Terry Pratchett - Back in Black


Terry Pratchett - Back in Black

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Transcript


LineFromTo

Marking. Camera one.

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Can we go back to the beginning?

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I'm aware of that.

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I can see my father every time I see myself in the...

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-What, every time you look in the mirror...?

-In the mirror, yeah, yeah.

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The anecdote I'm specifically thinking of is the...

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I know what the anecdote is. I'm trying to remember...

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He was in Karachi...

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-in the war. In the air force.

-Ah.

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-Burma.

-Ah, OK.

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And he turned and...

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He was a...

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Air like... Air lang...

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-Erm...

-'So sad. A man of words, a man who created so many words,'

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and I think we probably left this six months too late.

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Today at five, the author Sir Terry Pratchett has died, aged 66.

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Lasted for over 40 years,

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Terry Pratchett wrote 70 books which sold more than 75 million copies.

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He is one of the greatest satirists since Swift.

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He skewers his intended victims.

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Terry is actually talking about the human condition in a way

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that is going to break your heart.

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He was brilliant at those lightbulb moments to get across complex,

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highbrow concepts in a book about witches and tea.

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He should be here, he's not here, that's the biggest thing.

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He's here in spirit, but we want him here in body.

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We really do.

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We miss him.

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So, if it's all right with you, I am going to tell you my final tale.

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The story of my own life in my own words. Well, mostly.

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I chose a wicker casket to be laid to rest in,

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because I always thought coffins were a bit morbid really,

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not to mention claustrophobic.

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Plus the fact it looks a little bit like a Weetabix.

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They say your life flashes in front of your eyes before you die.

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This is true.

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It is called living.

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But nobody's really dead until all the ripples they have created on

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Earth have completely died away,

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so as long as my words and my stories are still sploshing

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around the planet, there's life in the old dog yet.

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Walking back into Terry's office,

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all the books were created for the first time after Terry had died.

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So I feel him all the time.

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Terry always said that you see cats out the corner of your eye.

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If you've lost a cat, you will always see it,

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it will always come back and it was

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just almost slightly, just slightly beyond your peripheral vision,

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but Terry's closer than that. He's here all the time.

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I was Terry's PA. It's still a multi-million pound business

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and it's all run from this desk.

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At least for the last couple of years of his life, we talked

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about Terry's memorial and we talked about what he would want from it.

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He would want the rock concert of memorials.

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That's what we've got to give him.

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My life on the whole has been that of a ping-pong ball

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in a hurricane - I just went where the winds blew me.

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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,

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and thank you from myself,

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from Terry's family, for being here tonight.

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I asked Terry, "What is the one thing you want from your memorial service?"

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-And he said, "To be there."

-LAUGHTER

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"Spread joy whenever possible.

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"Make puns and bugger the embuggerances. Read books,

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"read my books, you might like them."

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There is a fury to Terry Pratchett's writing.

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It's the fury that was the engine that powered Discworld

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and you'll discover it here.

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It's the anger at the headmaster who would decide that six-year-old

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Terry Pratchett would never be smart enough for the 11+.

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Anger at pompous critics and at those who think that serious is the

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opposite of funny. And I think,

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"What would Terry do with this anger?"

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Then I pick up my pen and I start to write.

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APPLAUSE

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Well, this is all very nice, I'm sure,

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but I was never the sentimental type,

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so that's quite enough of that nonsense.

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Let me tell you how it all began.

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HE LAUGHS

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I left school in 1965 at the age of 17 with barely

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a qualification to my name, but I had one burning ambition in my mind.

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I knew I wanted to be a writer.

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But with a father who was a mechanic and a mother who was

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a secretary, I realised that the odds of me actually making

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a living from writing were about as likely as a hen growing teeth,

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or the Earth being flat. HE GASPS

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Whilst I was still at school, I wrote a letter to the editor

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of my local newspaper, the Bucks Free Press, asking for a job.

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"I like the cut of your jib, young man," he said,

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which I believe is the last recorded use of that phrase

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in Britain.

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This was a real newspaper with 96 pages of classified ads.

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It was here I learnt all the rudiments, tricks, dirty jokes,

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suspicious folklore and cliche of local newspaper journalism.

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It was an education.

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When you're a journalist, you're taught very quickly that

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there's no such thing as writer's block,

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because there will be some unsympathetic bloke screaming

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in your earhole to get the bloody thing written.

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It was while working at the Bucks Free Press that I came up

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with the idea for my first-ever novel.

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Ooh! The Carpet People.

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I was sent to do an interview with a small press publisher.

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While I was there, I thought I'd be a little cheeky sod. "Here!

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"I've got a manuscript in my satchel, mate.

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"Would you like to have a peek?"

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And there was no way it could not be published.

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I mean, this had been written by a 17-year-old

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and it was brilliant and that is the result.

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Terry painted this picture and even hand-coloured pictures,

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which we pasted up.

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There's the hymetors, the honeybees of the carpet.

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Imagine beings who are so small, who look on the threads of carpet

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as being towering trees of 60-100 feet high.

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This one's inscribed, by the way, "To Colin Smythe,

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"and may this book make him lots of money."

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"There was beauty but none to see.

