The L-Space Web: Interviews

Loose Ends



Transcription of Terry Pratchett interview on Loose Ends, a BBC Radio 4 chat show, Saturday 27th November, 1993.
Ned Sherrin (host, theatrical impresario, and professionally mildly camp and considerably acerbic person):
... But first, Robert Elms grills Terry Pratchett.

Robert Elms (professionally cool person):
Oh, I think grill is the wrong word here. It's more a sort of flambee. But it's my preconceptions that are going up in flames. You see, they told me that I was interviewing Terry Pratchett, and I said "Who?". Then they told me he writes incredibly successful science-fantasy novels, he's really famous, and I said "Oh, no!". As far as I was concerned, that stuff was exclusively for spotty boys with racks full of Yes albums at home. I mean, look, I dutifully read the new one, Men at Arms, and I was totally seduced. It is a world of trolls and dwarfs, and all that stuff, but it's also really very funny, and, what's more, kind of real and grubby. And now I've got to go back and read fifteen others that he's written in the last ten years, all set in this Discworld. What is the Discworld? You tell us about it.

Terry Pratchett:
I'd just like to say that I still have a perfectly serviceable anorak

RE (interrupting):
(laughs) I'm going to have to go and buy one now.

TP:
and several Yes albums.

RE:
(laughs) I thought you would. Describe the Discworld for us.

TP:
(clears throat) It's flat, and it goes through space on the back of a giant turtle, which an image straight out of mythology, and it doesn't really matter very much. It's a bit like

RE (interrupting):
But the turtle sits on some elephants doesn't it?

TP (interrupting):
No, no. It's the elephants on the turtle. Get it right. I mean, whoever heard

RE (interrupting):
I am a new.

TP (continuing):
of a turtle sitting on elephants, um, and it's kind of like Shakespearean England and a bit like er pre-Dickensian London um but it just has the trolls and the dwarfs and the elves and all the the magical paraphernalia of fairy tales, but but they're living real lives. You know, they have to have a police force, night watchmen and all the other things that you have to have in a city.

RE:
Isn't it

TP (interrupting):
It's very much like um er it's kind of like Dickensian London.

RE:
They're not just real-life, they're incredibly incompetent ones aren't they, and inefficient, and no-one who's (unclear) got any powers can use them properly, and nothing ever works.

TP:
Well someone said that there is er a strong tendency not towards violence but towards indignance. They're always complaining about things. Uh I er just thought it would be nice to take the the (pause) the Tolkien-type imagery because there've been a lot of bad copies of Tolkien written, and treat it as if the characters are real. You know, no-one in their right mind, who wasn't on serious hard drugs, ever said anything like "Landlord, a pint of your finest ale." Um can you imagine saying th... My characters don't talk like that. They act like real people I hope.

RE:
You've written an incredible amount of these books in the ten years

TP:
uh huh

RE:
plus I mean tapes and children's book and all sorts

TP:
yeah

RE:
of thi... Do you live your entire life in this world? I mean, you must sit there twenty four hours a day living in it.

TP:
Only if I wanted to get the white canvas blazer with the optional long sleeves um and, you know, be rafia-work champion of my ward. I've (pause) No, you've got to live in this world: "To keep your head in the air, you've got to have your feet on the ground", as G K Chesterton said, but you have to think about it a lot, and you have to think about adapting ideas to it and so forth.

RE:
Given that you've got this other quite spectacular place to go to, I mean, do you go to places yourself, do you go on holiday and to the real world, and doesn't it seem a bit mundane when you get there?

TP:
I've heard about holidays, um I'd like to have one one day. I I tend to go to a lot of places for the publishers. I've seen Sheraton hotels in, ooh, erm Sydney and Seattle, New York. They they all look the same. I'm an expert on the road to the airport. I went to Chicago three times before I found out it wasn't dark all the time.

RE:
What about your poor family though? Do they get you know taken to this Discworld or

TP (interrupting):
Well sometimes they come with me and and and sometimes I'm afraid my wife stays at home where she is at the moment sorting through the mail.

RE:
(laughs) I must admit one of the things I loved about the book... I mean, Men at Arms is set in Ankh-Morpork, which is the great city of your world isn't

TP:
Right.

RE:
it, and I'm a big city boy, and what I liked about this is that it it seemed to not get... It's a kind of a distillation of urban essentials, and I thought, here's a true urban man, he knows the real scene. And then I found out you live in Somerset

TP (interrupting):
I'm a

RE (continuing):
I felt cheated.

TP:
I'm a true rural man, but I believe in civilization, and civilization means cities, and everything we are has come from the fact that that that that we are a city species, and all the words that mean things um `politeness' come from polis erm `policeman' curiously enough, as I say in the book, also comes from the same root word, you know, politeness is the correct mode of behaviour for policemen as we know.

RE:
The ones in your book aren't very polite, though, I mean, there's a troll who, every time he salutes, knocks himself over.

