The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - Hogswatch 2021: Hogfather, Your Cleavage!

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, recap and discuss every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week - a fabulous bonus Hogswatch extravaganza as we discuss the Hogfather TV adaptation! Piles of Teeth! Some Other Things! (Ridcullys Nipples!) More Piles of Teeth!Watch the video version of this episode here!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Hogfather - IMDBHunt The Wren - YoutubeHouse of Cards - WikiLove and Monsters - FandomMy Family - WikiA few painting recommendations from Francine:youtube.com/c/EmmaLefebvreyoutube.com/c/Makoccinoyoutube.com/c/DrawwithShibaOur Book Recommendations:The House Of Shattered WingsThe Elegance of the HedgehogThe HollowsStation ElevenH is for HawkThe Way of All FleshMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Season's Greetings listeners, I'm just bobbing in to let you know that the video version of this episode is available for everybody on YouTube. I will link it in the show notes. However you choose to do so, please enjoy the show. And there's no one here. I make an effort to turn up. Joanna's never here, no Francine either. What is this nonsense? All right, I'm coming. Oh. Hello Francine. Hello, not Joanna again.

I don't know where she's gone off to, but I'm here to wish you all a merry Hog's watch. I seemed she'd gone out for a smoke, which is why I was a little bit indignant when the bell started ringing, but it's nice to see you Hogfather. How's your year been? It's been a marvellous year. That's it, well I suppose it would be for you, wouldn't it, Juice? Sorry. I've been locked in the castle of Phones, just me and my pigs, and the elves, but I don't really talk to those if I can help it. Well that's why they're unionising.

Yes, well we won't discuss the elves union on the... Don't want to spoil your podcast with the healthy unions. Now I've got some letters Francine. Oh have you, that's exciting. I've had some letters from your lovely listeners. I'm glad you've got them all into one place. Yes, I've got them all in a festive, one of your round world, Google Documents. Ah yes, festive.

The modern equivalent of the sack. First of all Francine. You clean me, Hogfather. Sorry, I'm doing a drag show after this. It's a busy time of year. We all have to pull in second jobs now and then make ends meet. Anyway, Francine. I do apologise.

First letter from one of your lovely listeners. Locke's hopes that Hogswatch isn't too busy or murdery. Thank you, Locke's. So far, very little murder. So far. If it isn't too much trouble, Locke's would like a sword, an interesting rock and the ability to stop time at will and in return offers their being good this year and further promise to be good for next, including studying, doing the dishes and not committing too much arson. That sounds pretty reasonable. That sounds like a very reasonable contract, Locke's, and you shall have your sword and a rock.

The time-stopping ability, unfortunately, is unavailable at this time of year. Please check back again in March. It's like the PS5. Exactly. High demand. Next, from a Mr. P.D. P.D. says that he's been listening to the festive fey at the Trouche à Maquifret and apparently Joanna has stated that Santa isn't real. Oh, I don't think she'd do anything so serious that without me noticing and editing it.

Well, Mr. P.D. apparently understands that Santa is just a round-balled allegory for myself, but he's concerned that I may not be real. He was crushed this past Soulcake Tuesday while waiting for the Great Pumpkin in his Lodded Pumpkin Patch. He saw the Soulcake Duck sitting on his friend's head, but whenever he mentioned it, the friend just said, what duck? Which seems completely realistic and nothing to joke about. Absolutely. Absolutely not. P.D., if it helps you at all, I'm sure you can trust me as a bastion of sensibility. And in front of my very eyes, I see what can only be described as the Hogfather.

Definitely the Hogfather. Mr. P.D. would like me to confirm my existence, and I would like to remind Mr. P.D. that presents do not happen for those who do not believe. You'd like me to clarify the dubious relationship between myself, the alleged Santa, and apparently possibly Joanna of the true Samiky Frat. Well, you've never even met Joanna, so... I could not possibly comment on the fact that we've never been seen in the same room. You've also never seen me in Batman in the same room. No, you say it.

Mr. P.D. would like to wish the host of the true Samiky Frat a lovely year of the Lachrymating Leveret. He'd like a new book recommendation, which I will have nothing to do with. He'd like a clockwork sword with sparkly knobs on, and one of those things that wobbles when your repetition goes ping when left unattended. Cool. I can't promise any of it. I'm not going to. It doesn't believe in me. It's rude. Karen, Karen would like a vaccine mandate for misogynist balls to turn green and fall off and millionaires to pay their taxes. Oh, they've got political early.

We have got political early. Unfortunately, I can't swing any of that. Luckily, Karen offered the alternative of a nice sweater, as I'm written by an Englishman. A nice jumper is on his way to you, Karen. Melissa would like a copy of The Last Hero ebook because it doesn't exist on Kindle. No. That's a list to mention. I'm not the host of a popular desk world podcast, obviously, but I would say if Joanna were here, she might recommend getting a physical copy of The Last Hero because the pictures are very good.

They are very good. I can recommend that. I have that. Courtney's children have asked for a cat. Courtney would like me to not give them a cat. Courtney, I shan't bring your children a cat. Stacey would like some siege weaponry. That is one guarantee of the truth. I might keep right. We will not deliver cats to your children. Neither will I. The pigs ate it.

Stacey would like some siege weaponry. Stacey, you've been very good this year. You shall have a catapult. A large one. A Boston and Slarty Bardfast, who I believe are cats that listen to the truth and make you frat. They haven't been eaten by pigs and they would like some catnip and a new hedgehog. I should provide them with a hedgehog. Unbug it. Gotta be careful of cats and hedgehogs. Get worms.

Uh, Majo. Majo. Lovely Majo. As we wish all a happy new year. And once let us existential dread for everyone. Now, I can offer less existential dread, but while you continue to listen to the truth, I'll make you frat podcast. I cannot make any promises about the lack of existential dread in your life. You're a terrible PR person, Hawkfeather. Castle Snacks and Albatrosses, however, will shall be an aplenty for all.

And lastly, Bree. Bree is sent a lovely letter. And among other things, would like the sun to shove its head up a duck's bottom. I think. Bree, I don't know if you know this, but uh. The sun and I have a very special relationship. We know each other as it were solstices and all that. So I've had a word. And I have arranged for you that the sun shall indeed shove its head up a duck's bottom. And marry Hogswatch to you, Bree.

Well, Francine, I must be off. Oh, good. I'm so sorry. I mean, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to have missed Joanna once again. Yeah, yeah, well. And also for the fact my voice is not quite so impressively deep this year. Well, it's it's the acoustics and the new flatters.

It's it's. Well, stop my flat. What you're talking about. It's a flat. It's definitely a flat. Yeah. Anyway, many deliveries to make. Have a lovely Hogswatch, Francine, and give my best to Joanna.

And to you, Hogfather. Good luck. On Gouda, on Ruta, on Tusker, on Snouta. Oh, you're all right, mate. Sorry, I'm late. Sorry. That's all right. That's all right.

My water turned into mild wine and I had to find the Vatican. I'm sorry. I didn't miss much. Yeah, let's make a podcast. Should we apologize for any letters we accidentally missed? I feel like I've seen some that we missed. I thought I got them all, but I could easily have missed some. Yeah.

So I'm very sorry if we missed listeners and do. Write in with retributions. We'll we'll sort it out with the with the Hogfather. Yes, send threats. Yeah, threats is fine. No, please don't threaten us. We're very, very sensitive. We're very fragile.

It's been a year. It's been a year, guys. God, it's been a year. Right. Sorry, we're making a podcast, aren't we? Yeah, I thought that would be fun because it's, well, for us today, in real time, it is the solstice. It is.

It is the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. It's so fucking dark. It is depressingly dark and has been since about three o'clock in the afternoon. Yep. But from now, from now, it's all on the up. It's all on the up. Up.

Days are getting longer. You know, solstice, etymologically, means the sun standing still. That's it. It does. That's lovely. Something about that. Yeah. Listen to that on a podcast about plants and the solstice today, which I'll link to in this show notes.

Plant thropology. Or plant thropology, probably, because it's American. Excellent. Shall I entrails properly? Yeah, go on then. Hello and welcome to The Truth Shall Make You Fract, a podcast in which we're usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series,

one time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And it's our festive Hogswatch extravaganza. Yay, yay. We are in theory here today to talk about the TV adaptation of The Hogfather. Sorry. I watched it.

Bells. You watched it. I did. I watched it. I liked it. Well done. But we're going to talk about things first. Warning.

Spoilers. We're a spoiler light podcast. Heavy spoilers for The Hogfather TV adaptation. And I guess The Hogfather book. Yeah, same plot. Since we just covered it. But we'll avoid spoiling any future events in the Discworld series. We're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel,

The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Proluctantly in a sleigh driven by your skeletal grandfather. Oh no, that's dark. Right, Francine. Jesus, sorry, no. On the wings of the raven. Much better.

Thank you, Francine. A little bit weird. Not festive. I'm sorry. I'm trying. Have we? We're in pink. Have we got anything to follow up on from our previous episode?

Yeah, actually, possibly the episode before last. A couple of our listeners got in contact about the folkloric traditions you mentioned. So Sonda Vogel, the ever-diligent researcher on our subreddit. At this point, we should be paying them. Yeah, don't suggest these kind of things. They'll unionize. Listener. Listeners, don't unionize.