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"There was life but none to live it. Yet in the dust,

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"the mother carpet wovers, the first of us, the carpet people.

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"Then the web was woven complete. Though Fray, who hates life in

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"the carpet, may tread on us, those shadows grow over us,

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"we are the lords of the carpet and that is a mighty thing.

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"We are the fruit of the loom."

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I mean, if you can do that at 17

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and if there was any, you know, development,

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my God, what was he going to be like later?

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How great we, of course, had no idea.

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There is an ancient myth that the world is travelling through

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space on the back of a giant turtle.

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There is a version of that myth

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that claims there are four giant elephants set on the top of it.

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I remember reading about it in a book on astronomy.

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I filched it and ran away before the alarms went off.

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This world began as an antidote to fantasy.

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There are so many cliches in the fairy-tale view of fantasy -

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with the wizards and the witches and so forth - that it may be fun just

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to treat them as if they were real life.

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This world even has a condom factory in it and why not?

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You couldn't do that in Middle-earth.

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You couldn't even think about doing it in Narnia.

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Being a fantasy writer is a bit like that kid you envied at school.

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We all had a box of paints,

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but he had a posh box that included tubes of gold and silver.

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"In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that

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"was never meant to fly, the curling star mists waiver and part.

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"See, Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the

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"interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs.

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"His huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters."

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Classic Terry. There it is. The Colour Of Magic

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and immediately he draws you in.

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I want to know more about that.

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As it was read, it had had more reactions,

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positive and negatives, than any other book they'd done for years.

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On some saying, "What trash!"

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And others saying, "This is brilliant, let's have some more."

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In those days, I wasn't earning much money from writing.

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I was just happy to get a free meal, to be honest.

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The only journalist who was interested in me was

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a snotty 24-year-old from an obscure sci-fi magazine,

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but he ended up becoming one of the biggest-selling fantasy authors.

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Behind me, of course.

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Terry and I met in a Chinese restaurant.

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I was the first interview that Terry Pratchett had ever done.

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The interview is in this, in this magazine, which I haven't seen

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for about 30 years and it ran one page.

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GLASS SHATTERS

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He is looking pretty rock and roll, he's got an argyle sweater,

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he's got an anorak and he has a little leather sort of beret cap.

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Part of the problem with Terry's fiction is a lot of

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people wind up starting there.

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So this is The Colour Of Magic. It's a romp

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and it's a terrible place to start.

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It's like trying to understand PG Wodehouse by beginning with

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his school stories, and it's a collection of jokes and in The Colour Of Magic,

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they aren't even very good jokes.

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The Terry Pratchett of fine and beautiful plots built like

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Swiss watches was a long way from turning up.

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But he's building something.

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If you're a writer, journalist or whatever,

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everybody you've ever known - loved ones, hated ones -

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they've all gone into the dark mill of your mind,

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so that when the time came for me to write my books, they were all there.

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Years ago, I watched a rather large lady struggling down

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cobblestones with a suitcase on wheels.

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The suitcase was bouncing all over the shop.

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It had a life of its own,

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so I bunged it in a book and the character of The Luggage was born.

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I have to tell you, at that time,

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characters were coming out of my brain left, right and centre

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and I was finding it extremely difficult to keep track of them all.

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Thankfully fate intervened.

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I met a mild-mannered civil servant who came up with a hi-tech solution.

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And this is it.

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The Discworld Companion. Still accessible after all these years.

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Genetics. Geoffrey. Gimmick. Ginger.

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Samuel or Vimes. Dislikes a lot of things -

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kings, the undead and assassins.

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A skinny unshaven collection of bad habits marinated in alcohol.

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HE CHUCKLES

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So what we've got here is the first complete card index of

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everything to do with all the books -

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every character, every place,

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every street name, every country, every river, every stream,

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every Ford is all in here on bits of paper.

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Terry found it highly amusing, because Terry was very

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electronically literate and I was still working in the 19th century.

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See how accessible these are?

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Unlike anything you'd have on computer.

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Granny Weatherwax.

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Famous throughout the mountains for special potions for

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illnesses that village women just hinted at with raised eyebrows

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and lowered voices.

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Granny Weatherwax is somebody who has total self-belief.

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She is intolerant of fools,

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she's not very tolerant of anyone really.

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Hard, driven, and very powerful

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and very, very, very good at understanding people.

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There's a lot of that in Terry, that kind of being driven and, yes,

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a certain anger about injustice and stupidity.

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There's always a kind of anger about him and Granny Weatherwax

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is somebody who's permanently angry.

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Unlike most fantasy worlds, Discworld is based strongly on reality.

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He wants to have a map of his city.

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And then this is the final version, the map of Ankh-Morpork.

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The last thing we did was to turn it around like this,

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so that it looks less like the opening credits of EastEnders.

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It's the Isle Of Gods, which has the Opera House,

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the theatre district, and then round here into Elm Street, which is where

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a lot of the undead tend to stay when they stay in the city.

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The thing that fascinated Terry was how cities work.

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When I first came across Discworld, when Terry and I first met, I was

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a civil servant working, effectively, for the Ministry of Agriculture.

