And death's a joke, it's true | 0:48:46 | 0:48:48 | |
# You'll see it's all a show Keep 'em laughing as you go | 0:48:48 | 0:48:53 | |
# Just remember that the last laugh is on you | 0:48:53 | 0:48:58 | |
# Always look on the bright side of life | 0:48:58 | 0:49:04 | |
# Always look on the bright side of life. # | 0:49:08 | 0:49:13 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:49:13 | 0:49:15 | |
God bless you, Terry. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 |