There's wassailing. It seems to be connected to singing and going around offering a cup of wassail, an alcoholic, possibly beverage to people. Don't know what kind of drink that is. There is an old German tradition in the south. The Kreisbaum loben, praising of the Christmas tree, where you go around your neighborhood or to relatives, praise them for decorating their tree so nicely,

and you get some schnapps or any burned alcohol in return. Interesting. And then Nathan DeGargoyle on Twitter, posted about hunting the wren, which is apparently a Manx tradition. And although they didn't kill any wrens, we, that is Nathan and Co, did sing this song when I was a kid, 60-ish years ago, which is the hunt the wren song in this video sung by the Mollag band. And it was rather enjoyable, and I will link to it in the show next.

Excellent. Thank you, listeners. That's excellent follow-up for us. So today we are, as I said, we're going to talk about the Hogfather TV adaptation, but first we have listener questions. You asked things. We're going to answer. We'll try.

So apparently in his letter to the Hogfather, which I missed for previously mentioned miracle related reasons, PD asked if we had any book recommendations. You go first. So first we're going to recommend a book called House of Shattered Wings by Elliot Broulard, which is from what I actually got it in the buffering, the vampire slayer Yola Boccaflod a couple of years ago. And I read it for the first time in lockdown last year,

but while I had what may or may not have been COVID, so I had a horrific fever. And it's a very weird book to read when you've got a massive fever, but I reread it again this year. It's very good. And it was from a lovely person called Abby, who I think may listen to this podcast they did at the time. So hi, Abby, if you're listening, I liked it. I'm also going to recommend in the non fantasy category another.

It's an oldie one, but one I just reread called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary, which is a very lovely book about a French concierge who is secretly very, very into art and culture and things. And a very precocious 12 year old who is trying to find the beauty in the world. So she doesn't have to kill herself on her 13th birthday. Oh, that would be. It sounds depressing, but it's very, very sweet and very well written. And then lastly, because I like them and I have been rereading the odd one recently,

Kim Harrison's Hollow series, which I might have recommended on the podcast before, but it's a very, very good sort of urban fantasy series about if mankind got very into biogenetics instead of going to the moon and vampires and werewolves all existed. Cool. Also demons as a weird mix of genetic science and hot vampires. Noice. Just what I look for in a series. What about you, Francie?

And what do you recommend? I've just been looking around frantically because I have a few written down, but I can't remember which ones I have recommended on the podcast before. So apologies if this is them. Um, Station 11, Emily, Sandra, Mandel. Good post apocalyptic, purging on sci-fi speculative fiction, which I believe is being adapted soon for the screen. So now's a good time to get in there and go, I read this already.

Second one is H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald, which is the nonfiction, um, memoir, autobiography, journal type thing about receiving and training a bird of prey. She was an expert. This one is particularly difficult. I think it's Goss Hawk. It's a very difficult one. Hold on, I've got it right next to me.

Yeah, could be Goss Hawk. There we go. Lovely. Which occurred to me because birds of prey quite often mentioned. Um, and oh, shit. I had a third one written down. Oh, here it is. Yeah.

The way of all flesh by Samuel Butler, which I haven't read yet, but Jack read out big passages to me and I intend to read and is an old book, which is very dryly amusing and, uh, follows several generations. And it says it's just very, it's very droll. Kind of excellent. Yeah. So I tried to get from mixer. I like that.

And as always, if you've not read any PG word house recently, don't do it. Do yourself a favor. Go on, it's Christmas. Helps a lot, whatever. Yeah, go on. Do it, do it. Next up from lovely listener, Melissa.

She would like to know what book we're most looking forward to covering next that we haven't covered yet, which do you have an answer? No. So let me think. Sorry, I missed that one. I'm focusing specifically on the ones that we're going to cover next year. And by the end of this episode, listen as if you stay till the end, you'll know which books we're covering next year and in which order.

I've also put them on the website on episode guide and schedule. Have you seen? I've put two tabs on there now. There's released episodes and upcoming episodes. You're amazing. Last continent. That's the one. That's what I'm looking for most.

Yeah, because it's funny. I am looking forward to the truth, partly because we're finally going to get to the one that inspired the name of the podcast. The name of the thing, except the name of the thing and the thing. We're going to say that so many times when we record it. We're going to be really obnoxious. Oh, God, yeah. But also, it's just one of my favorites.

Oh, that'll be my birthday. Yes, it's fun. It's clever. It's got one of the greatest names of any Discworld characters in any book. It is. And I'm going to say it aloud a lot. Yes. Also, it's got one of my favorite characters who has the fantastic name.

Good. So, yes, very much looking forward to the truth. And then a couple of questions from Madjo and Reddit. Hello. Hey, how many times do we reread the books for the podcast? For me once. For me, I'd say two to three times, but I'm not sure the third one really counts. So, I read in our week off between books, I read the whole book without taking any notes.

So, I have a vague idea of A, where I'm going to break it up into sections and the sort of flow of the whole book and where I'm going to want to talk about what. And then each week, I read the section that we're going to cover and do all my Post-it notes. And then I go back through it to go through all the Post-it notes and write it up into an episode plan. But I'm not sure I really count that third one as a proper read, because quite often it's a skim from note to note.

Yeah. But then I get distracted and start actually reading it. Yeah, I can't read something twice in a row. Well, it kind of gets broken up. Yeah. I don't just read the book three times because, yeah, no, I would hate that. It was bad enough actually with the Hogfather thing. I knew I wanted to watch the whole thing at least once,

but I wanted to also enjoy watching it without worrying about taking notes. So, I ended up watching the whole thing twice. Right. And that was a bit much. Yeah. So, yeah, I simply did not take notes. Excellent, Adam. Well, yeah, I was trying to do other things at the same time in my life.

I was wrapping presents. My first watch is, I watched it like while eating dinner and knitting and stuff. And then my second watch is, I watched it while taking notes, but also knitting and stuff. I didn't take that many notes. So, I was not as thorough with this as I have been with other things in the past. That's fine. An individual questions from Madjo for Francine. Where did you learn to paint watercolours?

Your art is, looks really good, both what they've seen online and the lovely Christmas card they may have happened to receive. Thanks. I learned here in my house because lockdown happened and I was sick of not being able to do art. So, I started learning how to do watercolours. You had some good internet places, didn't you? I did.

I did. I've got several channels that I follow that I've done tutorials on, but it's all very desperate. I sent one of our listeners, a big list of them recently. So, I might put that up somewhere in the link if anyone's interested. Yes. Do some awesome tutorials. And, yeah, yeah, just, yeah, video tutorials. It's one of the few things I will watch videos for,

because I usually hate learning awesome videos, but obviously. Yes. There's a few things that really helped me with it, but I can imagine with painting it's quite necessary. Sowing, for me, that's to be video tutorials. And then, yes, for me, how's the IT studies going? I hope you'll never have to deal with JavaScript. I have, unfortunately, had to deal with JavaScript,

because my first attempt at learning coding was, I did a whole web development course. So, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and then lots of fun server building back-end stuff. And I learned a lot, but I think the main thing I learned is that I don't want to career in web development. Yeah, I did the front-end part of that course. So, we've done the same JavaScript fun.

It gets worse when you start doing servers and things. I'm sure. That's why I haven't done it. But now I'm learning C++, which is like JavaScript with knobs on. I'm actually quite enjoying it, though. Oh, good. Does it just make, is it a bit more logical in JavaScript? It's not that it's more or less logical.

I think it's that JavaScript has given me enough of a grounding that things that I really struggled to understand during JavaScript now to do two or three times, I now don't have to with this. But also, I'm only about a third of the way through the course, and it looks like it's going to get a lot more complex, because you're more directly interacting with where things are being stored in memory and stuff, which is fun, which is fun and terrifying. So, yeah, so I'm going to finish my C++ course,

and then I'm going to do a course on specifically C++ and the Unreal Engine and start making little games. Little games. Little games. Little games to play. Yes, thank you, listeners. I'm looking forward to making games and stuff. Yes, thank you, listeners, for lovely questions.

Thank you for letters to the Hogfather. Again, apologies if we missed any. We did try very hard to catch them all. Yeah, we have too many open channels of communication. I say that I like having them all, because it's nice to just flip between them and see things. But when it comes to when we've asked for something specifically and not specifically said where to put them, this is entirely our own fault.

Yeah. Oh, also, shout out to Tanya on Facebook, who messaged me a very, very old, handwritten recipe for molasses cookies from her grandmother. That as soon as I can get some molasses, I'm going to try making. Nice. Oh, I think I have some molasses. Oh, awesome. And this, it gave them to me before she moved back to America.

Sweet. Shout out to Elizabeth, who sent us a very lovely email about how nice we are and suggested we sometimes have a bit on the podcast where we read out the nice things people say about us. So thank you very much, Elizabeth, but we're not going to do that. No, I can't do that. There's too much shame here. Yeah.

You can't expect us to do things like have pride. But still, thank you. It was a very lovely email. It made me smile. Yeah. We do read the nice things and enjoy them very much. Yes. I try and reply to them.

I don't always remember, but I try and reply to them. Shall we do five and then should we talk about The Hogfather? So The Hogfather. Specifically. The TV movie adaptation. So this was the first live-action proper Discworld TV adaptation. Did it come before this? Yeah, this was made in 2006.

I believe Color of Magic was 2008. Why is it so much better? Good grief. We'll get to that. We will. So this was made in 2006 by Manchester-based production company The Mob, with Pratchett's close involvement using the credits as mucking about with. Thank you, Mark Burroughs.

