Meeting Terry Pratchett

In the world of wizards, witches and even Death, Sir Terry Pratchett commands enormous sales figures as creator of the Discworld novels. Going Postal, Sky’s newest action-packed two-part adaptation of the colourful world of Ankh-Morph, is the reason Sir Terry is sitting before an array of journalists in a smartly upholstered room in The Soho Hotel, London.

Dressed in black, wearing his trademark black fedora hat and wire-rimmed spectacles, sporting a neatly trimmed grey beard and earlier preceded by a chicken Caesar salad — which remains under its silver domed lid waiting to be eaten — he’s every inch the fantasy superstar.

But, even having sold more than 55 million books, Terry remains capable of remarkable discoveries. ‘Seventy per cent of my fans appear to be women,’ he states.

We, the journalists interviewing the man rapidly approaching ‘national treasure’ status, hold our collective breaths. ‘I say appear to be,’ he corrects himself. ‘Nearly all my fans who are women are women, I’m fairly sure.’

The elephant has just entered the room, for the balding bespectacled author isn’t just a Knight Bachelor, rewarded for his ‘services to literature’. Terry Pratchett is the public face of Alzheimer’s in Britain, a man who three months after his own diagnosis donated almost half a million pounds to the Alzheimer’s Research Trust. Is his inability to tell the sex of his readers an example of posterior cortical atrophy, the rare form of the disease Terry has been diagnosed with and which he has referred to as an ‘embuggerance’?

Apparently not. Although the disease’s progress has meant that the 62 year old no longer trusts himself to drive and has handed back his license, can’t type and now dictates his books, and is sometimes confused finding his way out of the gents, life is continuing. Largely this is due to what Terry refers to as ‘work arounds’, or systems he’s devised that make sense of his changing world.

‘I can talk my book,’ he explains. ‘Because my general style is conversational anyway, it generally works. Talking to a computer is actually more natural.’

Some things are not natural, however, and one of these was his cameo at the end of the two-part adaptation, something which was insisted upon by the powers that be producing his book.

‘It took six takes to walk across a room,’ he remembers, grimacing. ‘Charles Dance was watching me with a smile as I went through the learning curve. I went up to him afterwards and said, “Never mind Charles. When you write a novel I shall help you with the first chapter!”’

Terry, who lives in Buckinghamshire with his wife of 31 years Lyn, describes himself as happily married. He’s so happily married that in one instance, when approached by a young lady who he discreetly describes as ‘wanting to make my acquaintance’, he made his excuses and went and bought a compost thermometer.

‘I thought, “Crikey — a compost thermometer! I’m the most married man in the world,”’ he laughs. ‘I felt like I’d let the male side down.’

To tell the truth, there’s little that is disappointing about Terry, apart from the fact that life for him, his family and his fans will definitely change. At some stage he won’t be able to continue writing and will disappear into a world controlled by his biology, but not by him. Nevertheless, he retains his sense of humour, even after a long day of fielding questions from the press about himself, his new programme and his future.

‘I think the disease will be conquered, although one expert said we can only conquer Alzheimer’s by conquering death. On the whole I’m not certain that’s the best deal the human race can get.'

By Linda Gibson