The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - Bonus: A Stroke of the Pen with Pat & Jan Harkin

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, an interview with Drs Pat and Jan Harkin! We sat down to talk newspaper archives, A Stroke of The Pen, and all things Pratchett. Find us on the internet:Discord: https://discord.gg/KuVPK2JE5V Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Pre-Order A Stroke of the Pen here:Discworld EmporiumWaterstonesThings we blathered on about:A Stroke of the Pen: Terry Pratchett’s Lost Stories - British Library event [buy streaming tickets here!] Good Omens bookshop burning/antique sink thread Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

Hello and welcome to a special bonus episode of the Truth Show-Makey fret. A couple of weeks ago Joanna and I were delighted to be joined by doctors Pat and Jan Harkin, the diligent researchers who combed through years of newspaper archives to collate the material for a stroke of the pen, a collection of 20 early short stories by Terry Pratchett, which is released on Monday. Francine from the future here, it is actually released on Tuesday, Tuesday, 10th of October. Sorry about that. As well as this, Dr. Pat Harkin was one of Fracti's trusted experts. He is a retired pathologist, a Discworld Uber fan,

member of the Order of the Honeybee and Guardian of a gigantic collection of Discworld memorabilia. Dr. Jan Harkin has, since retiring from her role as a nationally prominent physician, spent more time on the convention circuit herself and even shared a pointless discworldly inquis. She is also the keeper of Pat's ex-talligence. I'll let them fill in the details, they are fantastic storytellers and I know you, dear little listeners on your dear little legs will enjoy their tales mightily. So, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the Treeshaar-Makey-Fressa podcast in which we are usually reading a

recapping every book from Toe Branch's Discworld series, One As Time in Chronologic Lauder. I'm Joanna Hagen. I'm Francine Carroll, and we have a couple of very special guests with us today. We have doctors, Harkin, Dr Pat Harkin and Dr Jan Harkin, who are Discworld Supervans both, is that fair? We've been called worse. Yeah. I just tag along. I think they call it, she's my enabler, you know,

I hope he's care. I'm tag along. I think they call it, she's my enabler, you know, I'm his care. Yeah. On the convention blurb, I've got you down as that in disc world circles. She is known as that poor poor woman. From yes, from so Terry himself. And Pat Harkin, masquerade MC, brackets, quack, which I may have found a clue to in some of the old user neck groups, but I'm not entirely sure how it started.

It's one of those things that you sort of can't believe it happened, but it happened. It started out when I was comparing the masquerade, must have been about 2010, I'm not absolutely sure. And one of the acts was a chap who had made himself a set of dwarf seamstress armor with sort of filigree mining acts and a little lantern on a pole and whatever. This guy's called Alex Carlton. He is one of the smoking canoe. He is St Alex.

It's the character he's named after him. Oh. He's got a beard that you could lose two badges in. It's very, very impressive. He makes a fantastic duel. So he had also written for himself a little song that he sang as this dwarf seamstress, but he'd recorded it and then electronically manipulated it to shift it up an octave or two.

So, it was like he was on helium. And he danced around the stage. And because of the way the stage was set out, my podium was in the head of where the action was. He was behind me. I'd seen the rehearsals when he was going on, but it was technically out of my side. me. I'd seen the rehearsals when he was going on, but it was technically out of my side. And it was a site, I think, is a good phrase to say. When it ended, incidentally, he dies at the end of his dance, because the next act was going to be CSI more pork and he was going to be their corpse. But anyway, so it comes to the end of his section. The stage lights go down, my podium light comes up, and there is a stunned sign of some of the audience.

And I just looked out of them and said, it's all right for me. I can't see a thing. You lot are sitting ducks. And somebody went quack. From the closing ceremony, the amateur dramatic crew had brought their duck quack that they had, and they started quacking. And since then, I've been quacked at in the street down in Appington, waiting for one of Stephen's plays. Any time I end up on stage,

quack, quack, quack, quack, quack. The house is full of rubber ducks that people keep giving me. Small ones were large ones. From every continent, I think we had a Boston Red Sox rubber duck sent by the bathroom, isn't it? Yes. And there's all sorts of duck paraphernalia like, you know, a duck shower cap and French toast mold in the shape of a duck.

You amazing. Oh, snowball maker. I think we're making shape of a duck. Amazing. Oh, snowball maker. I think we're making snowball shape like ducks. Oh, I never would have imagined there was such thing. I honestly, it hadn't occurred to me there was that much duck merchandise in the world. The world continues to surprise me. I love that. Sorry, Joanna, I've immediately taken this off topic.

That's the entire podcast. Is that going off topic? Quick note on spoilers. We are a spoiler light podcast. We'll mostly be talking today about a stroke of the pen. We will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series past, THUD, which is technically the book we'll be on by the time this comes out. And of course, we will save any inal mention the Sheppard's Crown until we get there.

So you dear listener can come on the journey with us. And what a journey it'll be. It will be. So Pat and Jan, in the nicest possible way, who are you and how do you know Terry Pratchett? Who am I? My name's Pat Harkett. I'm now retired, but I got into Terry's writings by accident. Sometime in the late 80s, I'm not sure exactly when.

We went to visit a friend in London and as we were packing the card, come home. He picked up a paper back and said, oh, I've just finished this. You might like it. He handed me the color of magic. I read the color of magic and I loved it. I started reading everything I could find. So it grew, it joined. Well, I missed the first

convention, went to the second one. And down the years, got to no Terry, we became friends, he would occasionally ring me when he wanted advice on some technical aspect, usually to do with dead bodies, because my background was in pathology. So he would ring up and say, how much ear wax do you produce in a lifetime? Or how strong would you have to be to rip somebody's head off with your bare hands? Just the sort of questions that you know, you can't answer on the spot, you have to go away and do a bit of research. And I've probably got a bit of a reputation from the local university libraries for the books I was borrowing, but anyway, so I help Terry out things like that. He'd named me in the intro to slip of the keyboard as Lord of the Uber

fans, which I always say indeed Lord of the Uber fans, it was a lot cooler title before the taxi app came along. I know. Yeah. But it's too late to go about that. It'll outlaw the app. Don't worry about it. And when when Terry died, he left instructions in his will or robbed, create an order to thank people who'd helped Terry during his life, the venerable order of the honey bee. This was announced at the memorial at the Barbican.

And I have a beautiful golden bee on a pell pin, which Rob had crafted. There's about a dozen of us. Stephen Briggs, you'll have met. He's got one, burned, burned, a piece and tolling some either, of course. And a small number of others. So that's, that's who I am. Uh, Jess. Yeah, well, we got married. Yeah, we got married just after we qualified. I went into hospital medicine. So I had a lot less free time than Pat, who is a university person.

