Grim up North Heath

Tag: Terry Pratchett

  • I’ll cut his heart out – with a spoon!

    I’ll cut his heart out – with a spoon!

    Have you ever liked a villain more than the hero? Who and why?

    Rumour has it that Alan Rickman gave such a commanding performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves (1991), that Kevin Costner cut many of his scenes to avoid being completely upstaged. This role was early in Rickman’s film career. His screen debut was as the villain Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988)1 a scene-chewing villain but up against Bruce Willis in one his first action roles as the reluctant hero John McClane. So here, villain and hero are equal. But in Robin Hood, the sheriff is such a colourful pantomime villain that Kostner’s anaemic goody is wise to limit shared screen time.

    Alan Rickman as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. A vivid performance that did his career no end of good.

    Rickman gets all the best lines. He threatens to cancel Christmas; to cut Robin Hood’s heart out with a spoon (because it’ll hurt more); and tells a wench to ‘bring a friend’ when she comes to his room. Kostner is there, which is just as well, or the film title wouldn’t work.

    Other villains and anti-heroes

    A good anti-hero is one thing (Deadpool, for example) but a good villain is always worth watching. Ricardo Montalban is commanding as Khan in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The combination of David Prowse and James Earl Jones as Darth Vader in the first three Star Wars films gave the character iconic baddie status. Cruella de Ville (101 Dalmations) is probably as evil as any character in children’s literature, though in her case I blame the parents for calling her ‘Cruella’. And the baddie doesn’t even need to be a person: Skynet is the villain in the Terminator series; the various Terminator cyborgs are just machines, not an artificial intelligence.

    Awful characters

    The BBC sitcom Ghosts doesn’t really have a villain, but the once-a-season appearance of their awful neighbour Barclay Beg-Chetwynd (played with more relish than an entire Branstons factory by Geoffrey McGivern) was always a highlight. He gets introduced thus:

    Barclay: Barclay Beg-Chetwynd. From next door.

    Mike: We have a next door?

    Barclay: It’s about a mile that way. I own the… you know the village?

    Alison & Mike: Yeah.

    Barclay. Yes, I own that.

    He’s not really a villain, just rich, uncaring and pretty awful. The only true villain in Ghosts is ‘Lucy’, played by Jessica Knappett, who tries to con Alison and Mike out of thousands of pounds.

    Barclay is a type of awful character that I love to see on screen, but would hate to deal with in real life. Father Jack in Father Ted is hilarious onscreen, but could you imagine living with him? I mean, the smell alone! And yet, they outdid Jack with the menacing, softly spoken sociopath Father Fintan Stack, who was malicious in his awfulness – getting Dougal drunk, drilling the walls at 2 am and driving Father Ted’s car ‘into a big wall’.

    I’m not sure why the size of the wall is important.

    Literature

    Going Postal (2004) gives us Reacher Gilt. He is one of Terry Pratchett’s few proper villains (though not a patch on Carcer from Night Watch), a flamboyant character up against an antihero in Moist von Lipwig. Both men are confidence tricksters; Gilt dresses as a pirate, complete with eyepatch and parrot2. Moist relies on being unremarkable for his cons to work, his golden uniform as Postmaster is a distraction from the man in the suit. However, Moist is in awe when they meet. They immediately recognise each other for what they are, Moist realises that Gilt is a master fraud to whom he would give everything to be apprenticed to. Gilt, for his part, is shocked that Moist is also a fraud.

    1. One of the best Christmas films ever made. ↩︎
    2. Who only ever says “Twelve and a half percent!” ↩︎

  • Is Michael Sheen the worst human alive?

    Is Michael Sheen the worst human alive?

    What public figure do you disagree with the most?

    You might think he’s one of the greatest actors of his generation, a philanthropist and mentor, but there are other sides to Michael Sheen. He’s got more sides to him than a full set of D&D dice.

    Who is he, really? One minute he’s a dishevelled wild man in the poorly-shot Staged, the next he’s Arthur, the exquisitely groomed robot in the better-filmed Passengers.

    Michael Sheen as he really is (left) and being paid to pretend to be a robot (right).