Your marvelous book, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, available from all good retailers and Mark's website. Quite your shilling, but no, you're right. Yeah, you should get that book. It's a very good book. So yeah, it's one of the first live-action screen adaptations. The storyboarding for the film was by Stephen Briggs, who drew The Streets of Anchor Moorpork on the Discworld map. And I believe he's also the guy who did a lot of the theatrical adaptations.

He's great. Yeah. And Bernard Pearson was also really heavily involved with some of the look, especially the look of Anchor Moorpork, which I think is why it's so accurate on screen. Like the locations are some of the best parts of the. Yeah, yeah. None of it was jarring, which means it was all good.

If that makes sense. It's not just, I think, that Terry Pratchett was heavily involved. It's people like Stephen Briggs and Bernard Pearson were involved to our big parts of the Pratchett extended universe family. They get to design Canon. Yes. And their designs very much are Canon. A fun fact about it from Fabricate D and PVNC on our subreddit.

All that talk of piles of teeth remind me of a fun fact about the Hogfather special at the UK Discworld Convention 2008, the director and producers made an appearance and said that when they made the special, they found out it would be cheaper to fabricate millions of fake teeth than it would be to animate them with CGI. So the pile is a real pile. And this person somewhere in their garage has a handful of eerily white plastic teeth from the huge sack they brought to the convention. Well, what a goodie bag.

Which follows up with another fun fact that after filming his cameo, Terry Pratchett was stopped by customs at an airport in Australia because he had a large block box of plastic teeth from the set and the officials were quite distressed by it. Yeah. So obviously he explained the situation and pointed out they should probably be more concerned with the large box marked death. Yeah. As we found out in the last episode, it's really hard to focus on anything else

when there's piles of teeth though. Piles of teeth. Piles of teeth. All right. I'm going to try and keep the piles of teeth chapped to a minimum because this is a fun festive episode. I'm not going to obviously summarise the plot because it is the plot of the book and we just did three episodes on that.

So. Yeah. All right. Listeners, you should know by now. But it's a good end. It's a good end. Did you enjoy it? I did very much.

Ashley, thank you. Much more than the other TV adaptations we've watched. I was not under duress watching that. You do seem a lot less filled with rage than you were when we recorded our episodes on the colour and magic adaptation. But I wasn't sure if that was because you like this more or just because there's not a general election happening right now. Well, I like it more.

There are also other awful things happening right now. So. Yeah, good point. Shall we talk about the casting? Shall we talk about the casting and the characters? Yeah. That was Susan. Fantastic.

Portrayed by Michelle Dockery in one of her very fair screen appearances, actually. This is pretty much her screen debut. What else has she done? You know, I'm sure with faces. She's very good. Imagine her saying cousin Matthew. Oh.

It's Lady Mary Crawley. Of course she fucking is. God's sake. It took me, I was trying to, on my first watch, like not get IMDB out because I knew I'd eventually have to do it for the podcast. So I spent like most of the first episodes. It's the story is split into two 90 minute episodes. I don't know if we needed to mention that.

I spent most of the first episode going. What have I seen her in? What's she done? What's she done? I gave up. Her voice is familiar. I managed to mentally put short, dark hair on her and worked out that we had. Lady Mary.

Well, she was very good a season. She also did the squeaks of the death of rats. And the death of rats is credited as dorky hell mice and an anagram. I know words of Michelle Dockery. Very good. Took me a second to remember what anagrams were there. I was about to say it was an allegory. No, you're thinking of the reptiles.

No, we did this already two Christmases ago, didn't we? We've done this for far too many Christmases, Francine. And then death. Death. Death voiced by Ian Richardson. And the body was portrayed by Marnix Vandenbroek, who's apparently a very well known sort of performative stunt double E type person. I say.

Ian Richardson, fun fact that I know a couple of our listeners we're going to kick out of was also in the TV adaptation of Gormungast. Gormungast, still not read it. I must mention actually, as a Christmas present, I know there's at least one listener that's still invested in at least one of us reading Gormungast that I got a book voucher for Christmas and I'm going to buy Gormungast. I got a book voucher. I suppose I could buy Gormungast.

I can't promise I'm going to read it, but I'm going to buy it and then feel really guilty about the fact I haven't read it because it's like right there, Joanna. God, what the fuck? But maybe by Christmas next year. Maybe. Maybe by Hogswatch next year. Maybe that'll be next year's Hogswatch present to the listeners. Hogswatch present nobody asked for.

So Ian Richardson is probably most famous for playing Francis Arkhart. I'm sorry. I've only seen this written down. I've not seen it in the very popular BBC mini series called House of Cards. Oh, yeah. And his character in that had a famous line along the lines of, you may think I've already thought of that, but I could not possibly comment. So they gave death that line as a little reference to his House of Cards role.

Sadly, this was his last role on television shown before his death. He passed away in 2007. But very good, very good death voice. I thought he'd not wasn't Christopher Lee, unfortunately, but he did very well. Yeah, I'd say it. It didn't make me miss Christopher Lee particularly, so he must have been good. No. That was definitely a good coffin door slam voice.

Also, I do quite like compared to obviously the last time we saw death in an adaptation was soul music, which I know you didn't particularly enjoy anyway. But completely non-animated, doesn't have any facial expressions. Death was somehow so much more expressive than cartoon death that had some weird eyebrow shirt going on. Oh, that's the thing, isn't it? So you can reject your own. Oh, what's that bloody thing called?

I was reading about this just the other day. Please continue for one second. We'll shout out to my next Vandenbroek who played the body because he managed to convey a hell of a lot of emotion with some set of shoulders, movements of hand. Also, I like the choice to very early on put death in red gloves, so they didn't have to worry about animating skeletal hands too much. Cool shove, cooler shove effect. It's where you can get an emotive effect by going between two scenes,

like even if one of them has a poker face, and it's kind of you project what you think is meant to be there onto it. Oh, interesting. I think you're the director. My internet isn't good enough to run this stream and open another page at the moment, so. Yeah, that's fair. And then next up, Albert, David Jason.

Much better. Well done, David Jason. This is an appropriate role for you. This is much better casting than when he played Rincewind. As we know, he was a massive Discworld fan, which is why he wanted to play Rincewind. I'm guessing also why he was cast in this. I feel bad because massive Discworld fan gets to play Rincewind.

Very cool, very cool. But, like, I love Rincewind. No, he wasn't Rincewind. I was going to be classy. Wasn't. He was still a bit gurney in this. Yeah, but it made sense. It makes sense for Albert.

It does make sense for Albert, but I think he was reduced to sort of slightly too slapstick comedy sidekick a little bit. Maybe. I think because I mean. The bit with the cigarette. Oh, I hated that so much. Did you?

I was trying to work out with Jack. We were discussing, like, do you think it's because you can't really have people smoking on TV by this point? Like the good guys. I would assume so. But it's also it's really weird because what he's rolling like. And I want to clarify for American listeners that hand-rolled cigarettes are very, very common in the UK and they're not usually spliffs.

Yeah, we can both roll cigarettes. And like, we don't usually, but we can. Does that make sense? Exactly. But what he's rolling doesn't look like a cigarette. Like, he's using like a Kingskin. He's using a paper you would use to roll a spliff. Not that I know anything about that, obviously.

Certainly not. And he's rolling it like a massive wide tube. And I don't know if that was like a. I think it's like a comic effect thing, surely. Yeah. I'm assuming it's a comic effect thing or like a, so it's more recognizable as a cigarette to an American audience. Rather than a rolly that might look too much like a spliff.

But yeah, no, it irked me. It was an annoying running joke. Oh, I found it quite funny. I found it. I didn't want a cigarette would probably help. Yeah. I just not even so much I wanted a cigarette. I just wanted to not see one rolled that badly.

Also, the bit where he gets the paper stuck to the lip like actively made me cringe because I've experienced that in winter. Yeah. But no, it was much better casting than when he was in color of magic. Like he is the right look for Albert and the right age. And he is a good actor despite on my bit in the last time. And the gunning was not so bad. And then tea time.

Tietime. Tietime. Mark Warren. Who's it was so hammy. Like if it had just been dialed back a little bit, I think it would have been really good. But the voice was just slightly too cringe for me. He had the look was perfect and all the mannerisms were great

and the laugh was great. I just like the voice could have just been scaled back a tiny bit and not quite so. It's very, very creepily breathy and high pitched. Yeah. I quite liked it. I thought it was pretty good. I think he was never going to be as scary as the one I made in my mind. But yeah, true.

I thought he was I thought he did well. He definitely wasn't. Hey, despite him having the mad contacts in, he doesn't have mad eyes. Doesn't have him. No, no, he doesn't. He can't fake mad eyes like that unless you're like an incredibly horror actors, I think, probably master at some of them. But yeah, he doesn't have the sort of wide eye thousand yard stare thing.

The kind where you realize very quickly in a conversation, you're speaking to somebody that may at any point take what you're saying the wrong way and start a physical fight with you. Exactly. Yeah. He didn't quite have that. But for all that, like I said, I think he looked exactly right. And that started my whole thing of how many of these actors do I just recognize from Doctor Who?

Well, in Britain, we have a pool of about 20 actors to choose from. I nearly if I hadn't had a horrific fever yesterday, I would have made a graph with how many actors have been in casualty, the bill, doctors, Grinchill and Doctor Who. Joanna had a booster shot, by the way. She's not ill, she's fine. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, that sounded very dismissive.