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He knew I'd know what figures there were for the per capita

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consumption of beef. That sort of thing fascinated both him and me.

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He was firing on all cylinders, writing about three books a year.

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It was just crazy, because he would have two or three books on

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the go at once, in his head.

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This next gentleman has sold over 35 million books. Can he get a, "Boo!"?

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Terry's audience was growing with every book and people were

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talking about Terry.

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And they knew that something was happening,

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something exciting was happening.

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Terry Pratchett.

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Discworld series of books have an amazing following.

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Are you surprised at the way they've taken off?

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I've been in a state of shock for the last eight years, in fact, yeah.

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Do you get upset if people say, "Are you a bit like Tolkien, then?

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"Or that kind of writer?" Is that fair or not?

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-He's more dead than I am.

-Yeah.

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Terry was writing two novels a year,

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editing two novels a year and touring two novels a year.

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That didn't leave a lot of time.

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Terry's writing became the most important thing at the

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expense of everything.

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Haven't been this way for a very long time.

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I do remember Dad

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picking me up from the little school I went to

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and it had snowed very heavily and my dad turned up to pick me

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up with a sledge.

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Dad embraced the narrative of the moment

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rather more than the practicality.

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Mum and Dad had a happy marriage,

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I think, living in a little cottage with goats and chickens and just

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trying to get by in a sort of Tom and Barbara in The Good Life experience.

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-Hello.

-Hello.

-Hi. Good to meet you. I'm Rhianna Pratchett.

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And this room hasn't changed very much.

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So this is where I'd sit in front of the fire and Dad

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would read me The Hobbit.

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That's one of my... That's one of my core Dad memories, I think.

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There was definitely a bit of big brotherness to Dad as much

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as the kind of, you know, he was part dad, part big brother, I think.

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The first book I remember was probably Equal Rites.

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Equal Rites has a character called Esk

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who he, he based on me.

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"Nothing much happened for seven years except one of the apple

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"trees in the smithy orchard grew perceptibly taller than the others

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"and was frequently climbed by a small girl with brown hair and

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"a gap in her front teeth.

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"The sort of features that promise to become, if not beautiful,

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"then at least attractively interesting."

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Thank you, Dad.

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Well, I think the success took him away from home more

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and I was always very...

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independent, I think,

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and I sort of kept myself away from the fame aspect of Dad.

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Fame can kind of twist things and sort of twist relationships

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and time and commitment and family life and work and things like that

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and so, you know, the dad that I grieve for most was the dad I knew here.

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We didn't have much back then,

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but I wasn't used to much.

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My own childhood was... Well, it was a humble one.

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I was brought up on this lane,

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in a little village called Forty Green in Bucks.

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I lived in a cottage which had a roof,

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one cold water tap and a mum and dad.

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In post-war Britain, that was a little bit like winning the lottery.

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I was an only, not a lonely child.

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In fact, I had no hang-ups whatsoever,

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so I had to invent them all myself.

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I was a pretty average young lad really.

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I liked climbing trees and playing outdoors,

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but then something happened that changed my small world for ever.

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A family friend gave me a copy of Wind In The Willows.

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Nobody had bothered telling me that books could be that much fun.

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There was this mole who had a friend who was a rat who had

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a friend who was a badger and they all had a friend who was

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a toad, but not just any toad.

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This toad could drive a car and represent himself in court.

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It was all so...utterly weird and entirely unexplained.

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So I got myself a Saturday job at the local library.

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It was a bit like giving a monkey the keys to

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a banana factory and they paid me handsomely in library tickets.

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I started with the fantasy and once I'd read all the fantasy,

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I moved on to mythology, because it was still blokes with helmets,

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bashing each other on the head with swords.

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When I'd read all the mythology, I moved on to ancient history,

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more blokes with helmets bashing each other over the head with

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swords and on it went.

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I read for pleasure every single copy of Punch magazine from

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the 1840s to the mid-1960s.

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I was reading Mayhew's London Labour and London Poor at the same

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time as I was reading Tove Jansson's Moomintroll books

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and contained within all this literature

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were all the friends I would ever need.

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Thinking about it now,

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I was probably at my happiest in that library.

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All I ever tried to do from that time on was to pass on all the

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fun I'd had with words.

0:21:430:21:45

-Right. It's Terry.

-Most words ending in fu

0:21:450:21:49

refer to some kind of martial art.

0:21:490:21:52

As in deja fu, which is the feeling that you have been kicked

0:21:520:21:56

in the head before. LAUGHTER

0:21:560:22:00

'I've had plenty of practice making up funny stuff.

0:22:000:22:03

'I've been doing it since I was 14 years old.'

0:22:030:22:06

The first short story that I ever wrote was called The Hades Business

0:22:110:22:15

and my teacher gave me 20 out of 20 and put it in the school magazine.

0:22:150:22:20

All the other kids loved it.

0:22:200:22:22

It made them laugh and I've been popular ever since.

0:22:220:22:25

These days, of course, people from all over the planet go to

0:22:330:22:37

Discworld conventions just to talk about my books.

0:22:370:22:42

I used to be guest of honour, but I'm currently indisposed,

0:22:420:22:47

so I send Rob instead.