So I, I didn't go to as many of the early conventions, because I was on call and things like that. But we've since retired both of us retired and so it's been great fun getting more or more into the conventions. I was roped into chairing a pointless quiz at the Irish Diswill Convention a year or two back which yeah which was really interesting. We had no technology, we had people making booty boop noises rather than the slick electronic. So yes, it was good fun. And I act as the sort of travel agents in general, gofa whenever we're sorting out cons, you know,

I'm the travel agent for it. But yeah, it's been great fun and yeah, we've been privileged to meet up with Terry a lot. And yeah, the fandom is just so great and funny and it's been amazing to visit people all over the world who are now our friends through Terry. That's really lovely. Brilliant. Have you been to many of the international conventions? Yes, we managed. Yes. I mean, when I was working, I had a national role in my specialty. So I was going to a lot of international conventions conferences. Anyway, it was great that we could sometimes tag them together. So like

we went, I went to a medical conference in Seattle and then flew down to Tempe for the American Discworld con. So we could sort of do it all in one trip. We've been to all the American cons, missed the first Australian one. We've been to all the German ones as well. So far, that one. A few. One, two. Yeah.

I've only been to one German one myself. It was the first one this year. It was great fun. Cool. So part of the kind of meeting practice origin story was online, was it not as some kind of tech support possibly? Yes, back in it will have been the late 80s. Again, I didn't know this was going to be important, so I didn't make notes at the time. Oh no. Sorry. Sorry, but I get told off because I will tell a tale and the next time I tell it,

it's slightly different and it's, well, I haven't got any notes. We've a leantorse changing stories on this podcast. Back in the late 80s, PCs were just becoming available for the domestic market, but really only sad nerds had a computer at home. So I had a computer at home and Terry had a computer at home. And at this point, I should switch into old phogey mode and say, you young people don't know how good you got it these days With your computer equipment, you want two things to work together, you buy them, you put them down sort of vaguely side by side and press a button and it all happens by magic. In the olden days, if you wanted to add, as I did, a CD dive, this is cutting edge technology, a thing that could read CDs to your computer to take the side of the case, stick in a circuit board, move some little dip switches around, get it all working. And I had one of these gadgets, and I'd got it working in Terry, and I've got one as well,

and couldn't get his working, so he posted a request for help on a bulletin board thing called Kix, which we could sort of talk to each other. Not in real time, you would sort of type something loaded up. It's a bit like email conversations, but public email conversations or Reddit, I suppose, something like that. And I was able to help Terry out. And I also met Terry. So I met him online at some point. I don't know exactly when. And I met him when he came to a book signing in my local bookstore, but I'm not sure when. So one of those was technically the first.

I didn't realize he was Terry Pratchett online. Uh-huh. Because of pseudonyms. And so I sort of realized afterwards, oh, I may or may not have met you already. So I don't know, I don't know how I first met him. I do like that. It's sort of the opposite of the sort of the dedicated fans,

they can tell you to the second and how many people were in the queue behind them. Oh, yes. So I don't know. I met him in all kinds of places who can say one was the first. I think that's much better. We were around. Certainly. Excellent. And then obviously you're kind of your friendship grew with him. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around.

We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around.

We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around.

We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. We were around. until that BBC documentary. Whenever Terry wanted you to answer a question, he would give you precisely what he thought was enough information to be going on and nothing else.

He was really frustrated. So in theory, I had sort of first sight into all these books, I'm in practice, I know what happened at the bottom of page 87 and that's it. I have no idea who these people are. Why do I care if they're in a river? You just want to know what they'll be like after they've been found three days later. I love that you get to cut a random window into a universe and extrapolate from that. You know how much air wax one was a good one. We were out once and demorning our microwave had died and we were in in curries getting a new microwave, the phone rang and it said, you know, number withheld, which usually meant

it was the university ringing. So I thought, I've got to take this, went outside and I answered, it was Terry and he opened with, this stays between us or there will be trouble. Oh, he's normal open again. He's going on here. I said, okay, okay, what is it? How much ear wax do you create in a lifetime? I thought from a minute, a jinnotary, I think I may have been absent for that lecture at medical school. I don't remember them talking, teaching us that. I'll have to look into it. So I spent many a happy hour digging through ENT textbooks and papers and references and whatever. So eventually I found some guys who back in the 70s had developed

technique for measuring earwax. For us I can say they just filled your ear with alcohol and then slushed it out and weighed the difference. But anyway I was able to come up with an answer for him. We worked at it was about an egg cup pool, which seems a very small amount, but that's what these scientists said it was. That's what he went with. Well, the same thing happened with, he rang me one day. I want you to imagine a magic door that you can walk through that takes you to another place. But you can't take anything iron with you. I said, yeah, okay, I said, but what about the iron in your blood? So I talked it through and I was able to work out of mechanism, the iron in your blood is not metallic iron, it's different, it's not magnetic. So we can say,

whatever this magic door is doing, it won't do it to a magnetic or metallic ion. And you get away with it for that point of view. But interestingly enough, if you were to swallow a bucket full of ball bearings and then walk through the door, you'd go through and other ball bearings would fall to the ground behind you because they're not going through the door. They just, your body goes away, they fall to the ground. He quite liked that. And I thought at the time, this is going to be another elves story back to the land of the elves where they hate iron. Yeah. But it was actually early research work for the Long Earth series.

Oh. Oh wow. Ah, super. Did he give me a clue that it was for something other than Discworld? No. Of course not. He told me what I needed to know for something other than Discworld? No. Of course not. He told me what I needed to know to answer the question he wanted answered. And that was such a privilege that I'm fine with that.

Oh, absolutely, yeah. That's wonderful. Oh, I love that. So we're on the eve of, well, not quite the eve of a stroke of the pen coming out. And you were both instrumental in putting the book together. The stroke of the pen is collected works hither to unseen. And how has that happened?

It's, it also, which is one of the one of the Disco book starts, everything starts somewhere there's some physicists disagree. And that's very much the story. It's got about three starts from chance perspective and mine. it started when Colin Rangus to say that fan had contacted him, Chuck called Christopher Lawrence, I think, had as a child collected clippings from the local paper, which were a short story by Terry

in I think it's 36 parts. And he had collected all these cuttings and still had them some 40, 50 years later Mounted framed and mounted and are in a board But in doing this he had cut off all the information as to which date or Which paper each piece of flipping had come from and Then Colin had never heard of this story didn't know where to go for it, so he contacted us. We had spoken to him before, yeah. Yes, it was a conference dinner.

Again, I can't quite remember the date, but Colin was normally going to Colin Dale to dig out the old newspapers that contained Terry's early journalism. But he was getting news that Colin Dale was closing and the British Library were opening a new newspaper archive building out in a place called Boston Spa. And he was generally asking, well, you know, where is this place and does anybody live nearby? And I said, well, we're about 20 minutes drive from there. It's just outside Weatherby, which is a small market town outside Leeds, and made the general connection that, if he needed us to look for anything, we would. And that died for years, years and years and years.

And then I think, just as we retired, again, I think Colin contacted us for a few confirmation issues he had with some of the early journalism. And so we joined the British Library as readers and went over to have a look at Boston Spar, which is a lovely little library in itself. The reading room at Boston Spar is about the size of your district general library size. It's not big at all. It has a couple of booths for private meetings and then a whole load of readers' desks and an absolutely huge campus of buildings behind it which contain more than three quarters of the British Library's stock. contain more than three quarters of the British Library's stock, including the newspaper library. So we ordered the stuff online, the lovely librarians, they were great, would pull the stuff out, we check out on these stories for Colin, and we'd have a nice lunch there, there's also a rather pleasant village, Boston Spa, where we could have a nice lunch there that's also a rather pleasant village, Boston Spa, where we could have

a pub lunch. So it was a nice day out sort of half day to check these things out. And then along came this issue with the quest for the keys. So we then started to get a bit more systematic about it, didn't we Pat? Yes, not knowing where to start looking was a bit of a challenge. Yes, not knowing where to start looking was a bit of a challenge. I think Christopher had said it was probably the Western Daily Press, but he couldn't be sure. And he said it's about 50 years ago. So we looked at Colin had sent us a few pictures of some of the clippings. We had a look at those.