    Often he’s too lazy to think up a character to portray, such as Arthur in Passengers, Paul Bates in Midnight in Paris or Brain Clough in The Damned United, so he resorts to pretending to be real people. But which one is he? Is he satirist and interviewer David Frost, slightly smarmy Prime Minister Tony Blair, effete and prickly actor Kenneth Williams, or the tragic revolutionary leader, Lucian the vampire?

    Michael Sheen in four roles depicting actual people. David Frost in Frost / Nixon (2008); Tony Blair in The Queen (2006), Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa (2006), and Lucian in Underworld (2003).

    Feud with David Tennant

    Sheen first worked with Tennant on the TV adaptation of Good Omens, the book co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The relationship got off to a bad start, with Sheen replacing Tennant as the angel Aziraphale during rehearsals. Pretending to be the Good Guy again. The third series is due out soon, maybe he will show his true colours this time round.

    Michael Sheen (right) as the angel Aziraphale and David Tennant as the demon Crowley in Good Omens. Sheen looks very smug and totally mis-cast as an angel. And I’ve only just noticed that Crowley’s belt buckle is a snake’s head.

    I’ve mentioned Staged and this is at the nub of my issue with Sheen. This public, ongoing war with Scotland’s greatest actor and the second-best Dr Who1 David Tennant was pitched as a distraction during Covid. Yet Sheen chose to heap humiliation on David, flaunting his art skills in the first episode and repeatedly correcting his Welsh pronunciation.

    Staged Series 1, Episode 1. Sheen gets the humiliation in early with this display of artistic talent.

    All actors are evil

    Not content with pretending to be someone he’s not – for money! – he’s turned his sights on his hometown of Port Talbot. Not content to constantly insist that the ‘t’ in port shouldn’t be pronounced, he’s plotted to flood the British stages with Welsh actors. Firstly, he’s funded and is Artistic Director of the new Welsh National Theatre and secondly he initiated ‘Welsh Net’, a talent-scouting project aimed at finding and developing Welsh talent.

    This is clearly misguided. Apart from Sheen there are no known actors or entertainers from Port Talbot or anywhere in South Wales. Well, none of much note.

    He’s set up a charity to provide housing, little thinking that in doing so he might affect house prices in Por’ Talbot. He sold his houses to fund a the Homeless World Cup in 2019. Again, without a thought of the effect on property prices. He also used his own money – gained through devious means, don’t forget – to wipe out £1 million of debt for 900 people in South Wales.

    Gameshow takeover

    The latest calumny is his ousting of poor little Richard Osman on House of Games, no doubt the result of a hostile negotiations. What next? A series of successful murder-mysteries, I’ll warrant.

    Studio shot of the new House of Games studio, now that Michael Sheen has completed his conquest.

    In summary

    The answer to the question at the top is ‘no’. I think he’s a brilliant actor and a wonderful person.

    1. Tom Baker is the best. Yes, his is. Be quiet. ↩︎
  • Terry Pratchett and unconsidered trifles

    Terry Pratchett and unconsidered trifles

    Today is the eleventh anniversary of the death of Sir Terry Pratchett (aka Pterry, STP) (GNU).

    I wrote one of my first blog posts about him a year ago. This shares my connection with Pterry’s work and how I met my wife through his work. There’s also a reflection on his death and the death of my dad, both as consequences of dementia.

    But the main reason for reading and re-reading his books is the joy they give. I recently quoted from Lords and Ladies when I was writing about fate and destiny and how I don’t believe in them. I’ve read L&L maybe three times, but I flicked through afterwards and found so many funny bits that Mrs S and I started re-quoting bits.

    Unconsidered Trifles

    The line about being a picker-up of unconsidered trifles came to mind when I was reading Michael Palin’s diaries from 1999-2009. Palin’s quote is in reference to the original line from Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale:

    My father named me Autolycus; who
    being, as I am, littered under Mercury, was likewise
    a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. 

    Being the ignoramus that I am, I didn’t know the origin of this1, but I was familiar with the expression.

    Pratchett introduces this expression early in the book. Death, making a cameo appearance2 to claim the soul of the poacher William Scrope, tells him:

    I LIKE TO THINK I AM A PICKER-UP OF UNCONSIDERED TRIFLES

    Death grinned hopefully. Scrope’s post-physical brow furrowed.

    ‘What? Like… sherry, custard, that sort of thing?’

    Death sighed. Metaphors were wasted on people.