0:22:470:22:49

Morning.

0:22:500:22:52

Welcome to the Discworld Convention,

0:22:520:22:55

a gathering of about 800 fans.

0:22:550:22:57

It's the first UK convention where everybody knew that Terry

0:22:570:23:00

wouldn't be here.

0:23:000:23:02

I feel as if I'm shouldering the burden of having to carry him

0:23:020:23:06

and his memory and then realised that when you're here with all of

0:23:060:23:09

the fans and everyone's enjoying themselves,

0:23:090:23:11

that isn't a burden, everybody wants to throw their love at you.

0:23:110:23:14

This is all very strange, because I'm just me.

0:23:160:23:19

Have you just seen what I've got to sign?

0:23:200:23:22

Somewhere Terry is looking down and he either highly approves of this

0:23:220:23:26

or he's shaking his head in dismay.

0:23:260:23:29

-Done.

-Thank you so much.

-Thank you.

0:23:290:23:32

I'd attended the first Discworld convention just as a fan,

0:23:340:23:37

just as an attendee.

0:23:370:23:38

Terry asked me what my favourite electronic component was and

0:23:380:23:41

I think he was actually trying to catch me out and I said,

0:23:410:23:44

"Well, Terry, it's the NE555 timer,"

0:23:440:23:46

and he stood up and punched the air and he looked me up and down

0:23:460:23:49

and said, "Good God, it's Captain Capacitor,"

0:23:490:23:51

so Terry noticed in me a kindred spirit.

0:23:510:23:53

There we were, geeks and nerds united.

0:23:530:23:56

-CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

-Welcome to the 2016 Masquerade.

0:23:560:24:01

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

0:24:010:24:03

You may think that my fans are a little odd,

0:24:050:24:09

but one of them could be the next Terry Pratchett.

0:24:090:24:13

Well, maybe not him.

0:24:130:24:15

I started going to science fiction conventions as

0:24:170:24:20

a spotty teenager back in 1964.

0:24:200:24:25

I was in the gents having a piss when I heard somebody in the

0:24:250:24:29

cubicle having a rather loud poo.

0:24:290:24:32

When the door finally opened, I was absolutely staggered to

0:24:350:24:38

discover it was none other than Arthur C Clarke.

0:24:380:24:41

And I thought, "Bloody hell!

0:24:420:24:46

"You're a human being, I'm a human being. Your poo stinks,

0:24:460:24:50

"my poo stinks. You're a writer and I want to be a writer."

0:24:500:24:55

I discovered the commonality of humankind.

0:24:550:24:58

I am a little old lady who lives with her daughter,

0:25:080:25:14

but when I come to Discworld, I am an assassin.

0:25:140:25:19

This is a Christmas card that was sent to me by Terry, so it was

0:25:200:25:24

a really lovely gift to get through the post and totally unexpected.

0:25:240:25:27

Pratchett fans have that shared core,

0:25:290:25:33

kernel of Pratchettness that he's left with us.

0:25:330:25:38

"Be more Terry," I think is what they say.

0:25:380:25:41

If you meet someone who also likes Pratchett,

0:25:410:25:43

you almost have this knowing smile of, "Ah, great!

0:25:430:25:47

"You have a wider worldview and a sense of humour that I

0:25:470:25:52

"instantly hope that we'll be better friends because of."

0:25:520:25:55

It had already been dedicated, so I turned up to

0:25:550:25:58

a signing in Bradford with this book and

0:25:580:26:01

a bottle of Tippex and Terry whited out the original dedication

0:26:010:26:06

and wrote underneath, "Officially unsigned by Terry Pratchett, 1997."

0:26:060:26:13

Terry was a great feminist writer, but that was not his mission.

0:26:130:26:18

It's character before anything and I loved that!

0:26:180:26:23

Yes! He gets this.

0:26:230:26:25

One of my favourite characters from my books is the Librarian.

0:26:300:26:35

He is an orangutan, because when I was a small boy,

0:26:350:26:39

I couldn't reach the books on the top shelf,

0:26:390:26:43

so I figured that an orangutan could get up as high as he liked

0:26:430:26:47

and discover all sorts of treats.

0:26:470:26:50

One of my fans turned up at a book signing one day with an

0:26:540:26:58

armload of the most incredible drawings of my characters.

0:26:580:27:02

And I thought, "Well,

0:27:020:27:04

"I might give this young whippersnapper his big break."

0:27:040:27:08

I like the Feegles, a cross between Braveheart and Trainspotting.

0:27:080:27:13

The sort of character that you don't want to meet down a dark alley,

0:27:130:27:17

even if they're six inches tall.

0:27:170:27:19

I think Terry was doing something like The Borrowers, but with

0:27:200:27:26

an edge, an edge to it that made you think about the realities

0:27:260:27:30

of being six inches tall.

0:27:300:27:32

It makes you think about things and see things differently.

0:27:320:27:37

There's so many characters.

0:27:370:27:39

My interpretation of Terry's creation was try and make it real.

0:27:410:27:46

It's a fantasy scenario, but it's peopled by people that you know.

0:27:460:27:53

So this is Death.

0:27:580:28:01

He's not the Grim Reaper.