I mean, we've had people writing before saying. No, I'm fine. I have my COVID booster and it didn't massively agree with me. But many lateral flow tests have been taken and they're all negative. So that's good. But yeah, so Mark Warren, who played Tea Time, was in an episode of Doctor Who called Love and Monsters generally considered one of the very worst ones. Oh, no.

Which one was it? It's the one where, God, I don't even remember, it's got Peter K in it. And there's like a really intense Doctor Who fan club. And then the woman who played Moaning Myrtle and Harry Potter was also in it. And she got turned into a slab of cement at the end. Which Doctor was it? David Tennant. Yeah.

It's David Tennant and I want to say Mark. I remember Peter K being, yeah. It's just kind of considered a shit. Well, it's not a great episode. But I think I just dislike Peter K. But he wasn't in this. Medium Dave. Medium Dave was played by Peter Guinness.

I liked it. I thought him Banjo and Chickenwire were all really good casting. I think they did a really good job of a bunch of sugs he'd find on the pub. Yep. It was very weird for me because I can't help but feel mildly comforted whenever I hear a Geordie accent because it's half my family. So it was very weird. The criminal sounded really Geordie and a bit of my brain went family.

No, criminal. Well, in this, they weren't really as violent as they were in the books, were they? So yeah, it glosses over why. So Peachy and Cat's Eye are all folded into Chickenwire and it glosses over why he's called Chickenwire. That's an image. Just fold them in, Francine.

How do I fold a fold sitting? I'm sorry. So Banjo was played by Stephen Marcus and Chickenwire played by Craig Conway. And yeah, I thought it was really good casting. Medium Dave also managed to be just a little bit more sympathetic as well. I don't know why. I thought he was very sympathetic in the book. Well, he was.

No, he was sympathetic in the book. Maybe I don't mean a little more. I mean, he was. He played it well enough. Sufficiently. Yes, he was sufficiently sympathetic. Thank you. That's better.

Yeah, despite having a much shallower role in it than he did in the book, he played the same. He brought out the same emotions. Yeah. Yeah. He was good. Who else are you having? Mr. Brown played by Jeffrey Hutchings.

So fun fact. Also played the picture in the colour of magic. That was a fun fact. And then, of course, the wizard Sydney. Oh, he's very good. That was Nigel Plainer. It was. That's...

Is he in the Young Ones? Yes, he was Neil in the Young Ones. He's Neil in the Young Ones. Right, yeah. I hadn't made that connection before with the voice and the... Yeah, so Nigel Plainer, he also voiced the auditors. Ah, yes. But he's done a lot of the audiobooks and voices in the video games.

Yeah, listen to a third of Hogfather with him narration. Yeah. I feel like his character in the Young Ones, Neil, was also a bit of inspiration for some of the students that hang around the high energy magic building. Oh, I hope so, yeah. Especially the description of Adrienne Turnipsy. That's just a nose crossing out through a curtain of hair.

Like, I feel like there's a spiritual loop there. Oh, Neil is my favourite character. Yeah, me too. I just want to look at Rick Mayle doing stuff. Yeah. Anyway, but also I saw... Woof, sorry. Enter the manual, that's no underwear.

Ask me why. Why? So the pants haven't been built yet, they can take the job on. Woof. Anyway. I was also going to say Nigel Plainer as Sydney is a bit more kind of... Oh, you're right. Yeah, yeah.

No, sorry, my light was just flashing. It's a bit more how I imagined Rincewind on screen. Like, he's younger and he's got the hair and not the thumb sucking bit, but the cowardly wizard with the hair. That was more the Rincewind vibe. Absolutely. Yeah, he would have done a good Rincewind. He would have done.

And then Violet, played by Sinead Matthews. What did you think of Violet? Yeah, fine, worked. Fair. I'm glad you've got strong opinions, Frontine. No, I just... Bit annoying, but I think that was the point. So that's what I mean by, yeah, fine, worked.

The voice was perfect. Yeah, she did well. She acted the part well, is just a part that I find annoying. I was debating whether to get a bit purple post it, feministy about it, because I couldn't be bothered with the book. And then I realised I still can't be asked. I'm not sure there's as much to get feministy about with this one, was there? No, not really.

I like that the film, like in the book, it sort of implies a tiny bit of almost jealousy on Susan's part when Violet and Billius, and I'm glad it completely skims over that in the TV series. Yeah, definitely. Also, I would totally wear Violet's outfit. Yeah, I can see that on you. Yeah.

Yeah. Billius, played by Roderie Mailer. I would totally wear that outfit. What, Billius's outfit? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a blanket. Dane Toga, that's me. Yeah.

Annoyingly, I know it would suit you. I'm not sure that's a compliment, so. Maybe not. Well, the stained part, I've just seen what happens when you hold a cup of coffee. That is life. But Billius. Billius, Roderie.

Again, that's how I imagined it, actually. They've just done, they just did very well at sticking to it. They got all the lip right. Roderie, Roderie, is properly well. She was Alfie in my family. That was Rara, who nice and from. Which maybe wants my family again. I loved that show for some reason, when I was a bit younger.

Which, for context listeners who haven't seen it, it was just a very, very ordinary BBC sitcom from the 90s slash early 2000s. Adzo, we want to make her in it. Love her. She's always good at things. It was good. You can watch it and the adults won't get horrified by the PRL stuff

and the kids won't have to watch anything bad. That's just, you know, unobjectionable. Completely unobjectionable. It's another one where a single line reading from it has lived in my brain run free ever since, which was a man saying, does she have her personal topiary shaved in the shape of a duck? Maybe there was more explicit stuff than I thought.

I think that was as close as it got to explicit, to be fair. I was quite old before I started recognising such things, so I think I got to. Yeah, I think the joke would have probably gone over my head when I first watched it, but it is just a line reading that lives in my head. But yeah, I thought Billius was very good. He pulled it off very well and he looked exactly right.

Yeah, absolutely. Rid Cali. Oh, good old Rid Cali. Joss Ackland, who is an absolute fucking powerhouse of stage and screen. All right. His earliest sound like a guardian column. His earliest screen credit is from 1949. Like he's been doing this for a minute.

I think he's he may have passed away since this was made, but he's hang on. I've got the IMDB page up. Oh, no, never mind. My computer does not want to load multiple things at once. He's been doing this for a very long time. I think he was quite young with the first one, but yeah. I thought he was fucking perfect casting and it made me so happy

that we got the wizard hat shaped shower cap. Yes. Yeah. That was my plan. I see that. I could have forever lived and I did make a note of this without seeing Arch Chancellor Rid Cali's nipples. I couldn't have.

I think that has propelled me on my route to self actualization. Oh, really? That's got you there. Yeah. No, I don't know. I'm just trying to introduce conflict into our conversation because we're just agreeing too much. Oh, OK.

Sorry. I don't know why I decided on the nipples for that. Yeah, I feel like nipples is not the point. Point is Joss Ackland. Not the hell I really want to die on. He did really job. Yeah, it's very good. I liked the Dean as well, John Franklin Robbins.

Did you notice that he had born to rune on the back of his robe? I did. I was very happy I pointed that out. That made me smile. One of the bits I didn't like quite so much was Bursar played by Roger Frost and they got rid of all the bursanness of the Bursar. I think that's one of those things that would require a bit too much explanation. I do think it wouldn't have translated quite so well to screen.

Especially we're now in 2006, which I know is only 10 years after 1996, but it's quite a 10 years and you're kind of without all the backstory as well. You're kind of just going to look like you're taking a piss out of somebody with an issue. Very good point. I just would rather they hadn't bothered with the Bursar and kind of just let it be filled in by lecturer of recent runes. Also, I think we've been saying Bursar wrong forever. How are you supposed to say it?

Bursar. We've been saying Bursar. Well, yeah, because that's how Ridicully clearly says it. Okay. Bursar. Ah, we're close enough. Yeah. Anyway, Ponda Stevens, Ed Coleman, I thought he was very good.

Yeah. Needed a hat. Needed a hat. What was he doing hatless? It's obscene. Well, he's a young wizard, isn't he? He's a young wizard. He's still wearing a fucking hat.

Notions. He's got notions. There was something about the way he looked and sounded that made me think that this was, if this had been made even two years later, then he would have been played by what's his face from the in-betweeners. The actor, whose name? I can't remember. Simon.

Yeah. Something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then Friday Night Dinner. Yeah. Such a good show. But no, Ed Coleman did a really good job. I thought he was very funny.

Lord Downey, David Warner. Another big name in stage, is it? Lots of stage. Roll Shakespeare Company, Lynx, I believe. Look at me recognizing a stage actor. What this TV adaptation has really shown us is that England has a seemingly endless supply of old, well-spoken white men. The devil you say?

Yeah. Shocking. Then in the English acting world, there's a lot of old, well-spoken white men. It's actually our only manufacturing industry still left. Yeah. We'll stop making cars. We do still make well-spoken Royal Shakespeare Company white men. Yep.

We are diversifying now. Yeah. Do you just mean Idris Elba? No, not just you. Others, others. Look, I can't name any other actors. I only have this list of, like, I didn't know the names of any of these actors until I printed up this list.

Yeah. Yeah. There was one actor I actually recognized, we'll get to him. But I always pictured Lord Downey a little bit younger. Oh, really? No, I hadn't. Yeah, I don't know why. He was already very senior, wasn't he, by the time he took over?