We saw that the action took place or at least starts in the city of Maupork, not Hank Maupork, but Maupork. And I reckoned that meant that the story was probably before the color of magic. I didn't think Terry would have reused the name after he'd sold the book. So that probably gave us one end of the time scale. And having been told about 50 years before that took us back to 1972, which is just before Terry started working at the Western Daily Press. That's where we started from. At each week we would request years worth or 18 months worth of newspapers, which would be delivered to the reading room, and we would sit down and go through them laboriously page by page. I'd been involved in some cataloging projects at the university

and one thing I'd learnt was if you don't know what you're doing, it's better to do too much than to miss something and then have to go back and start again. So we collected all sorts of information that we probably wouldn't need. So at one point we were collecting not only where a piece of art, which page a piece of writing was on, but where about on the page it was? Colin seemed to regard that as very interesting. All sorts of stuff, you know, and volume numbers, dates, time, places and so on.

Jan and I would work separately, but together. So we'd be working on the same year, but different months or different quarters. We'd go through them at the end of the day, we would get together to combine our two sets of findings into one spreadsheet. And that was the system that we worked for some weeks, and that worked quite well. Yeah, the library were really, really helpful. When they realized that we were working together, they gave us one of the private side rooms. So, if we did let out a little shriek of enthusiasm, having found a bit of television, the journalist would interested me on the other reason.

Oh, no. The Eureka Room. Yes. But although we'd found, when we were looking for the nonfiction material, we'd found something most weeks. Well, we started to this. There was nothing to see. It took us a while to find out where the children's stories, excuse me, took us a while to find out where in the various newspapers the children's stories were held. They were in a standard column. It was

definitely in each paper, but we eventually got to know the structure. Western Daily Press, I think all the stories were attributed to an Uncle Jim. Terry was Uncle Jim at some point, but nobody knows when. Other journalists, I think it was just something you probably gave to the new guy who came in and got all the rotten jobs, was writing the children's column each week. I think it was a book's repress where it was uncle's gym. It was a children's circle. Yeah, it was the children's circle in in Western daily press and they, yeah, the children's column had had different authors, didn't it? Should we do that bit again? Because that's a bit confusing. No, because I'll get it wrong again. I just find out that like war in the

Discworld novels, I keep my memory in my wife. That makes sense. Yeah. So, once you were saying yesterday, she uses me as a filing cabinet. That's very convenient for me. Of course, Jack and Ian refer to it as ex-telegence. Yes. The fact that information lives outside individual people.

And that's what makes us what we are. But anyway, back to the plot. The book's free press had children's circle, which was the pseudonym Uncle Jim. Right. Yeah. Got it. Whereas the Western Daily Press actually

gave names to the writers. And as I said earlier, we decided we would collect more information that we needed. So although we had no interest in Colin Morningstar writing a story called The Haunted Lava Tree or something, we would carefully write down all the titles, page numbers, dates and times, so that we could be quite sure we weren't accidentally missing out amongst newspapers because it would have been quite easy for me to do January and March,

January, the Janitor have done April, May, and the World February get forgot. So we kept track of all the information. So the end of one afternoon, we are combining our two sets of findings into one spreadsheet. Jan was reading out to me and I was typing. We could do this because we were in this nice shared room that we were allowed to talk it. And she read out her first story today is the Blackberry Pie by Patrick Kent. So we go, oh, OK, I'd be in the Blackberry Pie of Patrick Kent. Second one, the Blackberry thing. Yeah, the Blackberry thing.

Blackberry, yeah. And on that one, as I was typing it, I said, oh, the spelling's unusual. It's BLACK, B-U-R-Y. It's not Blackberry as in Blackberry pie. And I thought, oh, hang on, that sounds familiar, Blackberry, Johnny and the Dead, Johnny and the bomb, only you could say, my kind, they're set in Blackberry. How can we check? Another well, Blackberry from the books was in the little town of, little, uh, county of Gritshire,

and we had a look back through a couple of the stories and there was a reference to Gritshire. And at that point, we thought, I'm not going to get excited yet. I'm reserving the right to get excited in a moment because it could just be a coincidence. It might just be that the journalists at that newspaper shared a common background that they wrote the stories against. And you know, you moved on, somebody else came in and wrote a story in Blackberry. So it could have been there. But we thought, right, well, we better tell Colin. So we got in contact with Colin pretty quick and explained what it had and sent him some photographs of the pages that we'd found.

And he said, well, it's certainly in Terry's style. And what I know that you don't know is that Cairns was Terry's mother's maiden name. So he was Terry Cairns in a way of speaking. And he's calling records that Patrick and Pratchett are close enough together that very Pratchett became Patrick Kairns. Fantastic. And at that point, we then went back in time to stories that we had looked at and ignored, whether we've made our notes that Patrick Kairns had written other things.

And then we were looking for other stuff. Jan found some non-childrens works by Patrick Kairns. And then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, titled Terry Pratchett by Line and next to it was a Christmas story by line Patrick Kins on the same page. Well Terry already had a couple of pseudonyms, didn't he? Had Marcus, which was he used to put again more factual things that he did for the books free press midweek editions later on. So he was known to use a pseudonym, but not Patrick Kairns. So we sent all this stuff off to Colin. Interestingly, you can't photocopy in the British Library. They expect you to take pictures or email or whatever, you know, if you're using the readers. So yeah, we then waited for Colin's phone call. It was exciting.

So it was, yeah. And from that, it kind of evolved into a bigger product. Well, Well, how can I put this? It was very exciting to find this stuff by Terry. It's not what we came here for. We were looking for the keys. Yes, that's right. Sorry. So we'd found all this new stuff by Terry and we went backwards several years and we

went forward several years. We found all that, but we still hadn't found the quest for the keys So we thought we looked we looked for another couple of years and another couple of years eventually we thought well Maybe it's not actually in these newspapers that the as far as I can tell back in the 1970s Newspapers change their names where it's two or three years and the box free press would become the box daily press will become the box midweek press would become the I don't know Made it really hard to keep track of stuff. Yeah, but We thought maybe we've been sent up a dead end We'll do one more year one more year, and then we'll have a look. So we started on 1984

And we got all the way through to August with nothing and then in September Bingo No, it was all except, no, sorry. No, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, Daily during the summer holidays and then when the kid went back to school it swapped to being a weekly story for 36 episodes Wow, so it is It is unique in that it's the longest serialized fiction that Terry wrote he's His other kid stories tend to be at most five part as this was this was 36 with an embedded map and competition, we could have won a tent to go to camping

and we were 40 years late for the entry date. Oh wait, for the air. Sticklers, some new papers here. So that was, we have actually found the quest for the keys and it is set in more pork and it is actually published after the use of animal pork. So I was wrong in my assumption that where my, in fact, if I had been, if I had stuck to my gun, stuck to my convictions, we would, we would have never gone back to 1984. We would have sought it. It's got to be earlier than that. Got to be earlier than that. But anyway. But that was, that be earlier than that, but anyway.