0:28:010:28:03

He's... He just does a job and he's trying to understand humanity.

0:28:030:28:10

You're challenging yourself to try and make...

0:28:100:28:14

a skull look friendly.

0:28:140:28:16

The most popular character in my books is Death,

0:28:200:28:23

your genuine, bona fide, seven-foot tall hooded skeletal figure

0:28:230:28:28

with a horse called Binky.

0:28:280:28:30

I simply ask the question, if Death were a real person,

0:28:300:28:34

what will he do on his afternoons off?

0:28:340:28:37

"He looked down and saw the landscape spread out below him,

0:28:410:28:44

"the night etched with moonlight silver.

0:28:440:28:47

"Vast streamers of light shimmered and glittered across the night.

0:28:480:28:52

"Great golden walls surrounded the world.

0:28:520:28:55

" 'It's beautiful,' said Mort, softly. 'What is it?'

0:28:570:29:01

" 'The sun is under the disc,' said Death.

0:29:010:29:04

" 'Is it like this every night?'

0:29:040:29:07

" 'Every night,' said Death. 'Nature's like that.'

0:29:070:29:10

" 'Doesn't anyone know?' 'Me! You! The gods!

0:29:100:29:14

" 'Good, is it?' 'Gosh.'

0:29:140:29:17

"Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms

0:29:170:29:20

"of the world.

0:29:200:29:22

" 'I don't know about you,' he said, 'but I could murder a curry.' "

0:29:220:29:26

I've received letters about him from convents, ecclesiastical palaces,

0:29:290:29:35

funeral parlours and not least hospices.

0:29:350:29:38

He is, in short, a kindly death.

0:29:400:29:43

Utterly fascinated by human beings and their capacity to find a bother

0:29:450:29:52

in the short time that they spend on Earth.

0:29:520:29:55

I brought Death to life, so with the help of my old friend

0:29:590:30:05

Bernard, I thought why not bring my fantasy city Ankh-Morpork into the real world too?

0:30:050:30:11

Conveniently located just off the A303.

0:30:110:30:15

Welcome to Wincanton.

0:30:150:30:17

The only town that is twinned with a totally unreal place.

0:30:170:30:23

Twinned with Ankh-Morpork.

0:30:230:30:25

Wincanton is a town of blow-ins, good breakfasts,

0:30:260:30:29

funny little hotels and lots of pubs and Ankh-Morpork,

0:30:290:30:33

of course, is the same, but writ much larger.

0:30:330:30:36

We spoke to the Foreign Office,

0:30:360:30:38

the Home Office and all the other offices of the Government in

0:30:380:30:40

London and then, of course, we spoke to the local council.

0:30:400:30:43

Of course, once the whole town had been twinned with Ankh-Morpork,

0:30:520:30:56

things started to go in their own way.

0:30:560:30:59

Wimpey were putting up houses and they thought,

0:30:590:31:01

wouldn't it be a jolly good idea if they took some of the names from the

0:31:010:31:04

Discworld book, from Ankh-Morpork, and used them as street signs?

0:31:040:31:08

And now we have Treacle Mine Road and Peach Pie Street and

0:31:080:31:11

Hen and Chicken Field and Terry was chuffed as hell.

0:31:110:31:15

Well, what you see here in this strange little shop

0:31:260:31:29

we create what Terry has written and we turn them into pieces

0:31:290:31:32

that people can take away with them.

0:31:320:31:33

It's the soft edge of a dream.

0:31:360:31:38

This is the description of Sergeant Jack Jackrum.

0:31:400:31:45

Terry did tell me the character was based in some part on me.

0:31:460:31:52

"The sergeant turned to Polly.

0:31:520:31:54

"The word fat could not honestly be applied to him,

0:31:540:31:58

"not when the word gross was lumbering up forward to catch

0:31:580:32:02

"your attention. He was one of those people who didn't have a waist.

0:32:020:32:06

"He had an equator. He had gravity.

0:32:060:32:10

"And if he fell over in any direction, he would rock."

0:32:100:32:13

HE CHUCKLES

0:32:130:32:16

Terry understood the human condition.

0:32:160:32:19

He was a man that had been bullied at school,

0:32:190:32:23

so he grew up understanding what it was to be the underdog.

0:32:230:32:30

Good old Bernard. He knows me better than almost anyone.

0:32:300:32:34

I wouldn't say I was an underdog, but as a child,

0:32:340:32:39

I did always feel different.

0:32:390:32:41

On the count of a bicycle accident

0:32:420:32:44

I had when I was, oh, five years old,

0:32:440:32:47

I have a mouthful of speech impediments which has left me

0:32:470:32:51

with a voice that sounds like David Bellamy with his hand

0:32:510:32:55

caught in an electric fire.

0:32:550:32:57

HE LAUGHS

0:33:010:33:03

BICYCLE RATTLES

0:33:060:33:08

Ooh.

0:33:080:33:10

I'm having a flashback.

0:33:100:33:12

I was a bit of a twit at school.

0:33:120:33:14

Easily distracted.

0:33:140:33:16

And I st-stuttered.

0:33:160:33:18

Kids can be quite cruel.