    Much later, we get this scene, where Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have just left the wedding feast of King Verence (previously the Fool) and Magrat (former witch):

    Nanny Ogg produced a wooden spoon from somewhere in her apron. Then she raised her hat and carefully lifted down a bowl of cream, custard and jelly which she had secreted there.

    Footnote: Nanny Ogg was also a great picker-up of unconsidered trifles.

    Much of the book is a spoof of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the Lancre Morris Men performing a play written by Hwel the playsmith3, Casanunda the world’s second-greatest lover4 and Pewsey Ogg, the world’s stickiest child. And, that greatest of all terrors, Nanny Ogg’s bathtime.

    This is one of the early golden age Discworld books. I’d consider this to cover from Wyrd Sisters5 (1988) to Thud! in 2005. He wrote ten books after this, but these were very good, rather than magical.

    1. I studied MacBeth at school, which helped when I was reading Wyrd Sisters. Most of the rest of my knowledge of Shakespeare is through cultural osmosis. ↩︎
    2. As he did in all the Discworld books except Snuff. ↩︎
    3. Who’s too good a writer to ever put a donkey in a play. ↩︎
    4. He tries harder. ↩︎
    5. Which was my favourite for a long time. ↩︎
  • Food, science & architecture

    Food, science & architecture

    Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

    This day is a patchwork of highlights. I don’t know if there is any one place that this could really happen, but ‘ideal’ has to be able to include the impossible.

    Mrs S is with me throughout, the kids join us for lunch then do their own thing after dinner.

    Wake up about seven, in a big hotel room with a massive en suite.

    Full English breakfast – local butcher’s sausages, back bacon, two fried eggs, black pudding, fried potatoes, toast, coffee. Or steak and potatoes if FEB isn’t available.

    Walking tour including local architecture, industrial, religious and civic. A lot of pointing at ceilings and mulling over the fact that we’re lucky we don’t have to work in those conditions at the mill/ mine/ factory/ farm that is now a working museum.

    Lunch is fish and chips by the sea, where the kids have joined us after a morning shopping. There is a magic seagull exclusion zone so we can eat them undisturbed and the chippy has saveloy for Mrs S.

    Afternoon at a bookshop where you can get lost among the shelves, the type Terry Pratchett described as ‘a genteel black hole that can read’. Someone magically comes and takes our books and other purchases back to the hotel for us.

    Coffee and cake (fruit cake or tiffin) to tide us over.

    Evening session at an observatory or other science museum where we will again do a lot of pointing at stuff and talk about science and the like.

    Late dinner. Italian restaurant overlooking a scorched valley in Tuscany, the evening has cooled enough that we can eat comfortably, but a cold Peroni or three is welcome. I’m not driving, so what the hell. A selection of charcuterie to start, then something involving gnocchi, a spicy pizza and gelato for dessert.

    After dinner, stand up comedy at an upstairs cellar with acts I’ve never seen before but leaving me exhausted with laughter. The fortifying pint of Guinness at the interval will see me through.

    A couple of whiskies as a nightcap. Something floral for preference, a Speyside single malt or a selection of whiskies from around the world.

    Then bed.

  • Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

    Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

    His most satisfying novel is now a Penguin Modern Classic

    As long-term fans of Terry Pratchett (see previous post), the publication of his 29th Discworld novel “for adults of all ages”, Night Watch, was eagerly anticipated in the Steele household. It was published in 2002, a year of changes for us. I finished my PhD that year and secured a placement at Monash University as a post-doc researcher in the Victorian College of Pharmacy1. Mrs S had been headhunted by a mortgage company late in the year, but had to turn it down to move to Australia. We also had our kitchen re-done that year. We completed the work the day before we left the country.

    By the time Night Watch was released we had got into the habit of buying the hardbacks for each other on birthdays and Christmases. If Mrs S bought one for me she would be impatiently waiting for me to finish. I’m a slow reader.

    All the little angels rise up, rise up…

    Twenty-three years down the line I’ve no idea who bought who our copy. But from the first line, we knew it was a good ‘un.

    Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but finished shaving before he did anything about it.

    After a brief interview with an apprentice assassin who’s fallen into a cesspit (the source of the scream), flowering lilac reminds Sam of the date – 25th May – the day when the Republic of Treacle Mine Road is commemorated. It went out of his head, what with his wife, Lady Sybil, due to give birth any time soon.