Mr. Gator, the father of Twyler and Gowen, who I've mostly put in here because, played by Robert Porcel, they gave him the very per-psychological bit and the line delivery was so fucking spot-on. It was exactly how I heard it in my head every time I read the book. And I proper tickled that scene. Very per-psychological. Yeah, you've gotta watch this. But I owe.

Yes. Also, the scene when they're sort of doing the cinematic depiction of children losing faith in Hogfather, which they show by his kids catching him in a Hogfather hat, filling stockings, and the crest fall and look on his face as the cigar drips from his lips. I had a proper emotion at that moment. Oh, sorry to hear that, Joanna. Like not to the point where Jim leaked from my face or anything, but you know. Yeah, good.

Good. I thought he delivered it incredibly well. He did, he did. And then to the police. To the police? To the police, oh god. Constable visit, Richard Katz. Not a big part, but good.

Very good. I thought he also does quite a lot of Royal Shakespeare Company stuff, it turns out. Of course he fucking does. Of course he does. Nobby, played by Nicholas Tennant. I thought that was very good, Nobby Casting. Having said multiple times on this podcast, you can't really put Nobby on screen. They did it very well.

Yeah, he was good. Could believe that man needs a piece of paper to say he's a member of the human race. I like his little kid smile. His little, yes. I thought it was really sweet. Also, he was also in the colour of magic. He played the librarian before the librarian got turned into an orangutan. What a good individual.

What a good individual. Lastly of our main cast, Crumbly himself, played by Tony Robinson. Yes. Which means we have nearly all of the audiobook narrators here. And I'm going to point out that one of the only subplots cut from the book was that of the Cheerful Fairy. And I would have liked to see the Cheerful Fairy played specifically by Celia Imre. A, because it would have been funny as fuck.

And B, because then we'd have had all the audiobook narrators from the original. However, it was long enough to say. Oh, yeah. No, of the things to get cast, it worked to cut that, but it would have been really funny. It would have, yeah. Even if it was just AC. A little bonus something, yeah. A little bonus something.

But yeah, I was always, Tony Robinson was the one actor I immediately went, oh, it's Baldrick. Oh, I went, oh, Time Team. I watched a lot of Time Team as a child a long time before I watched Blackadder. I watched a lot of Time Team as a child, but I also watched a lot of Blackadder when I was way too young to watch it or get any of the jokes. But I thought it was quite fun seeing Tony Robinson interacting with Nobby as a character, because Nobby is such a Baldrick of a character. Yeah.

That was a little treat. And it's just a treat to see Tony Robinson and things that made me happy. But lastly, also, there was a very good cameo appearance from Sir Terry Pratchett as the toy maker at the end, selling Death the Rocking Horse. It was very good. It was very good. Fun bit though, Pratchett himself had this cameo, as well as his official script credit of Mucked About by it.

And although the toy maker isn't named in the original book or in the script, Pratchett decided that the toy maker's name was Joshua Izmi and his shop was Toys Izmi. Good. And I really, I'm completely projecting here, but I really feel like Pratchett was always mildly irked by the bad grammar of Toys R Us and eventually decided to make a small joke to himself about it. Yeah, got me. I like to think that was just a lingering alert.

But yes, it was a treat to see him. It was good. It was. And now, before we continue discussing, a word from our sponsors. Sugarpicks and little stockings. Glingle bells in the air. Blood on the snow. Worthy or slaughtering livestock to see through the winter.

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But the hedgehog can never be bugged at all. Wasn't that a lovely word from our sponsor? Oh, yes. I feel very commercially stimulated. I shouldn't speak. As we're doing a podcast, Francine, I'm going to recommend a certain amount of speaking, otherwise I'm just going to monologue for the next half and no one needs that. Oh, let's not pretend you wouldn't enjoy it right until the end when your voice ran out.

Anyway, should we actually talk about the Hogfather beyond casting in characters? That would be nice, yeah. I think my first main talking point kind of folds into your first main talking point, which is the general accuracy to the book and the fact this was clearly made by nerds. Yeah, massively. And as you've commented, why is this so much better than Color of Magic? Yeah, I didn't bother looking at the dates, obviously, but I assume this was made a couple years after and just... Well, I've thought somewhere it's better, but...

I mean, sorry. Sorry, now you go on. The accuracy stuff is fantastic because it feels like it is made for people that like the Discworld books. It's not horribly explaining every aspect of it. The opening is really lovely, even like things like just mentioning the philosopher de Dactylos saying, what the hell? And just a philosopher called de Dactylos and no further explanation of the fact

that not replacing that with a Roundwell one, not needed. I already mentioned Stephen Briggs and Bernard Pearson working on the storyboarding in the city design, which I think is why that's so accurate. I mean, all the locations are amazing. Didn't the Tower of Art look fucking huge? The Tower of Art looked huge and intimidating and how it should. The whole unseen university looks like pretty much how I pictured it. The monochrome in Death's Domain, I thought that was really fantastic.

The way it's not quite in black and white, but it's... It looked like Susan was green screened on, which I didn't notice, but because the mask they've used, obviously, to make her saturated still, it wouldn't have shown up on a screen at the time. No. Susan's look as well. Like, obviously it doesn't have the explanation in the book that she has things like her hair re-styling itself.

That seems like a needless expense, doesn't it, for them? Yeah. But so just making her, when she goes into Death's Grand Auto Mode, looking, her hair just all expanding and looking a bit curlier as she's got her cloak on and the matching her cloak and Death's cloak, having the sort of matching brooch thing in the middle. I thought it was a really nice little touch. Yeah, especially as they kept the bit where Tea Time was

founded, twerp's peerage. Yes, I'm really glad they kept that in. Although they did explain the dog-lasen joke. They did. I don't mind that quite so much. No, I mean, it's one thing when it's written down and you can look at it properly, but otherwise you're going to have to pause, rewind, yeah. I love that Hex had an ant hill inside sticker and it's the Intel inside logo. Absolutely.

Hex is also exactly how I imagined. And again, just little details. There's a paper party hat on Hex, which is a throwaway line in the book, but they've bothered to do it. And they've got the ear trumpet and the massive keys. The ear trumpet, the massive keys, the plus, plus, pluses, which again. Mellon, Mellon. Mellon, Mellon, redo from start.

Also, Hex has great handwriting. I noticed Britt Cully had the exact expression we would have when a computer said something similar to us. I've definitely had programs put out things like that. That's, yes, Marvel is acting from Joe Sanclan. Who'd have thought of him? The kids' painting thing as well was exactly the right level of weird. Especially when...

They cut the way to kids' painting that didn't have the gap. Interesting, they didn't know. It did in the landscape. It was a bit of a weird choice, but it worked. Oh, yeah. And the water going through Susan's fingers. Yeah, that was odd. Yeah.

2006 not massive budget CGI, that was pretty good. Yeah. I guess if you are making it look unreal. Yeah, it worked. Yeah. That was very cool. But yeah, to your point, it's definitely a much better adaptation than Color of Magic and like Fantastic.

But I think the book lends itself better to adaptation. I think that's a huge part of it. For sure. It's a lot more, although it kind of goes through various dimensions, it's more contained. It's in several locations, but they are locations generally. Yeah. And they are not, it's not trying to do some grand journey

like in Lord of the Rings or in Color of Magic. There's also, I think, the fact that it's a Christmas story helps lend it an air of pantomime. Which helps. And you can forgive a lot more in a pantomime than you can in a fantasy. It had a similar feel to Muppet's Christmas Carol. Yeah.

Which is my favorite Christmas movie. And yeah, I don't know. I think because you got time to focus on some of the cool detail I put in. At the end of the day, it's a better story as well. I like Color of Magic because it's written by Terry Pratchett and I like Rincevend. But Hogfather is just a much better book.

I mean, there's no two ways about it. Well, the Color of Magic is four separate stories in one book. And then it follows on to the like Fantastic, which is one story. So it doesn't really lend itself to adaptation well. Yeah. And also that was two books turned into two 90-minute episodes, whereas this is one book turned into 90-minute episode,

which means everything's got more room to breathe. Doesn't it? You wonder why they didn't do sorcery or something, doesn't it? I'm not surprised they didn't do sorcery because it's popular, but it's a lot easier. I think it's because it was sort of a, oh, you liked this. Let's go right back to the beginning.

Yeah. And I think it was entirely because they're the first books. I didn't dislike Color of Magic as much as you did, but I understand all of your criticisms on it, but I just don't think this had any of the problems. I think it's a story that lends itself to adaptation a lot better. Yeah. And they didn't have to improve on it for TV the way they may be.

I know improve on it's not the way it worked, but you know what I mean? Try and bring it all together, streamline it into one story. Yeah, condense it, yeah. Yeah, I know what you mean. Also, one of the biggest changes that Color of Magic adaptation had to made was turning Trimon into an overly hammed up, cape twirling villain played by Tim Curry.

Yeah. And this book didn't have to make a change like that because it had a very good villain. Yes. Like a criticism I've got of this one is probably that the auditors just aren't quite as terrifying. Well, they don't really explain, do they? No, which again, I feel like this one also relies a lot more on the viewer having...