0:33:180:33:21

Ow!

0:33:210:33:22

But it wasn't the kids that really got to me.

0:33:220:33:26

It was the crushing of my boyhood dreams by someone three feet taller.

0:33:260:33:33

Mr Tame, my headmaster, thought he could tell

0:33:330:33:36

how successful we were going to be in later life

0:33:360:33:38

by how well we could read or write at the age of six.

0:33:380:33:42

At six years old, I was far more interested in climbing the desks

0:33:420:33:46

than working at them.

0:33:460:33:47

Pratchett!

0:33:490:33:51

TERRY GASPS

0:33:510:33:52

Mr Tame had taken a rather vicious disliking to me.

0:33:550:34:00

But I subsequently discovered that he'd had a very bad war.

0:34:000:34:04

Seen lots of men blown to pieces.

0:34:040:34:06

"It may help to understand human affairs to be clear

0:34:080:34:12

"that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused

0:34:120:34:16

"not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad,

0:34:160:34:20

"but by people being fundamentally people."

0:34:200:34:24

'Young Terry Pratchett is told he'll never amount to anything.'

0:34:240:34:27

It really got under his skin, it really, it did affect him.

0:34:270:34:31

There were pictures of Terry smiling,

0:34:330:34:38

and there were pictures of Terry fierce.

0:34:380:34:42

The fierce Terry was the more accurate.

0:34:440:34:48

'The feeling of being somehow inferior was hard to shake off.

0:34:480:34:52

'The critics, bless 'em, could be utter bastards!'

0:34:520:34:57

Tom Paulin, Terry Pratchett has been one of the literary

0:34:570:34:59

sensations of recent years

0:34:590:35:01

read by millions of people. Are they stupid? Why do they read him?

0:35:010:35:04

For me, it was like lifting up a stone.

0:35:040:35:05

You see all these insects scurrying around and you think,

0:35:050:35:08

what on earth are they up to? And you put the stone back and go away.

0:35:080:35:11

That was my attitude.

0:35:110:35:12

'The London literary clique were quite unabashed.'

0:35:120:35:17

The snobbery that was going on.

0:35:170:35:20

I got to about page 151 and I actually wrote

0:35:200:35:22

across the centre of the page, you know, I just can't go on.

0:35:220:35:25

It's nerdy, real-ale stuff. Very Boy's Own stuff.

0:35:250:35:27

I'll be surprised if any woman would want to read this book.

0:35:270:35:29

He's selling thousands of copies, a complete amateur,

0:35:290:35:32

he doesn't even write in chapters.

0:35:320:35:33

THEY TALK OVER EACH OTHER

0:35:330:35:35

'Anger, for Terry, was an engine. Anger drove him.'

0:35:350:35:40

Always taking that anger and using it as fuel.

0:35:400:35:45

He will take something.

0:35:450:35:48

Take an idea, take something big and obvious, like newspapers

0:35:480:35:54

or steam trains

0:35:540:35:56

or movies, the movie industry,

0:35:560:35:58

use the Discworld to reflect it.

0:35:580:36:02

'I wrote a lot of words, and I made a lot of money.

0:36:060:36:09

'Anger can carry you quite a long way, it turns out,

0:36:090:36:14

'if you learn to channel it properly.'

0:36:140:36:16

The thing is, I would have written the books anyway

0:36:160:36:19

whether they paid me or not. Shush.

0:36:190:36:24

'It only took 20 years and three dozen novels

0:36:240:36:28

'before the critics finally caved in.'

0:36:280:36:31

'Terry Pratchett matches Charles Dickens book for book,

0:36:310:36:36

'as Britain's best-loved novelist.'

0:36:360:36:38

I mean, compare Pratchett with Tolkien, the use of language,

0:36:380:36:42

Tolkien, completely dead as far as I can see, linguistically.

0:36:420:36:45

Pratchett is very alive. I mean, very funny. Highly satirical.

0:36:450:36:50

As for Terry's best book,

0:36:510:36:54

Night Watch is the deepest, the darkest, and the most human.

0:36:540:37:00

'For a crime writer like me, there's a great appeal in Sam Vimes

0:37:160:37:18

'because he's the cop.'

0:37:180:37:20

In Night Watch, what's not to like about Sam Vimes?

0:37:200:37:24

You know, the boy from nowhere who goes on to run the world, basically.

0:37:240:37:29

And is essentially a good man trying to do the right thing.

0:37:290:37:33

"Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that.

0:37:330:37:37

"Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority.

0:37:370:37:41

"Everyone talking to a copper was secretly afraid you could see

0:37:410:37:44

"their guilty secret written on their forehead.

0:37:440:37:47

"You couldn't, of course.

0:37:470:37:48

"But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and

0:37:480:37:51

"smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was."

0:37:510:37:54

You'd have to say he could have been a crime writer

0:37:540:37:57

if he hadn't fallen by the wayside into fantasy.

0:37:570:38:01

'Just like Sam Vimes, I started out with very little,

0:38:020:38:06

'and ended up being made a knight of the realm.

0:38:060:38:11

'Do you know they don't give you your own sword?

0:38:110:38:14

'So I had to make my own.