But that was finding the question for the case, and then in the middle, somewhere on the way, we found one last little tip bit, which is probably the least important thing to have found, but it's my favorite, in that Terry wrote a story called Mr. Brown's Holiday Accident, and a chap who sets off on holiday without wishing to give any spoilers here and has an accident and takes another three pieces to get back together again. It's quite a nice little story, but it was known that had been published, at least written in five parts. Parts one to four were present in the Library Archive and Colin knew about them. But part five, the following week's paper was no paper for that date. There is no copy of this paper for the second of January, that particular year.

Why not? Well, I've been given several hypotheses. One is that there was industrial action, and nobody wrote anything, so they printed anything. I've also been told that losing newsprint due to industrial action at Paper Mill was not uncommon or shortage in supply lines. So there were all sorts of reasons for this, and in fact, if you go to the library archive and get that magazine out, the first parts are there and then there's

a blank at the date and then the very next issue of the paper has in pencil on the front. June 2nd NP not printed. So you know, this was, this had been accepted as that's what happened. It wasn't printed. Yeah. And this, this story has lost forever. Oh. But I had been going through newspapers and photographing everything, remember I said, collect stuff you don't need, even if you don't need it. So the stories in, and I'm going to get it wrong again, a chant can tell me off again, the stories in the Western, the the Bucks Free Press, the ones with the Uncle Jim, were not given titles.

When you look at Terry's collections of children's short stories that have recently been issued, there are titles in there. Those are titles that Colin made up because he had to call them something. So, the missing element of the Bucks Free Press was thought gone forever, but I had photographed everything. And at the end of the day, when I wanted to tie a piece of newsprint to a title, I would use Colin's website, because Colin would say this was published on these dates in August 1972 under the title, Mr. Flopsy has an adventure or whatever. So I was going through these and matching them all up and I went to the website

and it went for a janitor and content. This story was never printed. I thought it is, I've got it on the other computer screen and I looked back to the computer screen and I hadn't got it on the other computer screen, not a trace of it. Right. Yeah. I thought you were hard. We're starting to get like lingering smell of bananas type mystery here, aren't we? Yeah. So, I had accidentally closed one window too many, but I went back and sorted through the files again.

In fact, there it was. Okay. But there it was. But it wasn't in the newspaper that the other four parts were in. Oh. The missing newspaper, the June 2nd edition, had never gone on sale. It had been given away inside another newspaper. Inside the, again, Jan will correct me the midweek's free press.

That's right. Yeah. Oh, sweetie. Right,week's free press. That's right. Yeah. Oh, sweetie, right, I got a reward for getting one right. So complicated, the story. The story had been misfiled for 40 years, 50 years. Incredible. And I'm kind of more proud of that one than the massive quest for the keys.

But when we started out, we knew the quest for the keys existed. We just didn't know where. The Patrick Kairn stuff, nobody knew existed, so we weren't looking for it. But the little missing bit of Mr. Brown's adventure was known to have existed and been lost, and somehow to have lost a bit of Terry's writing. Oh yeah. It seemed so terrible. Somehow it seems worse than not knowing of it, but to know that you've lost it. Yeah. And to find it where so many others had failed. Yeah, the whole story is in the book, isn't it now? It is. Oh, see for sure. And the other thing I like about it is it uses a literary device that Terry reuses in one of the Discworld novels.

And I won't tell you what it is. Okay. You can find it out. Fantastic. I look forward to that. That's not a sales pitch for the book. I don't get commission. No, no, I don't think you really need to do the hard sell on our audience to be honest.

No, no. I did once ask Terry at a convention. Do you ever look around and think, what have I done? He said, every bloody day. But I had to say, I think he was one of the best authors from the fans perspective that has ever been. Again, I did once ask him, if you didn't spend so many hours signings just writing your name over and over and over again, how many more discord novels would there be? And he said, I think there'd be about half as many. Oh, he loved talking to his fans and he took inspiration from them. That is lovely. Yeah, in Rob's book, the

the Life With Footnote, I did enjoy the early stories of Patrick going to a couple of conventions himself and speaking to the greats and that inspiring him and it is wonderful how that carried on to his esophage with feeling with fans later. It's fantastic. I've been tied in slightly with what we were saying earlier about the news groups, the forums and everything. One of my favorite little random bits of research to do before we start covering a book is to find his comments in those news groups about that particular book. And I do enjoy how Cantankarose he gets sometimes with the bad annotations. Oh yes, there's the public Terry Pratchett and the Neil Gaiman Terry Pratchett and the Neil Pink's a more realistic picture. Yeah, but kindly. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean,

it was at the same time lovely. I think, yeah, it's just funny when you pick out the I'm sick of this one. Yeah, the only stories, then you found these wonderful gems. And at what point did they kind of cover less into? We're going to make a book out of these. Was it Colin smith? It was Colin. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. It took a while before we, yeah. I mean, we had no inkling that we're going to go into a book or when. It took some time before we found that out. Oh, cool. So you were saying you've seen some kind of a literary device definitely used and we've had the name Morpork. Once you started reading these stories under the aliases or under practice name, was it easy to see him and the beginnings of his style, his work?

I can definitely tell you that Terry's style was very, very different to all the other children's writers writing for those newspapers at that time. How he compares to the sort of the greater universe of children's authors, I'm not sure I'm qualified to judge, but you'll know that in, have you got to the amazing Morris in your read through yet? Yeah. It's not really a spoiler anyway, but the rats have a book. Mr. Bunsy has an adventure. And there are some extracts from Mr. Bunsy has an adventure.

And they are written in the style of the other writers from the early newspapers, the terrible myth of Flopsy, hopped down the bank, hopperty, hopperty, hopperty. Yeah. So I think he was letting it out at that point. This is what they expected me to write, but I knew better. You love the idea of a child picking up that edition of the news paper and kind of going, not knowing what hit them. No stories could be that.

Super. Obviously you were massive Pratchett fans already put it very lightly there. Did all this kind of give you a new appreciation of the of Pratchett's writing or a new new angle to look at it from or just adding to the foundation? We're pretty much so deep in that the wrecked oil tanker on the bottom of the ocean does not notice the ripples on the surface. What a nice mess. I think it's nice to see the early stuff.

We've said how we developed. Yeah. We'd read a lot of these journalistic nonfiction a few years ago when we were helping Colin again and see how he would cope with stories that you might think were unsalvable. Like there are some ducts nesting in the cooling pond of this power plant. Got right 300 words on it. Or the local German dramatic group are doing, I'll Anthony this week, go and write a report.

So he was forced to write in 100 topics, which he had no personal interest in. But he had to be good, he had to get the numbers out, he had to get the words out, he got the word count right, he had to make it readable. And that was interesting. Yeah, it's so worried about the discipline. Yes, yes. He was reputed to have said about writer's block. It's. I have a way of dealing with writers block.