    We get reacquainted with The Watch in this, the sixth novel in the sub-series. The fortunes of the watch have improved beyond recognition since “Guards! Guards!”2. We meet the main players at a graveyard where they privately remember the fallen of the Glorious 25th May. One of the gravestones bears the name ‘John Keel’, which sits among five other graves (one of which is normally empty, but Reg Shoe, now a zombie and officer of The Watch, buries himself in solidarity with the other fallen).

    But official remembrance of the fallen has to wait. A serial cop-killer, Carcer Dun, has been spotted. A rooftop chase ends by the library of the Unseen University, the most concentrated region of magic in the Discworld. Lightning strikes Vimes and Carcer, sending them back in time 30 years.

    Faced with being unknown and out of time, Vimes adopts the identity of John Keel, the sergeant who trained Vimes as a young watchman. The real Keel has been murdered by Carcer, the first change to the timeline and an event that the History Monk Lu-Tze3 spends the novel trying to rectify. Carcer, having falling in with pre-Guild thieves, is soon established as a sergeant in the city’s secret police, the Cable Street Particulars (aka The Unmentionables).

    What follows is a mix of social commentary, Les Misérables, philosophical musings on what to do if you meet your younger self (other than be shocked at what a twerp you were), fun with an ox and a piece of ginger, a new spin on the expression ‘Look after yourself’, and, finally, the way home.

    How do they rise up, rise up?

    This isn’t his funniest book. That’s a toss up between Witches Abroad and Last Continent4. Too much humour would have been out of place in a book where political corruption culminates in the assassination of the city Patrician, where we witness the intense loneliness of Sam in his home city but 30 years away from his current life, and where a torture chamber is unearthed that makes watchmen vomit.

    We also get a timely reminder of an earlier Pratchett aphorism that it’s not only the cream that rises to the top in society.

    But there is gallows humour and the sort of social observation we love in Pratchett’s work. The use of old ladies as psychological warfare, the topology of a revolutionary state (if there’s more of the city inside our barricades than outside, that makes us the majority) and how seamstresses differ from needlewomen.

    They rise up arse up, arse up high!

    Eleven years after his death and just after what would have been his 77th birthday, Night Watch has been published as a Penguin Modern Classic. As such, it joins the ranks of Brideshead Revisited, The IPCRESS File and Nineteen Eighty Four.

    This new edition has a new cover – rather than Paul Kidby’s pastiche of Rembrandt’s Night Watch5, we get a black and white version of the original. This is a rare example of the cover art determining the title. The working title was “The Nature of the Beast”, but when Kidby visited Pratchett and showed him the painting (Kidby’s first for the series), Terry changed the title to reflect this wonderful artwork.

    Comparison of the original cover (left) and the cover for the Penguin Modern Classic edition of Night Watch.
    Comparison of the original Paul Kidby cover (left) and the cover for the Penguin Modern Classic edition of Night Watch. Kidby’s original features characters from the book, including Sam Vimes, Sam Vimes, Nobby, Lu-Tze, Havelock Vetinari and Reg Shoe (pre-zombie).

    The cynical part of me suggests that this cover art is more fitting for serious readers to be seen with. It must be a proper book because it has a black and white image on the cover. Either that or a bold abstract design, because one can’t be seen reading fantasy, can one?

    The new edition has notes and annotations to contextualise the novel. I’ve not seen a copy yet, but the authors of the notes are known Pratchett fans. One even nominated Terry for an honorary doctorate at the University of Dublin.

    I don’t know how many new Pratchett readers this new edition with generate. It is a rare author who can blend satire, fantasy and properly good jokes. And despite – or perhaps because – Sir Terry was, for a time, the best selling author in the UK, there is still an element of sneering at fantasy and science fiction from some quarters, especially when it’s funny. It may be that Pratchett is seen as putting a hat on a hat – he should have written fantasy, or comedy, not both.

    I don’t really care. I’ve never been personally mocked or attacked for reading Pratchett, and it’s likely that I would never have got to know Mrs S were I not a fan. All praise to the Republic of Treacle Mine Road!

    Tea towel from The Discworld Emporium commemorating the main event of the novel Night Watch
    The motto of the Republic of Treacle Mine Road: Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love and a Hard-Boiled Egg.