0:38:140:38:16

'Not bad for a boy who was told he'd never amount to anything, eh?'

0:38:160:38:21

'One day, he called me down and said,

0:38:390:38:40

' "Come on, what have you done with it, what have you done with it?"

0:38:400:38:43

'I said, "Done with what, Terry?"

0:38:430:38:45

'He said, "The S on my keyboard's gone, where has it gone?" '

0:38:450:38:49

I looked over his shoulder and there it was next to A where it always is.

0:38:490:38:52

And I said, "No, it's there," and I lent over and punched it.

0:38:520:38:56

And in that moment, we knew something strange had happened.

0:38:560:38:59

He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

0:39:010:39:03

I'd like to show you something.

0:39:080:39:10

'Imagine you're in a very, very slow-motion car crash.

0:39:160:39:22

'Nothing seems to be happening at all.

0:39:220:39:25

'There might be the odd banging noise possibly,

0:39:250:39:29

'a little crunching sound here and there.

0:39:290:39:32

'A screw might pop out and spin its way across the dashboard

0:39:320:39:36

'as if you were in Apollo 13.

0:39:360:39:40

'But the radio's blasting rock and roll.

0:39:400:39:43

'The heaters are on and it doesn't seem all that bad.

0:39:430:39:47

'Except for the certain knowledge that, at some point,

0:39:490:39:52

'your head is going to go smashing through that windscreen.'

0:39:520:39:55

I've heard myself called Mr Alzheimer's.

0:40:010:40:05

AUDIENCE LAUGHS GENTLY

0:40:050:40:06

What they're going to be calling me in the morning, I have no idea.

0:40:060:40:10

LAUGHTER

0:40:100:40:11

'Dad being so public about it was quite surreal.

0:40:110:40:15

'In Discworld, there's a concept of second thought.'

0:40:150:40:18

So the idea of, you know,

0:40:180:40:19

there's always a part of you watching yourself,

0:40:190:40:21

and even a part of you watching the part of you watching yourself.

0:40:210:40:24

'There was still a part of his brain that was processing

0:40:240:40:27

'what was happening to him with the Alzheimer's.

0:40:270:40:30

'I could see him watching himself.'

0:40:300:40:32

On the first day of my journalistic career, I saw my first corpse.

0:40:360:40:41

Some unfortunate chap had fallen down a hole on a farm

0:40:410:40:46

and had drowned in pig shit.

0:40:460:40:49

Would I swap my own death for his?

0:40:490:40:52

All I'll say is that, compared to that horrific demise,

0:40:520:40:56

Alzheimer's is a walk in the park.

0:40:560:40:59

HORN BEEPS

0:41:000:41:02

Except, with Alzheimer's, my park keeps changing.

0:41:030:41:07

The trees get up and walk over there.

0:41:070:41:09

The benches go missing.

0:41:090:41:11

And the paths seem to be unwinding

0:41:110:41:15

into particularly vindictive serpents.

0:41:150:41:18

Terry got really angry at his disease

0:41:190:41:21

because now he could see how it was affecting him,

0:41:210:41:24

how it was tripping him up.

0:41:240:41:26

And I knew we were up against it for time.

0:41:260:41:29

We had to get these words down

0:41:290:41:30

with the white heat, that white anger driving him

0:41:300:41:34

to write seven more novels, through the haze of Alzheimer's.

0:41:340:41:39

I remember buying this and thinking, I don't want to read it.

0:41:410:41:44

Because it was the last.

0:41:460:41:48

And I felt that very much.

0:41:480:41:50

I didn't want to read this book because that would be it.

0:41:500:41:55

But one of the things I think is done very well in Terry's books

0:41:570:42:01

is that when people come to the end of the line, he lets them die.

0:42:010:42:05

And Granny Weatherwax, in The Shepherd's Crown,

0:42:050:42:09

comes to the end of her days.

0:42:090:42:12

There's a sort of pragmatic honesty to it

0:42:120:42:14

that really, it really touched me when I first read this,

0:42:140:42:17

it definitely brought a tear to my eye.

0:42:170:42:19

I don't know if I could write with that much joy if I knew I was dying.

0:42:210:42:27

"It was a strange night.

0:42:290:42:31

"The owls hooted almost nonstop and the wind outside, for some reason,

0:42:310:42:36

"made the wicks of the candles inside wobble with a vengeance,

0:42:360:42:39

"and then blow out."

0:42:390:42:41

"Then the darkness spoke.

0:42:440:42:46

" 'Esmerelda Weatherwax, we have met so many times before, haven't we?'

0:42:460:42:51

" 'Too many to count, Mr Reaper.

0:42:510:42:53

" 'Well, you've finally got me, you old bugger.

0:42:530:42:56

" 'I've had my season, no doubt about it,

0:42:560:42:58

" 'and I was never one for pushing myself forward or complaining.'

0:42:580:43:03

"There was no light.

0:43:040:43:06

"No point of reference except for the two tiny blue pinpricks

0:43:060:43:09

"sparkling in the eye sockets of Death himself.

0:43:090:43:13

" 'Well, the journey was worth taking,

0:43:130:43:15

" 'and I saw many wonderful things on the way,

0:43:150:43:18

" 'including you, my reliable friend. Shall we go now?'