Well, not relies on. I don't think anyone's assuming that someone who's never read any Discworld is watching it. I disagree. I think it's... I don't think you need to have read Discworld to watch it, but I feel like it lets things like auditors kind of be less explained because they can be explained if you're watching it and you're watching it with a Pratchett nerd

or if you're watching it, you're going to end up going to read the book. I don't know, maybe. I'd have to look into what they were actually saying about it. I didn't get the impression that it was like a... This is just... Made for fans by fans thing. Yeah, I didn't feel like it was just made for fans. I just feel like some of the detail-y stuff like auditors.

It's not really worth putting the time in to explain that when there's so much else going on. Yeah, I don't know. I disagree. I think they should have explained the auditors because I think it's a bit odd otherwise, but I think it's okay without, but I think it would have been better if they had.

I think the fear aspect around them, the sort of horror of them as a villain would have been better if they'd been explained. But you've got Tea Time who's already a really well-written villain. Yeah, I guess there's just no motivation for either of them. Explained. I guess Tea Time's motivation is enough in his character. He is the kind of batshit man who would do this sort of thing.

Yeah. It's not really explained. There is a bit where death explains to Ridcully. Auditors don't like humans. They want to control belief and it's kind of just left there. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's good enough, but there's some... I don't know.

I think they could have made it scarier with a little bit more exposition on those. Well, speaking, as you know, Francine, speaking of exposition. We had our exposition Raven flying in for service. I'm glad that actually the Raven and Death of Rats characters were cut way back. In Death of Rats case, because just the CG wasn't very good, which is not something that's worst massively complaining about, but I think it's fine that it wasn't there much.

I'm glad the Raven wasn't there much because the voice was annoying. Yeah. God, why did they have that? That was the one echo of the British comedy. Yeah, it's just stupid voice. Because it's funny if we talk like this. It could have been worse. It could have been a fucking cring.

Yeah, at least it was a cring, but it was close to cring voice wise. It was a hint of cring to the voice. Anyway, it wasn't too bad. One of the most, as you know, Bob moments of the whole thing was as Susan's in Death's library and the Raven's like, the biography show, everything that's happened in your life. I know I'm Death's granddaughter. I used to live here.

And I was like, well, that was subtle exposition there. Wasn't it Lance? Yeah. I do like though that the film is just like, yeah, Susan's death's granddaughter and it's not really bothered being explained. Like halfway through episode two, Susan in less than a minute says Tbilius. Yeah, that's my grandfather. He took my father as an apprentice and he married my mother

who lived with death because he'd adopted her and then they had me. So that's my grandfather. And that was it. And I like that it didn't sort of do the, here's everything you missed from having not read or seen Morton's soul music. Yeah. Well, it's like, yeah, it's all you needed for you, wasn't it? The familial relationship in the fact it was clearly a bit awkward.

Yeah. But I like the fact that it didn't feel the need to like handheld and explain everything to the audience. Yeah. There was enough. The motivation there was explaining to each friend at the beginning. It was like, but you wanted to be normal. Yeah.

Again, not so subtle moments. Also death very dramatically saying onwards to the Hogfather's castle of bones was just a really awkward lineblading because it was such a, as you know, Al, but the Hogfather lives at the castle of bones and we're going there. Yeah, it would have all, it would have made a bit more sense to turn up and go, the castle of bones. The Hogfather should be here. It's where he lives.

Yeah. Something, I don't know. It makes a lot more sense in text, doesn't it? It works a lot better in text. It looked cool from the outside. There's styrofoam plastic, styrofoam ice falling everywhere left a little to be desired, but I guess what can you do?

It was hints of rain of polystyrene to it, but I, uh... Again, it's pantomime, so I don't care. Yeah, I don't know. I forgive a lot more. In a Christmas story, it turns out. I think also I'd rather watch what's clearly a rain of polystyrene than what's a badly animated fall of ice. Yeah.

Like, there was some animation in this. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't the best. It was of its time for something that didn't have a million-pound budget. Oh, God, I can't believe we can say of its time for something. It was 15 years ago, now. Yep. Well, things have come along so much in the last 15 years.

Yes, they have, yeah. I'll spare you the... Yeah, to the fact that with free software, you could probably make the opening with free software and quite a lot of experience and vision, but... Yeah, you could probably make the tassel opening. But for all that, I did still, like I said, it looked cool. Yeah, no, it did, yeah.

I liked the crater marks on the elephants. Yes, I thought that was a nice detail. What was the other... A good sort of expositioning moment is what is in the book, a good few paragraphs of explaining that Mr. Brown is the best locksmith in the business is T-Time says, we've got a locksmith, Mr. Brown, and Dave and Chicken Wire do a very nice... As in, yes, we approve.

That is the right locksmith to get. And that's all, that's the two paragraphs just handled in a single nod. I thought that was a really, really good moment. Yeah. You get the bit about him knowing Bandos and his mum before he struck downstairs. Yes. And that's, yeah. That's good adapting, that is.

I think the moment with Ernie, I understand why he was cut, but again, it took away some of the motivation of T-Time. It's not quite the right word, but you lost the humanisation of his first murder. Yeah, true. Fun fact again, Ernie, I can't remember the name of the actor, but it's David Jason's brother. Yeah, there you go. They kept it in the family, that was nice.

Streamlining, they did streamline the story a bit in places. And I think it worked. I don't think they, like I said, I kind of missed the cheerful fairy just because I think it could have been very funny. And just as England has a wealth of old white British well-spoken dudes, it's got a fairly good wealth of middle-aged and up women. And you could cast quite a lot of them, but I wouldn't have wanted Senior Emery just for the nice

get-the-set of audiobook narrators. Yeah. The King, when it's his last parody, was a loss, I thought. Yeah, but I can understand again, it's a bit of a, it's a very depressing scene, isn't it? It's hard to make that bit funny. It's a depressing scene. Also, the sort of really wretched, powerful humility

and weird pride of the person being given the meal, I think you couldn't get that across on screen quite as well. I think you could be a good actor, but not in a way that's at all festive. Exactly, I feel like it would have ended up being hammed up to the point of cringy or been a very weird, like, depressing drop that would have messed with the pace a bit. I was sad to miss it,

but I don't think it was the worst cut that could have been made. Yeah, I agree. Also, like, a pig's head's a bit gross. Ah, delicious. I already mentioned... Which other bits are missing? I already mentioned peachy and cats, I kind of get folded into chicken wire.

I don't think there's no major subplots that are missing. Like, Quaith and Death of Rats both trimmed back a little bit, that's fine. We're missing the beggars and the fine dining restaurant subplot, but again, I don't think that's a huge loss. I don't think you could ever really portray Fowler on smell. And the restaurant scene could have worked, but probably quite a big budget for many actors.

That many actors, it's a whole other set. Yeah. There's also just... They make the plot and the stakes a lot more obvious from the beginning. One of the things I talked about that I liked... Yeah. Dramatic point to end on on the outside one, didn't you say? Exactly.

And like, I talked about in the book, I really liked how subtly the Tooth Fairy stuff was built up to. But I think it worked in this, to just have it there. You actually see them kidnapped the Tooth Fairy, you see the piles of teeth really early on. Yeah. You establish the stakes much earlier with tea time monologuing around the pile of teeth,

about how he's going to control the belief of all the children. Like, it makes the plot a bit more obvious and spelled out, but I don't think that's a bad thing for a TV adaptation. No, no, certainly not a two-parter festive thing. The Tooth Fairy's bit was trimmed down. Like, there wasn't a hole. And the fire taste away the shadows and understandable. Because it's a bit harder, again,

portray without doing a whole thing. Bit harder to portray without doing a whole bit. And kind of bringing me on to my next point as well, which is how the horror in this, generally, the edges have been filed off. But by getting rid of Peachy and Cat's Eye and generally sort of trimming back the role of the businessmen, it also trims back a lot of the horror of the different fears chasing them.

And we see Sydney gets the Scissor Monster, which is fine. I don't think you need... It's harder to build in the childhood bully backstory without like an awkward flashback and casting some irritating child actors or something. I'm glad they didn't do that. So we get the Scissor Monster for him instead.

The wardrobe just... Again, I don't think you could ever make it as scary on screen as it's described in the book. No, because you need your imagination. That's the whole point. Yeah. The whole point is you're imagining a face rather than just a creepy face on a door handle.

What was the... I'm trying to remember what the other fears were now. Dark. Oh, yeah. The dark didn't really work. It sort of sneaks in a bit around the edges and bugs off again. The Marlily White bit, I thought was probably one of the worst bits of the adaptation.

Yeah. They just sort of look at projection of a woman shouting. Yeah. Because Marlily White is less built up, which is fine. You don't have as much time for it. You did manage to have a few lines about, I remember her strangling a goose or whatever the line was.

Strangling a man with his own leg. That's the one. Yeah. I'm not sure why I was thinking of a goose. I have something to do with the TikTok I just watched. I'm just thinking about geese. Sure. Aren't I always on some level thinking about geese?

But yeah, it just, it wasn't scary. Just like a very awkward projector. Yeah. Or like a Star Trek sort of hologrammy thing. Let me like old Star Trek hologrammy thing. Yes. Yeah, no, it was that. But then I guess because she wasn't built up,

it didn't matter that much. It didn't matter that much. If you look at it on its own. Medium Dave's death was a bit. Yeah, a bit odd. Yeah. He just sort of, ah, scary hologram lady die. So I think that kind of Blair, not Blair, but you know,

missing some of the creepiness and horror. The whole thing was just a bit too hammy to be as horrifying as the book in, which again is fine because obviously it's a festive TV thing. Like a lot of these aren't really. Do you know what it was rated originally? I think it was a 12. I've got the, it might even be a PG. I've got the DVD case, but it's the other side of my microphone.

