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)
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