TP:
Well, he's a little bit stupid.

RE:
(laughs) He is a little... And a dwarf who can't reach any of the things they've got to get to...

TP:
Um I just wanted to to distil all the police procedural th... you know, all the films we've ever seen, you know, gen... generally with Clint Eastwood in. I wanted to get all those into a fantasy situation so maybe then people could then look at the cliches for the first time and see what they really were.

RE:
I mean, you said that these were kind of real characters and real people, and the stuff that happens to them is very like real life. So (pause) why not write about real people and real life, then? Why do you have to take it out and put it in this world?

TP:
The nice thing about writing fantasy is you can step... you can take that step beyond. If I want to (pause) There's a talking dog um in Men at Arms who comments on what humans get up to, and looks at everything from a dog perspective, and so sees the world differently and

RE (interrupting):
And smells it differently

TP:
Well, to him the the city is purely colours, it's smell, he can see the smells, and and that's fun, I mean you can you can do a new perspective on on things by seeing it through non-human eyes, and that's hard to do in the real world without c... you know, calling it "magical realism", which is a Sunday Times term meaning "fantasy written by someone I went to university with".

RE (laughing):
Someone Latin American, I thought. You are being taken seriously, though, I'm... if that's not a terrible word, you know, Guardian profiles and comparisons to Wodehouse and Chesterton. I mean, does this worry you?

TP:
It does a bit, because you feel that you're being set up so that the next person can come along and push you off again. I think the thing to do is keep your head down, switch on the word-processor and er get on with it.

RE:
You do say there's one thing in the book that it says "there's no such thing as a humble opinion" is it is a quote from it. Now, is there any such a thing as a humble author? I mean do you really want to be taken seriously at heart?

TP:
No, I just want to be paid lots of money and

All:
(laugh)

TP:
and be read by everyone in the world.

RE (taking deep breath):
Is it going to be read now, I mean where do you go from here? Are there going to be movies of the... is the first Discworld cinema... cinematic experience on the horizon?

TP:
Ohhh... I think every author's familiar with this. About once a month someone fairly low on the food chain in Hollywood makes an approach, but, er, nothing ever comes of it, and I'm quite pleased. I I I just like writing. I I think I do it (pause) well enough and, stick to what you do, that's what I say.

Emma Freud (another presenter):
Terry, can I chip in here

TP:
Yup

EF:
very rudely, and ask you why you're wearing two watches, one on each arm?

TP (laughing):
One of them's Seattle time, one of them's London time, and that one's got a thermometer on... I'm just a gadget freak.

EF:
It's very interest...

NS (interrupting):
Why Seattle?

RE (interrupting):
Yeah, why not discworld time? I mean, isn't there a...

TP:
(laughs) Because there is no such thing. It's a non-existent place. You're trying to catch me out.

NS:
Why Seattle? Why Seattle, not er (unclear)

TP (interrupting):
Because that's where I was last week and and part of my brain's still there I'm afraid.

NS:
Yes

EF:
Sleepless in Seattle of the (unclear)

All:
(laugh)

TP:
Indeed yes. Um I saw the film on the plane.

EF:
Oh no (laughs)

NS:
I whe... whe... You're off to Winchester signing.

TP:
Yes. Faraway places with strange-sounding names.

NS:
It's carefully worked out so you can just pop off to Somerset on the way home um (unclear)

TP (interrupting):
Just about missed the train, yes, yes I...

NS:
Where in Somerset? I'm a Somerset person.

TP:
Well, somewhere in the sort of Cheddary area.

NS:
Oh yes, I (pause) remember the gorge well. We used to get the strawberries there.

Carol Thatcher (journalist, and daughter of Margaret):
My mum's been signing her books too. How many can you do in an hour?

TP:
Oh well you see I have to talk to them.

CP:
Oh

TP:
And you say "What's your name? Kevin? Is it? How do you spell it?"

All:
(laugh)

TP:
And besides which, they put twenty-nine other titles on the desk as well, and they want them all signed, it's a different

NS (interrupting):
Mrs Thatcher won't speak to anybody, I understand, unless they've queued overnight and are first in the queue,

All:
(laugh)

NS:
this is the only qualification to getting a word out of her.

TP:
Mine only look as if they've queued overnight

All:
(laugh)

EF:
Oooh

RE:
Can I ask you one question before you go, sir, would you please sign that one?

All:
(laugh)

TP:
But it's not for you, it's for your nephew

RE (interrupting):
Oh of course, it's for my producer

All:
(laugh)

TP:
This is so embarrassing for you

NS:
(Introduces next item)
[Prev Page][Up][Next Page]

This page maintained by Jamas Enright, Jamas.Enright@vuw.ac.nz.
The L-Space Web is maintained by The L-Space Team, librarian@lspace.org,
This mirror site is maintained by Christian Morley and Kendall Libby, librarian@lspace.org,
Last modified Tue May 27 09:46:38 EDT 1997