So I'm not going to get. But yeah, the, there was no, it was all, it was all very bloodless. Yeah. And it leads me to think they were trying to play for a PG. Yeah. I think you're right. And it probably was a PG, especially because I think it was shown at like six or seven on the evening, like Christmas Eve.

Yeah. Um, so it's weird because it doesn't shy away from the death. Like you see a lot of the guards murdered. You just don't see any blood. Which, okay, that's fine. I don't mind seeing murder without blood in a PG thing, but it meant you don't see the blood on the snow bit. And I think that bit really missed something.

I wonder, I wonder how they'd have done that though. Well, the thing is, you see a dark liquid on the snow that is clearly meant to be blood. True. It's just not bright red. Yeah. It's like menstrual adverts, doesn't it? You can't show blood on the television. I was half expecting like the blue tampon water.

Blood on the snow. Exactly. So exactly. So I can't, why is it not easy to find what something was rated? I guess on TV, it's not rated, is it? It's only when it comes out on DVD. It did have like a brief cinematic release, but I think it was like one showing.

It did. There was, um, Pratchett posted on the alt.fandom group about it. There were a couple of tickets left, and he was saying write in to apply. By this point, by 2006, Pratchett was not active on forums. So there wasn't really a lot for me to dig into that. But yeah, because we've talked about that before, and we just decided it was not worth it.

12 on DVD. I was at 12. By the time I got to Blu-ray, and that's, oh, no, here it is, PG. PG on UK. There we go. Found it. So yeah, that I reckon is why they cut off so much the scariness.

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, like things like the Bogymandas doesn't really translate well to screen. No, and also considering actually how much of the book really does rely on you just remembering your childhood fears. It's amazing how well they did do. Yeah, yeah. Like so, so much of it is just,

hey, remember the irrational terror of your unbuilt mind. But, fun TV show. But things, I think the thing that honestly was a lot less horrifying than imagining was the piles of teeth, because I think they just looked so plastic and fake enough that, yeah. Which is fine. Honestly, I didn't need to see that. The noise wasn't right either.

The noise wasn't, it kind of looked like a pile of Lego. I think if I were trying to make the noise, I was saying, I feel like I'm going to get into sound effects for a bit, because that seems like something I don't have time to do. Yeah. I might use like ice cubes or something. Yeah, you need some liquid to the sound. Like dice, like set a dice in with some ice cubes or, do you know what I mean?

Well, dice were made with things like bone and ivory for a very, very long time. Oh, yeah. So I'm thinking of it. Clickity, clickity, click. It is that kind of sound. Listeners who happen to have teeth lying around. Chuck them. See what they sound like.

If any of our listeners have handfuls of teeth. Please don't tell us why. For goodness sake, look after them. Yes. Please don't tell us why. We don't want any explanation. We just want description of the audio. Thank you.

We really don't want to be implicated. I keep bringing us back to piles of teeth and honestly, I don't really have much more to say about. Yeah. I don't have much more to say about this. I think it's a really good adaptation. I think there are three discworld TV adaptations kind of made by this company, or made like Foursky TV.

So we've had Color of Magic and Hogfather. I'd say this is the best one, both in terms of accuracy to the book and how enjoyable it is to watch. Well, I've obviously seen the third one that we haven't. Yeah, so. Oh, I disappointed in advance. Well, no. So Going Postal is the other one that's adapted,

and it is not quite so stringently accurate to the book, but it is a lot more fun to watch than the Color of Magic one is. Okay, cool. The guy they've got playing the main character is exactly right. Cool. It's very, very good casting. That's good. Look forward to that one.

What did you think of the end scene? By the way, the Hogfather yelling into the sky. I quite like that. I thought that was really good. I really liked that. I think that seeing the sun come up and the big roar and the... I liked that. I didn't mention this already,

but I liked the look of the Hogfather in general. Yeah, yeah, his little pigs. Yeah, they did well. They copied the illustration. Yeah. Very well into a costume. It was very, very good. One thing they changed to make a bit happier

was the little poor kid got his stocking full of things. Yeah. And I cried because he got his puppy. Oh. And then I cried at the end because Bando got his puppy because having a dog has broken me. Because that's how you can give a shit about the rest of it. I cried at these two bits a little bit.

I wasn't full on weeping, but... I was so jealous of the guy playing Bando in the scene with the puppy because how great would it be to just be like, yeah, your job for the next half hour, hour, however long it takes, just lie there and play with the puppy for a bit, could you? Just give it attention, fuss it a bit.

Say hello. Yeah, very cute. That was very sweet. I like that bit. Yeah. Again, not criticism. I understand why. But all the socioeconomic stuff

definitely did not get interrogated quite so thoroughly. No. It's all... I like that they bothered mentioning it at all, though. Yeah, there's sort of a flail towards it at that scene, but because it kind of ends there... Yeah. It was kind of like the death response to it was more like,

but it's Hog's Watch, not but that is incredibly unfair on a basic level. Yeah. But what do you expect if it's going to make it to TV? Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, the scene almost feels like it's asking you to agree with Albert that Jam is always best. And it's like, oh, I want Jam now.

Fuck you. Oh, I've got Jam. Should I have some toast? I don't have a good attention span when watching things. That's fair. That's fair. I think I did at that point go and make some toast. Good.

I'm happy for you. And your toast. But yes, I don't think I have much more else to say about it. Other than, well done, everybody. Very good job. Yeah, I liked it a lot. I do think I am slightly more lenient towards stuff like this than at Christmas, as you are.

Yeah. There's something about the general festiveness. Well, if we hadn't covered this at Christmas, I'd have probably found a lot more to bitch about. Well, Color of Magic, we did watch it at Christmas. But I think it's watching the Christmassy thing at Christmas. Yeah. Yeah.

I'd have found a lot to bitch about if I'd had to watch a festive thing, not near Christmas. The rest of the world doesn't really do Panto, does it? No, I think we've talked about this briefly. I don't know if Australia does, maybe, but America doesn't seem to. I think we've talked about this briefly on the podcast before when I've tried to sort of explain what Panto is

to our non-English listeners. Oh, no, you didn't. Oh, yes, I did. Francine. A joke. Brief explanation. I won't go into the history of it, although I kind of did. Oh, please don't.

Yeah, it's half past nine. Well, for some of the history of Panto, I'm joined our Patreon and listened to my Down the Rabbit episode on clown makeup. But it's a weird British theatre tradition, usually at Christmas. And they are plays often adapted from various fairy tales. It's supposed to be funny and something for all the family. There's usually songs, but it's not a musical.

There's lots of grown-up jokes that the kids won't get. In the same way that a Christmas cracker joke is generally accepted to be unfunny, but because everybody knows that it's okay. Out of the pantomime. Yes, also cross-dressing is a big part of it. There's usually a dame, which is a man dressed as a woman, but not really drag, but sometimes played by drag queens.

There's also usually a principal boy. So usually there's a lead girl and a lead boy, and the lead boy is more often than not also played by a girl. I had to be in a Panto of Robinson Crusoe once, and it was fucking horrific. Yeah, I mean, no offense. Oh, no, it was fucking terrible. The director, who is not a man I don't friends with anymore,

thought it would be a good idea to do a bad cover of the banana boat song called Robinson Home from the Isle of Wight. Yes, the big, big central joke of the play was that actually we'd got shipwrecked on the Isle of Wight. Spoilers. For a Panto, it was in like, no, like eight years ago? Fuck me, that was a long time. Like eight years ago.

Might have been. No, I wasn't drinking by then. Six years ago. Five years ago. Five, four, maybe. It wasn't very long ago, really. It's over five. Okay.

I'm going entirely on the length of hair I had at the time. Sure. So I remember things, Francine. Well, we've devolved away from Hogfather. Before we go into the last few bits of the episode, what are you doing for Christmas, Francine? We haven't talked about what we're doing and our Christmas traditions and things yet.

Oh, gosh, Sid asked me that at the beginning of the night. Sorry. No, it's all right. It's just my brain's melted. Now, just, I mean, it's not very fucking exciting, Joe. It's still pandemic. Dad's going to come here. We're going to have a quiet Christmas dinner.

That's it. Pretty much the same. Yeah. Same for me, but your dad's not coming here. No. I don't really have any. What, you've got mates coming over, haven't you? No, I've got my friends coming over for Christmas lunch.

Yeah. If no one's got COVID, other people are welcome to turn up in the afternoon for a bit of cheese and a glass of whatever. Yeah. Yeah. We're still, yeah, still, still being careful this year. Shout out to the listeners. Hopefully I get to go to Jersey next year.

I hope so. Yes. Shout out to the listeners. If you're having a shit Christmas because of COVID, we're here for you in spirit, if not literally, because... Yeah. I'm the spirit of Christmas. Potentia.

I am the ghost of Christmas. Fuck. I forgot to put the potatoes on. Yeah. So, as you can tell, we're really effective. We're very positive Christmas. See, I was much more positive about Christmas two hours ago, in fairness. I'm sorry, I made you talk.

Don't be sorry. It's just, it's just, it's just... Stop apologising. It's who I am, Francine. I feel very bad about everything all of the time. Well, do you know actually, actually, actually, I was trying to find the word sorry in our transcript for a couple of episodes ago, because I needed to replace another thing of it when there was noise at the top.