    1. ‘Victorian’ as in the Australian state Victoria. Not ‘Victorian’ as in men in tweeds with handlebar moustaches riding penny-farthings. Though that remains the image I have in my mind whenever I hear the phrase ‘Victorian Police’. ↩︎
    2. This includes the presence of the troll Detritus, who we first met in “Guards! Guards!” working as a splatter (“like a bouncer, but trolls use more force.”) then in “Moving Pictures” as hired muscle. His transformation from animate rock to respected Sergeant in the City Watch is the most remarkable character growth in the series. He’s truly a renaissance troll. ↩︎
    3. Six thousand year old monk, practitioner of déjà fu, devotee of The Way of Mrs Cosmopolite. He was a main character in Thief of Time; first seen in Small Gods. ↩︎
    4. Inevitably, this is a personal opinion and subject to change depending on how recently I’ve read them and which bits Mrs S and I have quoted to each other. ↩︎
    5. Officially, the painting is called The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, but that’s much harder to fit on the cover of a novel. ↩︎
  • Terry Pratchett GNU

    Terry Pratchett GNU

    Today is the tenth anniversary of Terry Pratchett’s death.

    We knew it was coming, but it wasn’t any easier.

    I read The Colour of Magic just after it came out in paperback in 1985. There was a very favourable review in White Dwarf, I may have borrowed my brother’s copy before splashing out a few quid on my own copy. I’d enjoyed Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series (lightly parodied in CoM) and read the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series a year before. Conan/ Hrun the barbarian was a trope I knew and I had probably seen Schwarzenegger in the film. I later learned that Bel-Shamharoth was a parody of the Cthulu mythos. I have tried to read Lovecraft, but I can’t get on with him. Just get on with the story, already.

    By the time I went to Uni in ’89 there were seven Discworld books. Pyramids, detailing Pteppic’s time at the Assassin’s Guild (modelled on public schools) in the first part had come out, not long after I’d tried (and failed) to read Tom Brown’s Schooldays. This was unrelated to Pratchett – I’d read the available Flashman books and thought I’d try the original. This did nothing to assuage my antipathy towards Victorian literature, which was based on having to drudge through Oliver Twist for O level English. I also have issues with books set in public schools – by brother loved the Jennings books, I was never keen.

    Anyway, I was a fan of his work and bought the paperbacks when they came out and I could afford them. I also came across The Unadulterated Cat and, by chance, Good Omens in hardback at the irresistible price of £8.95. I was in Quiggin’s in Liverpool, looking for cheap clothes probably, and was astonished to see this for sale.

    I had no idea who this Neil Gaiman person was.

    First edition (I think) Good Omens, bought in Quiggin’s Market, Liverpool.

    Back at Loughborough, I was sharing a house with Simon, a fellow metalhead who was doing English and Drama. As is the nature of Drama types, they tended to congregate as a group. One of the group became friends with Simon’s girlfriend. Over a curry one evening, this friend and I got chatting about books and fantasy. We shared a love of Anne McCaffrey and a growing disdain for high fantasy, but she’d never read Terry Pratchett, could she borrow one?

    By the time she’d borrowed all my books, we realised that we really liked each other. So much so, that we got married, bought more Pratchett books and had two children together. But not before we got to meet him and nearly poison him with a bananana dakry.

    Pterry at Loughborough University, signing for Witches Abroad in 1992. Our friend Emma and I colluded to get him a bananana dakry which, to his credit, he drank and pretended to enjoy.

    So Pterry meant a lot to us and we were saddened by his death, although we had known it was going to happen. Not as sad as when family have died, but still upset.

    Not long after my dad died, I read “A Life With Footnotes”, Rob Wilkin’s biography of Sir Terry. My dad had had vascular dementia, which stripped him of his memory, his independence and his dignity. Reading the last part of the biography was difficult for me. Not only because of how accurately Rob described his final days and Terry’s decline, but because I was crying while reading it.

    I’m rereading A Life With Footnotes. I keep meaning to do a re-read of all the books, revisit old favourites and maybe, finally read The Shepherd’s Crown.

    But I do need to find a copy of The Unadulterated Cat.

    Original cover of The Unadulterated Cat.
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