I sit down and I write. Yeah. Because you're a journalist, a junior journalist, particularly you have no sympathy for a writer block. Get out there and write it. Boohoo, anyway, this was June and how are we going? Yeah, absolutely. So, um, as Strugg's a pen, obviously coming out when this releases in just a couple of days, we've got the talk at the British Library coming up, doing any more kind of promo interesting events, that kind of thing. Yes, we're going to the Yovoliterary Festival, where we'll be speaking in, or just being interviewed in Waterstones, and we're going to an independent bookshop in Tondon. Tondon. Today's later.

Tondon, did I say Tondon? Yeah, yeah, that was right. No, I'm good. Right. Yeah, yeah, because we, it's actually, I've been getting something right. It's so unusual that she has to come in. Yeah, no, it's right. Oh, I'm good. Yeah, yeah. Because we, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down.

I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down.

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I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. I'm sorry, do come down. So my wife's saying you'll be at the Irish convention, Disco-Ad convention, not so far as well. Oh, yes, I mean, I thought that just... Yeah, it'll be auctioning. Check that for granted, yes. Absolutely. Cool.

Um, moving on then from a strike, the panacea, that's all right. The thing you're perhaps best known for within the Disco-Ad circles is your, uh, incredibly impressive collection of oddities and ephemera and disquelled in miscellaneous. Yeah, I think that's reasonably said. I never started collecting, it just happened. That's what they all say. Yeah, so if you look around the house, you'll find wardrobes crammed with convention programs, bars of chocolate from different conventions. It's probably not edible anymore. Well, everything's cool.

The average convention produced bars of chocolate. All sorts of strange things. I have a shell casing of them, a 9mm block pistol that's hairy fired. You've still got the pickle. You wish to be by annual meetings in Wincanton where Bernard has the Discworld in Poryeum, so every six months we would all bundle in the car and go down there. One of the events was always the charity auction. And this particular year, Terry had grown some onions in his own garden, pickled them and given them to Bernard as a Christmas present since both Bernard and Terry,

very fond of pickled things, pickled walnuts, pickled eggs, you name it, they'll ever go, pickling it. So Bernard, et the pickled, enjoyed all the pickles, all bar one, which he put back in the jar, sealed up, and put in the auction as a pickled onion, grown by Terry Pratchett, and I bought it. And the next Faburu Ridd and I took it back, and I put it back in the auction, and I bought it again. And then I took it back, and this time I let somebody else have it for a go, but when they brought it back the following year, I bought it again. And I don't know how many times I bought it now, but it's got to the point where you can't

tell there's a pickle in there anymore. The liquor has gone opaque or at least opalescent. If the lighting is just right, if you happen to walk into the room at just the right time of day, you might glimpse the holy pickle, but basically you will never see it, you have to believe in it. It sounds like a ghost story, I love it. It's just a Holy Pickle. And on a quiet night, you can still hear the bells ringing.

And on a quiet night, you can still hear Bernard Burden burping over the ladder to come in. Much better. Have you still got the prop luggage? Oh, I do. Yes, he was out for his annual barbecue just a few weeks ago. I went with Terry to one of his honorary degrees. I think it was University of Warwick.

And over lunch, he said, would you like to have your own luggage? This was shortly after the color of my ticket being filmed. Would you like to have your own luggage? And I thought from memory, said, well, Terry, I would absolutely love to hold my have my own luggage, but what would I do with it? It's enormous. I can't have it in the living room. I wouldn't want to see the television past it. I guess what? You mean, it's a lovely offer. Thank you very much. Thank you for thinking of me.

But I have to say, no. And he said, well, I'll never mind. I think of something else. And he put it into the auction at the Birmingham convention. So when it came to the auction, people were bidding. And people were bidding. And then I suddenly realized who was bidding. Or at least who one of the two bidding were and who might that have been?

Well I just can't be listening. Well yeah I just waived my my paddle in the right time you know casual gestures. I didn't want you to it it would go in the garden. So we ended up paying 400 quid for something I could have been given for free. Of it for charity. I'm not forgetting for charity. Now think about film props. I have a couple of other ones as well, but the thing about film props is they are designed, look good from a certain distance for a very short period of time. They tend to be fragile. They don't look terribly good close up. The luggage actually does look quite nice close up, but it was terribly fragile at least, but he's fiberglass. I'm saying he, I think that's canonical isn't it? Yes. It's quite fragile, made a fiberglass. And I thought, well, I know what I'll do. I'll pop down to Holford's, get some of the kits you get from mending car wings that have taken a dent. Little patches of

polystyrene, a poly... Oh, what did I say we made of? A little patch of fiberglass and a resin. And I went down to Holfords and I found that enough to make a repair a hole about the size of a teaspoon was a ridiculous amount of money trying to do the whole luggage was going to probably double the price. So I thought, oh, well, never mind, I'll think of something else. And then I had a sudden thought, I work at a university which has a lot of students and students have societies. One of those societies will be a canoeing club. They will be used to mending fiberglass and buying it in industrial quantities. I will get on to them. So I abused my powers as the moderator of

the student's mailing list, to send a message to all the medical students. I'm retired now, so I can't get into trouble. It's all right. Oh, there's a fairly low level of use of powers. I think you know, what's the point of having power if you don't abuse it always. So I sent an email out saying, anybody here in the cadu club knows about mending votes. And a couple of days later, I've got to reply back from one of my students saying, I'm not in the clue club, but my boyfriend has a business making fiberglass votes. So he's got all the raw materials. He's got all the equipment. He's got the ovens.

He's got everything. he can do it. I'm sure, oh, that'll be brilliant. So he came around and had a look at it and said, yeah, yeah, I can do that. Stuck it in his car, set off. It's a very slow process because he coated the inside. He built a wooden frame and then coated the inside with fiberglass and then had to let it mature for a long time. So it was about two, three months before I got it back again.

And when he brought it back, he said, I'll let's sitting out in the workshop ready to bring back to you. One of my other customers came in and said, it's the luggage. So the luggage had fans of its own. And now he lives in my garden under a barbecue cover. And then once or twice a year when we have a Discworld themed barbecue, he comes out and takes pride of place. Oh, see that. That's lovely. What else happens at a Discworld themed barbecue? We eat food and we have a quiz. Yes, a quiz is usually horribly, horribly difficult because people do this teams and can take time. So it's not, it's not the sort of the mastermind style. What was the name of two flowers, child or whatever? They do tend to be quite difficult. For example, this a Jan chair challenge,

if somebody wants to get from here to here, which of these routes? Yeah, Sam Vimes wants to get home from the watch house to the manquin manner. What streets does he go down? Now, that looks like a absolute get-over question, but it was written as multiple choice. There were what to choose from. And of course, you look at one that starts since you doppel as you are and ends in, is it spoon-haven you? Scoon-haven avenue. Scoon avenue. Yeah, so if you know where the rampans are, you can see that he, well, he has to end up there and he has to start somewhere. There's a watch house, so it's actually very easy.

And that's the thing I most like about the quizzes. You hand them out and people go, oh, hey, hey, hey, you, and then I explain to him how easy they are. They go, I really, really, hey, you know. We could have done that. We did know you. That's not a barbecue without inducing some rage. Oh, it's a really, such a part of a gathering. That's why I enjoy your gathering so much. Sure. Oh, fantastic. So, the, that, do you have any other bits in the collection, particularly golden bee that Terry or Rob commissioned to have made for me, which is a beautiful work about and an honour to have been given.