But, and so I control left, sorry. And I said it more times than you. That episode. So that is progress. Well done, Joanna. Getting over my Catholic guilt. One of my new year's resolutions has been to apologise less in emails. Has it worked?

Well, it's still December, so I haven't... Well, it was your last year's one, wasn't it? No, last year's one was to stop buying clothes. Oh, yeah, that's right, yeah. Which I've done well on. Yeah, I know you did do well on that, yeah. I bought two pairs of jeans. And a ridiculous...

Because you can't make jeans. Yeah. I did also buy a ridiculous, very expensive, feather-trimmed robe, but I don't think that counts. That's not clothes, I think. No. That's a... That's a piece.

Yeah. That's art. It is. That's wearable art. You say wearable. You say wearable. We stretch the limits of wearable, because I can wear it. But I then have to...

No, it fits beautifully. I look fantastic in it. I just then have to spend the next three weeks sweeping up fucking feathers. Oh, no. Oh, I want some stupid pajamas one day, but what am I going to do in them? I have to say, I think possibly my favorite new Christmas tradition that I created for myself, and that I will be celebrating... As of last year, and I'll be celebrating again this year is on Christmas Eve,

opening up a brand new pair of pajamas I've bought for myself. That is nice. What kind of pajamas have you got this year? They're lovely blue silk with a sort of Japanese cherry blossom pattern. Very good, very good. Yes. Yeah. I love new pajamas and stuff, but honestly, in the winter,

pajamas are not warm enough for me. I always end up wearing jogging buttons and a jumper to bed, so it's a bit pointless for me. I'll wear them, come spring. Or you can buy those horrible flannel ones I don't like how they feel. Pajamas are for lounging about with a large fluffy dressing gown over the top for me. Yeah. If necessary, I'll then change into something warmer to sleep in. I used to do a lot more daytime pajama ring, but last two years, obviously,

a lot of it's been at home. So a lot of my wardrobes kind of transition to comfy around the house clothes anyway. Yeah. So I have a lot more trousers that don't have any kind of structured ways to them. Right. Which is really just as well, because I can eat as much as I want without changing. Excellent. Don't you hate having to change your trousers after dinner?

There's a reason I wear these big, poofy skirts from the sea. Ah, smart. Stomach room. Right. I think we've devolved far enough away from the hogfather that I can round us towards the end of the episode, can't I? First up, shall I tell listeners what's coming up? Sure. For the next 12 months.

So we have listened to the people who responded and we are not going to bother doing an episode by episode recap of The Watch. Honestly, I think I would have refused to even if everyone had said we should. So. Yes, you're welcome to do that on your own. I can monologue about TV, but I'd rather monologue about something I actually liked. So as always, this is subject to change depending on release dates of what's its and things.

But the plan currently, dear listener, we're going to stay on the disc in January and talk about Jingo. And then I'm going to take a brief break from the disc in February for the first of our terrific trilogies and talk about Bromeliad. And terrific trilogies is a working title for the season. But like, I can't think of anything as good as pre-tape. Rule of three. Rule of three season.

Rule of three season. Rule of treason. Ah, rule of treason. Thank you. See, this is listeners going to treat us workshopping live on the podcast. In March, we're going to talk about the last continent. In April, we're going to chat Carpe Juggulum. It should be fun.

It's a nice line up, isn't it? It's a very good year next year. May we do. Very good year. Very good year. Very good year. Very good year. May we continue the rule of treason.

It's the thing now. With the Johnny Maxwell trilogy. Which I've never read. Me neither. Even once. I don't think I've even got them. No, me neither. So that'll be fun.

New for both of us. June, we're going to talk about the fifth elephant. Yes. And despite the fact it's literally only referred to in the title, I will use this as an excuse to re-watch the fifth element. Excellent film. Yes, all right. You don't have to.

It's fine. Good, thanks. In July, we're going to talk about the truth. We're spiky friends. We might say the name of the thing in the thing. We might say the name of the thing in the thing, listeners. We're very excited. In August, we are going to take our summer holidays and have a month off.

We've earned it. Maybe. Maybe. September, we're going to talk about thief of time. October, we're going to talk about the last hero. Which get the one with pictures in their good pictures. Yeah. And then this is dependent on release dates,

but we've penciled in quite possibly talking about series two of Good Omens in November. Maybe. We may end up rearranging the whole year if it gets reintroduced, not introduced, released earlier. Yeah. We will shift a lot of things around in order to be weird about David Tammant on air.

And Michael Sheen. And Michael Sheen. Yeah, I mean. Different kind of weird about Michael Sheen. So yeah. Socks in a Bath. One treat. Socks in a Bath.

Um, if for some reason Good Omens series two doesn't come out at all next year, then we'll be talking a bit about the science of discworld instead. And in December, as we reach our 100th episode, and that's just the 100th, the vision episode, that's not including all the bonus that we do. Yeah, I wonder when we'll hit that. I'll work it out. Probably pretty soon.

We will be talking about the amazing Morris and his educated rodents. Fuck yes. So ready. So ready. Probably need to buy a new copy. Mine's falling apart. It's very well loved. So that's next year listeners.

Yeah, I've got that on the website. I'll link it in the show notes so they feel like you need to memorize that. I hope you didn't already. Patreon listeners can also look forward to continued journeys down rabbit holes. In fact, we've got another one coming up very soon. And as soon as we know what we're going to do, we'll... Probably just record it and then release it. Probably just do it.

Yeah, that's what we've been doing, isn't it? But any new patrons can catch up to the several ridiculously long PowerPoint tangents we've been able to go on through the freedom of... Also any non-patron listeners who've chosen to watch this on YouTube, you can regularly watch the video versions of the podcast on Patreon. Yeah, so for goodness sake, why? I will say, I'm not usually wearing makeup. So I thought this much.

Joanna always looks that good. So you can at least look forward to that. Usually not so much, me, I'm afraid. If my cleavage is what sells it, then let's go with that. Leavage and a skull mask. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have a skull mask. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah, I mean, to ask you right now, we did that. Never mind, carry on. Don't spoil the surprise for the dear little children. Now, last year, I did a little poem for the podcast. You did? I've prepared a delight for the podcast this year. Oh, have you? You haven't peached at my notes, have you?

No, I nearly did. But I got as far as surprise and stopped. Thank you for not peaking at my notes. I'm now regretting putting this in, but to stop this from being horrifically long because we've babbled on for long enough. We've done all right, actually. Yeah, I know we have.

But I'm going to start on day 12. On the 12th day of Hogs Watch, my true love gave to me. 12 hermit elephants, 11 unbuggered hedgehogs, 10 swamp dragons, nine quantum weather butterflies, eight sides to the altar of Bell Shammeroth, seven counting pines, six eaters of socks, five bursas, four massive elephants on the back of a big turtle, three castles, two snacks,

and a pointless albatross that flew into a tree. I'm not going to lie, I put slightly less effort into that than I put into last year's. That's fair, that's fair. Oh, fuck, I forgot to mention the Easter of socks. Oh, these little socks look great. There you go. Can I need a little elephant rat?

Yes. Now my stupid Christmas surprises reminded you. I think at that point, that's probably everything rational, we can say, in our festive Hogs Watch. Did we say anything rational? Fuck no. OK, good. I didn't mean to.

Apologies, listeners. If I accidentally said anything rational upon this, the most sacred of nonsense days. Christmas Eve. We do. Hopefully. This comes out on Christmas morning. What a nice surprise, but I stayed up on Christmas Eve.

If this comes out on Christmas morning, I will not have listened to it before it comes out. No, that seems very fair. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's all we can say. We hope you have enjoyed our silly festive bonus Hogs Watch extravaganza. Trying to think if I could get an extra adjective in there,

but I feel like I. Things ending with Olly. Jolly. Yes, Olly. Golly, truly. We did this already. Olly, Holly, not Barry Melancholy. Ridiculous, Olly podcast.

Marvelous. Perfect. Thank you, Francine. I'm a writer. Double check the schedule properly so I can inform you that we will be back, scroll your bastard, on the 10th. Title.

We'll be back on the 10th of January, where we should be talking about Jingo. Nice controversial start for you. Yes, nice and chill. In the meantime, of course. Dear listener, until then. Sorry. You can follow us on Instagram at the true show

Micky Fritt on Twitter. Francine, can I just do the outro? Yeah, all right, sorry. You can follow us on Instagram at the true show Micky Fritt on Twitter at Micky Fritt Pod on Facebook at the true show Micky Fritt. You can join us at bread at community r slash ttsmyf. You can email us your thoughts, queries,

castles, albatrosses and snacks, the true show Micky Fritt Pod at gmail.com. And as we mentioned, you can join our Patreon community, patreon.com, forward slash the true show Micky Fritt and exchange your hard earned pennies for bonus nonsense. We're also now on TikTok and Tumblr. I nearly got there, Francine.

Oh, I'm sorry. Well, all right, you've never said it before. No, I wasn't going to say that. Where are we on TikTok and Tumblr? I don't know. People, they're not very regularly updated, so if you really want to find this, you probably can, but they're fine.

I'm allowed those. Francine is in charge of those. Yes. The two absolute nonsense platforms, as is correct. As opposed to all that sanity I spout on Twitter. Until next year, dear listeners, don't let the hogfather detain you. I will see you tomorrow.

Yeah, see you tomorrow. 7 o'clock, wherever that thing is. Where is it?