0:43:180:43:22

" 'Madame...

0:43:220:43:24

" 'We've already gone.' "

0:43:260:43:27

It was actually the 8th of December.

0:43:320:43:34

We'd had a good day working on the biography.

0:43:340:43:36

And he said, "Rob, Terry Pratchett's dead."

0:43:360:43:39

Completely out of the blue.

0:43:420:43:44

"Terry. Look at the words we've written today,

0:43:440:43:46

"it's been fantastic."

0:43:460:43:47

And he said, "No. No. Terry Pratchett's dead."

0:43:470:43:52

He knew he was going to die.

0:43:570:44:00

Yeah, he was furious. It was unfair.

0:44:000:44:03

And if there was anything that really pissed off Terry Pratchett,

0:44:030:44:06

it was things being unfair.

0:44:060:44:08

The last time we were together, I went down to see him,

0:44:080:44:12

and it was towards the end.

0:44:120:44:14

And I thought, I want to talk to my friend.

0:44:140:44:18

And we said everything we had to say.

0:44:290:44:32

And he was there.

0:44:340:44:36

And then Rob turned up with scampi, and we sat and ate scampi.

0:44:400:44:45

I miss him so much.

0:44:450:44:47

'It doesn't feel like a world without Dad.

0:45:010:45:03

'He's still here, I think.'

0:45:030:45:05

When you lose someone close, you're sort of, they're always part of you,

0:45:050:45:09

and you're always taking...a piece of them with you, I think.

0:45:090:45:14

I mean, I'm always seeing things and aware,

0:45:190:45:23

"Oh, Dad would have loved that," or you can sort of hear him laughing.

0:45:230:45:28

'Life will never be the same again.'

0:45:330:45:35

You have to learn to live in a post-Terry world.

0:45:350:45:39

Yeah, that was really quite hard.

0:45:390:45:41

Please welcome Terry Pratchett!

0:45:430:45:45

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

0:45:450:45:46

'Terry was a human with all the good attributes turned up to 11.'

0:45:480:45:52

To Be More Terry is to be more caring, to be more human.

0:45:520:45:57

Death is a fact of life.

0:45:590:46:02

And it's how we react to that death that should take us forward.

0:46:020:46:06

And this, to me, is what Be More Terry means.

0:46:060:46:11

'Everybody here will always tell you what a great, amazing guy he was.'

0:46:110:46:15

But he was also a complete git!

0:46:150:46:18

But he did always make time for his fans.

0:46:180:46:21

I had a terrible time when I was, like, a young teenager.

0:46:210:46:25

And probably without Discworld books, I wouldn't be here.

0:46:250:46:27

I was very suicidal at that age.

0:46:270:46:30

And I don't think that's over-saying it, really.

0:46:300:46:33

And that's about the long and short of it, really.

0:46:350:46:37

BURST OF CHORAL MUSIC

0:46:430:46:45

I always dreamt that, when I die, I'll be sat in the deckchair

0:46:510:46:54

with a glass of brandy, listening to Thomas Tallis on the iPod.

0:46:540:46:59

But I had Alzheimer's. So I forgot all about that.

0:47:000:47:03

When I was a boy, all I ever wanted was my own observatory.

0:47:050:47:10

I knew even then that all the mysteries of life

0:47:100:47:13

lay hidden in the stars.

0:47:130:47:15

Having said that, stars aren't that important.

0:47:220:47:26

Whereas street lamps, they're very important. Why?

0:47:260:47:31

Because they're so rare.

0:47:310:47:32

As far as we know, there's only a few million of them in the universe.

0:47:320:47:36

And they were built by monkeys

0:47:360:47:39

who also came up with philosophy, telescopes,

0:47:390:47:43

E=mc-squared.

0:47:430:47:45

And I have to say I'm very proud to have been one of them.

0:47:450:47:52

Well, I'm off now.

0:47:550:47:57

You're in charge.

0:47:570:47:59

Oh, and one more thing.

0:47:590:48:01

Don't bugger it up.

0:48:020:48:04

# Some things in life are bad They can really make you mad

0:48:050:48:11

# Other things just make you swear and curse

0:48:110:48:14

# When you're chewing on life's gristle

0:48:140:48:17

# Don't grumble, give a whistle

0:48:170:48:20

# And this'll help things turn out for the best

0:48:200:48:23

# Ay...

0:48:230:48:25

-ALL:

-# Always look on the bright side of death... #

0:48:250:48:30

WHISTLING

0:48:300:48:33

# Just before you draw your terminal breath... #

0:48:330:48:39

WHISTLING

0:48:390:48:41

# Life's a piece of shit When you look at it

0:48:410:48:46

# Life's a laugh And death's a joke, it's true

0:48:460:48:48

# You'll see it's all a show Keep 'em laughing as you go

0:48:480:48:53

# Just remember that the last laugh is on you

0:48:530:48:58

# Always look on the bright side of life

0:48:580:49:04

# Always look on the bright side of life. #

0:49:080:49:13

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

0:49:130:49:15

God bless you, Terry.

0:49:180:49:20

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