One of the, I tend to go for things because they're odd, rather than because there's nothing particularly special about them. So, if you were at the last UK convention, you'll have seen these items sold. I have a second one. A few years ago, an American company called Hill House Press announced they were going to issue facsimiles of the Discord novels, or at least the first 12. So I ordered the first three, which is as far as how did you could order. And they delivered the first two and then went out of business. So there were only two facsimiles teller of magic and light fantastic. I found out about it in a slightly unusual way. I was at work and parcel arrived for me and I opened it

and I took out what appeared to be a pristine copy of the first edition of the color of magic. The cover matched, the pages matched, the printer's information on the inside matched, the ISBN matched. Good grief. And it, Terry had signed it just like the real thing and sent it to me.

What, what, surely he's not sending me a first edition color magic. Because even in those days this was about 2000 quid, which is why I don't have one. And eventually I found a little disclaimer that said that this is a fiximally. So I had my fiximally signed by Terry for many years. And then it occurred to me that Paul K. the actor has sort of become the de facto Terry Pratchy played Terry in the back in black. And he's also played various parts in good omens and watch I think. But nonetheless, he has played Terry Pratchett. So I got in contact with him through his agent saying, if I were to send you a couple, a copy of the color of magic, it's fixed similarly rather, was the color of magic. Would you, as the effectively

Pratchett, sign it for me for the charity auction? With lots of disclaimers about, I am not some random nutter, I'm a very specific nutter. I am the firm, I'm not a credentials. Yeah, Rob Wilkins, I hope Wil, will about for me. What do you got back to? He's, yeah, send them off. So I sent it off and he signed it, nothing like the real thing. Okay. So there is now a facsimile color of magic signed by the facsimile prejudice. There are only who I've got one Rob Wilkins has the other fantastic which he bought at the charity auction. And I suppose a slightly background question on it is what made you want to collect all these things to kind of what we've been talking a lot about collection instincts, because we've been reading, going postal and obviously Stanley and his pins and his stamps and everything like that.

This is a very vague question, but what is it that brings you kind of joy about it? Really don't know. I was never a collector of stamps, for example. I collect books or rather I never let a collector of stamps, for example. I collect books, or rather, I never let a book go. I buy a book, I read it, it goes on the shelf. You can call that collecting, if you like. But somehow, the Brexit stuff just built up and up. And some stuff, you know, you sort of can't get rid of that. To my right

is a life timer from Hogfather. Is that the film prop? Yes, it's the film prop. And I ended up with that by accident in that I was giving Rob a hand, shifting stuff to the auction. We ended up in a very dark car park. When I unloaded the boot, the black lifetime had got left behind in the badly lit car. It wasn't until the following day that I realised it was still there. So I acquired it semi-licently. I did pay the equivalent into the charity auction to account for it. But a few years ago it got broken, we were burglared. And the burglar along with the middle of the night, we rushed downstairs

there in the living room, the TV unit's been pulled over and there on the floor surrounded by sand and broken glass. It's the lifetime. Oh, very ominous. And Jan looked at me as if he's going to go librarian poo over there, isn't he? I just looked at and said 17 seconds, which is the number may well be wrong. What death says when Albert drops his lifetime running rate because of the rest of the 17 seconds. So anyway, I now have the wooden stands, and I have the sand that's broken glass, which is not all that useful, I thought, oh well, somehow this got made, I will find out who made it and where he got the thing from. So I phoned or emailed Rod Brown, one of the producers from who made Hogfather and a color of magic. And he said, you know what, you're this showman, he said, you know what you're, this is what I'm saying. No. We just asked props if they could get one.

They did. Oh, okay. So I then went on the internet and just looked for our glasses and hunted and hunted and hunted. And eventually I found a company who actually make, among other things, little glass beads that go into phyrex new chisprinchal systems that burst at the particular temperature and let the water through. And they do all sorts of specialist glassware, including an hourglass, which was the right

size to fit in the stand I had, I'd measured what I had. Oh, wow. So I then contacted them and said, you know, I want one of these, Glitfitter stand this side. And they said, yes, that's, you know, we sold an awful lot of these about a year ago to a film company. So I had actually found the right company. I was able to repair it, put it back together. In the interim, I mentioned to Rod Brown that it had got smashed. And he said, Oh, I've got a spare one. Next time you're in London, drop by the office and pick it up. So next I was in London, I dropped by his office. He was out, but his assistant was there. He said, Oh, he's left it in his office. I'll go get it. And

he went and he got it and he brought back a God's lifetime, which is about twice the size, a very impressive piece of, piece of property. But far too big, I go in the box I had brought to carry my lifetime or in. I spent some time wobbling gently down Oxford Street trying to not to drop this thing. I thought, the plan had, Jan was in London at a meeting. The plan was I was just going to go shopping and have a nice time there after doing and then meet her at the train. But I thought, no, I cannot carry this, I will drop it. So I went to the railway station and asked to be let into the first class lounge, please, I haven't

got a ticket because my wife's got them. And so they let me into the lounge and I was able to sit in isolation with this fragile object. It was brilliant. And so they let me into the lounge and I was able to sit with in isolation with this fragile object. It was brilliant. And then she arrived at the end of the afternoon to pick me up and said, we don't have first-class tickets. Oh wow. Yeah, these things happen. Lifetime, I remember God, what more do they want? That reminds me, I don't know if you've seen it, there was a thread on Twitter that got quite popular earlier in the week of one of the props department on Goodomans talking

about because they burnt the shop down at the end of series one and they really burnt it down. Everything was destroyed and they didn't realise it was going to be a series too. And the struggles they've had putting back together, the exact props for continuity and hand painting this antique sink in particular. I love that stuff. And yes, I suppose. Yeah. Sort of cool.

The similar thing about the Hobbit wasn't there, that after the first Lord of the Rings film, the farmer had his farm cleared of all the props and then they decided we're going to make some more, so then they set up a more permanent Hobbiton set and it's still there. You can go visit. Excellent. Harry's been in Bilbo's borough. Is it for a Bilbo? No, Bilbo, yeah. We got to sit on the bench outside, we didn't get to go in. Yeah, yeah. We got to sit on the bench outside, we didn't get to go in. But he got there with Terry. Terry had been sometime before.

Oh, okay. I'd recommend it. That's slightly less sad than being left outside than if he's allowed it in New York to wait here. We've got one last question, I think, which is one of our most annoying ones, but we have to do it because we're a discreet forecast. So, where do you get your ideas from? Yeah. How do you write? How do you write? Your favourite slash top three discreet books. With the caveat, we can fully understand this is only your answer today and it could change in five minutes. this is only your answer today and it could change in five minutes. This is good books. I think mort. I have a fairly black sense of humour

and the death novels in general I love. And if I have to pick only one of the death novels, it's mort. I just so many wonderful visuals and visual images in it as a boy constructed entirely of knees. I think that's the phrase. Everybody went to school with somebody who was constructed entirely of knees, but never realised it until Terry put the ones together. Jan, do you want to have one of these? Oh, well, I like the Witches series and also I'm a sucker for a police procedure also. You know, anything to do with the watch, guards guards, I've just finished reading and it's it's so funny in places as well. Yeah, guards guards was going to be my setting choice as well, particularly the elucidated rather than the Ebony night. Yes. I finally found a copy of the guards guards

board game recently and it is very fun to constantly read out the nonsense about the elucidated brother in of the Ebony board game. Yeah. Well, my third arrived, Joanna. We need to sit down. Oh, yes. We need to learn how to call the three. Oh, if we can go back to the connection. So collection for a moment, we have an unusual thud set. Do you?

When Bernard was doing the, this world buildings, the unreal estate, there were 250 of us collecting them. My collector, then, was 235, and I found out about them very late on, and he just got on. In fact, that was how I first talked to Bernard. I found out online that somebody was making a model of the Unseen University. But, you know, they were going fast. And here's the phone number. I thought, well, it's 10 o'clock at a Friday night. They'll be closed, but I'll leave a message on the answer phone.

So a rang the number, do do do do do do do. And the voice of the room, hello, Bernie. I'm going to help you. Do you have any money? Answer the second question first. And I went, well, I'm being object-spoken on the phone. Oh, no filthy on the phones here. So that was the first time I ever spoke to Bernard. And he was putting my number down to have an unseen university model.

However, roll forwards some years, Bernard, when Thudkimer made the Thud game for what set. They also did a limited edition one, it's a limited of 100. But I made a special plea that since my collect is number was 235, go, I have number 235. So mine is number 235 of 100. And the the third stone is three sided as thud stones are. And one side is signed by Terry. One side is signed by Bernard. One side is signed by Trevor Truurham who is on the game. Super. Oh, well that's fantastic. Are you any good? Do you play? I'm absolutely useless. One day is something play every time I play? I've only just opened the instructions

and I'm worried already, you see. Yes, but you'll be playing against me, darling, you'll be fine. I've never loved to display board games. Oh, well, there's the witches. Ack more pork. I'm looking at mine up there. The clacks, the clacks one.

Oh, yeah. Yep, that had a reissue recently. Yeah. I think that's it. There are some of them are available in more than one addition. There are others that were sort of in small numbers. There's called Watch Out, which was a nice idea, but it never took off. You have a set of, I think, its eight watch officers and a set of eight thieves and a board. The board is made up of 64 squares,

which are shuffled and dealt at the start of the game to make a random playing surface. who make a random playing surface. Each piece has a color and a shape on it. And the rules of movement are, I can't remember them in detail, to do with you can move onto something of the same color or something of the same shape or under certain circumstances, you can jump over other people.

Oh, wow. And the underlying thesis of the game is that each army is trying to get to the other side of the board, that each army is trying to get to the other side of the board. Ideally without interacting, the watch won't get home without having to do paperwork. The thieves want to get home with that ending up in the in the tante. So there are rules about whether you can be next to a policeman or whatever. And we're only a small number of those may not.

I don't know how many. Oh fantastic. Sorry. Tangton Ting again there. There was one that I don't think I've ever got properly made or got a proper printing called the gods. I've found one person selling it recently but who was selling it for very cheap and being told by everyone in the comments, no, please sell that for more money. It goes for a lot more. I was lucky it's a nice stand of, isn't it? Travature room also wrote card game rules for this world set of cards, which have... It's easy.

...they're based on the tarot set. There are four suits each with eight values, and then I think it's 64 in the minor arcana. Oh, cool. Never went into production. Some sets were made by getting blank cards and writing on them. Yeah. Play within WinCanton, but I haven't seen a set for years. Oh, I've to look into that.

Excellent. I think I have the rules so you can you know, we create cards. Yes, exactly. I've got some blank cards on a sharpie. Let's have a Saturday. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to talk about? Is there anything that we haven't covered that you would like to talk about? Hmm, not football. Absolutely, we're looking forward to doing unseen academics. I kind of am some of the history of the really early stuff and the 300 people brawling in the street, it'll be fine, no. Frank, so I have played on Terry. Oh, yeah.

Not exactly a prank. I got a headset for a mobile phone, but it was like an old-style, bake-alite phone that you hold. The whole thing. The big thing. The sort of phone you normally associate with a rotary dial. Oh, sure. Yeah.

Yeah, one of those. So I changed the ring tone on my phone to be the classic ring ring of an old cell phone. Stuck it in a little knapsack I was carrying. Went to the next to Terry and got somebody to ring me. So my bag starts going ring ring ring ring ring ring. I reach in. Take out the phone. Hello, and then gave it to Terry saying it's for you. You bastard. My other good telephone story is I was in the office one day. We're not with a big open plan office.

And the phone rang and it was Terry and that was the time he wanted to know about how much force it would take to hear somebody's head off and I'll talk to him a little minute saying, yeah, I will have to go look this up. This is not the sort of thing I carry in my head. At that point, I spotted there was a new member of staff walking down the corridor towards me, a person I knew was a great Discworld fan. And I said, Terry, we've got a new member of staff knew was a great Discworld fan. And I said, Erry, we've got a new member of staff who's a big Discworld fan, would you have a quick word with her? And I said, yes, certainly. So I just said, Jillian, somebody on the phone wants a word. And handed the receiver over. And she went, Jillian, and, I can't do this on a Zoom link,

but she just rose in the face, looked suspiciously at the phone, looked furious at me, and went, pink, cherry, lobster. And then they had an absolutely wonderful conversation about archaeology, because she had to be a archaeologist. And when they hung up, she had to move the phone back and said, you ask. To a lot of stories end with somebody saying that.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you what, actually, something I did want to ask, because you were at a lot of the early conventions and you're still at the later ones. How was it seeing that kind of that fan community evolve over the years like that? It must have changed a lot since the, what's it, 97? You would have started going, I suppose. 98 was the first one. 96 was the first one in Liverpool. No, sorry, in Manchester. And then 98 was in Liverpool and I went to that one. And then 2000 got cancelled. So I haven't got much view of the very early years. I was only at

98. That was only one out of the first three supposed conventions. I don't know that they've changed that much. They're probably a bit better organized. I don't mean that from the point of view of the convention organizing committee, they've always done an excellent job. But the fans are bringing more and more elaborate costumes and setups and whatever. And on the other hand, fans are improvising on the day and doing incredibly well. I've seen people win the masquerade with a costume they made that morning. Wow. Out of bits lying around in, oh, there's a, there's a, TAYOS costume in a room that's just got lots of sewing equipment and glue guns and fabric and

whatever. Alex Carlton, the guy I mentioned earlier, who the dwarf seamstress, went as Mr. Troll, him diamond, on a costume made entirely out of wrapping paper, holographic wrapping paper. And CDs hung on a fishing line to sparkle and glint. Fantastic. I love that. Oh, brilliant. There was a group who, I don't think, had the blue die from. Anyway, it's some, some, I think four people had come as feagles. And then, never having met before, entered the masquerade as four feagles, they managed to make a fake sheep out of hotel sheets and chairs and stuff and take the sheep

lifted up and send it hurrying backwards out of the auditorium. It's very like that one. I bet. Oh, super. Right. I could, I will keep asking random questions until the cows come home if I'm allowed, but you are giving random answers. Oh, well. laugh, but I keep giving random answers. But yeah, yes, I suppose again, is there anything

we haven't covered that you would like to because of just this entire world of topics, surrounding disc world and everything, but I'm conscious that you've already given us quite a lot of your time. Is there anything that springs to mind as just an anecdote you like to tell about the general world of? Me, tell honeydews. I suggest a seriously, what about the time they blew up the drum? Okay, yes. For filming the color of magic, I was lucky enough to be an extra, which I found about, found out that Terry phoned me up and said, we've been doing a draw for the pieces of actually, and I'm afraid your name keeps coming up. So yeah, so we did our filming for the day, we knew that the drum was going to be blown up that night. Now, the setup for the filming was basically there was a small open space with a road leading

off it, leading to a T junction. And there was sideways in and out. It meant, as you stood in the middle of this open space in front of the drum, everywhere you looked, all you could see was Act Morepork, there was no way of looking back out into reality. It was all nicely cut off. What that meant was that the best place to see the drum blow up was from the top of the T-junction, we thought, that's where we'll go. So we went there and the director and the cameraman had thought that was the best place to do it as well. So we were glad to go there. So we had to go

somewhere else. So there was a security fence around the set and we thought, well, we go out there. We can actually get right next to the drum, but on the other side of the security fence. So as time, the sun was going down, we went, we stood in the car park and we waited and we waited and we waited and some security guards came wondering around and they came to us and said, Well, that's what you're doing. Oh, we're waiting to see them blow up the drum. They said, Oh, one of them said, I wouldn't stand there if I was you. And we said, Why not? I said, you're in the secondary effects zone. Most looked at his mate, his mate said, the zone of flaming death.

Oh, gosh. No, we thought, right, we'll, we'll, we'll take a step away out to the car park, shall we? So we walked back a little bit into the car park. I thought, yeah, this will do, this will do. Now, maybe a little bit further. So we walked a little bit further back into the car park. This will do. Now, maybe just, maybe it's that we walked a little bit further back into the car park. This will do.

Now, maybe just, maybe it's that, I mean, there's cars here. They wouldn't, they wouldn't do anything with damage to the cars. It's probably a little bit further. We got back a little bit further. And then Jason Anthony from Disworld Monthly was with me. And he was in, look, there's a camera over there. It was, oh, it's, it's, it's, it's,

it's, it's, it's turned out it was the making of documentary people were filming it from outside the fence. So there's a camera over there. Oh, right, cameras are expensive. They weren't to put that anywhere dangerous. Let's go stand by the camera. So we walked up to the camera and somewhere the mob have a little bit of film with me going, I, my name is Pat Harkin, you may have seen me in previous films, such as who in my best Troy McEw impression, anyway. So Jason and I went and sat by the camera and then three things happened at once. I said, this camera is running. Jason said,

This camera is running. Jason said, is that the making of crew hiding behind that van over there? And the drum said, we went deaf, all the car alarms in the car park went off, from the blast. And the air was full of little bits of burning polystyrene coming down. Oh, beautiful.

I still have the shirt. I was wearing that night. It is covered in little black burn marks. Oh, I think. Oh, tertiary effect zone. Yeah. The thing was the next day we came onto the set and we were filming in the drum. They blew it up without doing any damage to it at all.

It was impressive. This sheets of flame, blasts of this and the other. We were talking about the spectral effects guys later. One of the things they had done was there were air cannons behind the windows. So you flick a switch on the air cannon, it pops a brick blast of air and all the light stuff you want thrown out because because from the moment the window looks like an enormous explosion, but it's just basically a man with a souped up hairdryer.

Oh, I'm kind of, I'm just talking about that. Love those parts. And you said the fire was mean, I said, Kerosene gives you flame, but no heat. Oh, that's because you're fleet, you know. Mm. Standing there at your pocket, we'll have some.

Some being fat. We need to have another watchable, the sky adaptation so we can actually look for the people who would be interested to look for Rob and Jason and you. Yes. Do you happen to be going postal anyway? That's our next one, isn't it? Yes. Oh yeah. That's all we're going for. our son Patrick as well is in it. Yeah.

Oh, see that. Oh, right. All right. We'll be looking out then. I don't know if there's still online, but when it came out Sky TV, did some little interviews with various people, including Patrick and me.

Oh, no. About what was it like to be a fan and an extra? Excellent. Oh, that would be great. I'm not sure if it's not somewhere. Or on the DVD, I forget that the DVDs are still a thing with features. The hog father DVD on some of the discs, I'm odd in the extras. They did the seven days of hogs watch. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I've always watched. Two days of Hogs Watch.

Oh, yes. I've got you interviewing death. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I found that. That was it. Yeah.

That was in the museum of the biology department at the university. Ah, best place for it. For which mob films paid a rental of £1. And they paid me a fee. You'll £1. Well, well, they had to change hands for it to be legal for the contract. I see, I see. That's the smallest amount that they could do.

I've still got the quid, actually. They should have given it to us a check. I want to just frame it and never cash it. Do you have a catalog of all you? No, I don't. I've been trying. Suddenly I live very panic. I'm so sorry.

Yes. Yes. This is a question of some importance. I have a list of books, but I don't have a list of anything else. Yeah. But I don't have a list of anything else. Yeah, I wonder if there's a there must be a real niche profession of stock takers of collectors, maybe. I reckon. Yeah, we had we had the building contents insurance renewed recently. We it took some time to explain to them about the collection.

This is a really bad. No, I know you can't see it. It's a point. Amazing. Oh, SEPA. I don't think there's a best erratic date to end on than a large explosion. No, that is how I like to end every year. We do like to end on explosions and then we walk away from them in slow motion. And that's on. Of course, there is an anecdote about Jason and me running away from an explosion. Silently over gravel, but never mind. Feel free to tell it. I mean, no, no, no, you're so serious. I told you it now, we were we were being directed by the second unit director. And we had to run behind Rinswind and Two Flower with flames going off and this and the other. It was a gravel path. We ran across it and the

director came back and said, run quieter. Hold gravel. So I don't know if it shows up, but Jason and I are doing this sort of hot, dialized hopping from one leg to another, trying to get across the gravel with this little noise as possible. I love that. Strange lots of film people. Yeah, that is a request. Amazing.

Oh, thank you very much for joining us for this very special episode of The Tricia Mickey Fred. That's a great pleasure. We really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been fantastic. We'll try and run away silently over the gravel as we yeah. If you find the secret let me know. Yeah. Break of the pen is out on October 10th and you'll be at the British Library that day. Yes, that's right. I think there's our line access as well. Oh, are there streaming tickets? Well, indeed, then I will put a link to those in the show notes, listeners, and I think that would be something. A lot of us would enjoy.

I think we would have some kind of live chat in the discord as we all watch perhaps. Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the TruSharmakiFret. We'll be back on Monday with the first part of the third. Until next time, dear listener, you can join our discord, link in the comments. You can follow us on Instagram at the TruSharmakiFret.com, Twitter at MakeYouFret.com, and BlueSky at MakeYouFret.com, and Facebook at the TruSharmakiFret.com. Join our subreddit community, our slash TTSS-M-Y-F, email us your thoughts, queries, castles and stacks, the Drizgett Make-E-Fret.com at G-Mail.com.

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