'I stared Death in the face'

6:03am Monday 30th April 2007

Last Christmas, Discworld creator Terry Pratchett saw his cult creation.s first ever live-action adaptation in Sky one's Hogfather. Now as the DVD is relased, he tells Jo Walker why he thinks his alternative universe holds such appeal.

With 50 million copies of his Discworld books sold, fantasy writer Terry Pratchett has a lot of fans. They hold conventions, go to book signings and like asking questions. The most popular query? "When's the next book coming out," Terry sighs.

"It's a bit depressing really - the ink is hardly dry on the paper, you haven't actually banked the cheque and so, with the new book in their hand they say 'Right, when's the next book coming out?'.

"The one an author really likes is 'are there any more in the pipeline?'. I swear that one day I shall thump the table and say, 'there is no pipeline! There's this guy sitting, banging his head on the computer screen, trying to finish this book'."

Having written 40 Discworld books (and counting), Terry can hardly be accused of begrudging his fans their favourite reads. But despite describing himself as an "old curmudgeon" - and owning up to the occasional silent burst of exasperation at the seemingly bottomless pit of reader demand - the author has a genuine fondness for those who share his love of the Discworld, the alternative universe he describes as "what Middle Earth would be like 500 years later if things evolved like they did here". And his fans can be found everywhere.

"There's this old thing about fantasy being something that's read by 14-year-old boys, as if actually that's quite wrong," Terry says. "Half the population can't help the fact they're male and if you're 14 years old, well, you grow out of it in 12 months.

"But my readership now is just everywhere. Even British Airways flight attendants have turned out to be fans and if you can crack that I think you can get anywhere. Or when I was in the States a few weeks ago, the Department of Homeland Security guy turned out to be a fan and was nice enough to tell me whilst fingerprinting me - as you do."

A slightly more anxious airport incident occurred a couple of months back in Australia. Flying into Melbourne for the country's first Discworld conference, Terry had a run-in with Australia's notoriously tough customs officials.

After the usual run of 'did you pack this bag yourself', and, 'are you aware of Australia's policies regarding the importation of plant and animal matter', the guards asked him to explain the contents of a sealed plastic bag in his luggage. What was inside? Teeth. Lots and lots of plastic teeth from the set of Discworld's first live-action screen adaptation, Hogfather - the story of how Death comes to impersonate Santa after an attempted assassination attempt involving the Tooth Fairy's castle.

"I got the impression they're used to all kinds of weird stuff," Terry says of his brush with Australian officialdom.

You'd think by now he would be too - his is, after all, the imagination that's brought us teetotal vampires, cross-dressing dwarves and witches battling fairy godmothers (the witches are the good ones, by the way). But on the set of Hogfather, it was another thing entirely.

"I have a very small role and I play the little old toy shop owner whose job it is to look absolutely terrified at the fact that Death is standing in front of him, which was not difficult because there was Marnix (Van Den Broeke, who animated Death's robe and skull) - I think he was six foot six anyway and he'd got built-up shoes - so you're looking at the better part of a seven foot tall Grim Reaper, with glowing blue eyes.

"Seeing a figment of your imagination standing in front of you is bad enough, but out of camera this little hand came out of the robe and gave me a thumbs up. And that came close to freaking me out, but it certainly achieved the effect - I looked suitably scared."

It's almost 25 years now since the first Discworld book hit the shelves, and while there have been some animations of the series, this was the first time real actors on a real film set had taken on an adaptation.

Terry is understandably protective of his creation, and has rebuffed other approaches before - the last thing he wants is a Hollywood-style blockbuster.

"What I thought about it when it came up was, I'm pretty certain that these people are going to make a version of Hogfather that's going to be reasonably true to the book and they have got in movie terms an incredibly low budget but they seem to be very ingenious and I'm absolutely certain that there aren't going to be any car chases in it," he laughs.

"That's the thing that you have to watch out for: when someone suggests they really like it but it would be a lot better if it could be set in LA in the present day and have a car chase, and somehow that just wouldn't have worked with Hogfather."

Pre-Harry Potter, massively popular fantasy fiction was a pretty lonely genre. And while Terry claims a certain amount of bemusement at the phenomenon his books have become, he's on solid ground explaining their attraction as a writer.

"It gives me a couple of different colours in the paintbox I would say. That's what fantasy does - you get everything, so I can write cop novels, I can write murder mysteries, I can write romances. But they're all like I used to say - put in one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer," he says, chuckling.

Ask the same infuriating 'pipeline' question Terry gets at conventions and book shop appearances and you'll get a laugh in response - and the information that his new novel, Making Money, has just been sent to the publisher. The Discworld juggernaut, and the man that created it, show no signs of slowing down just yet.

But what does the author make of the alternative reality that's given him and his readers so much? It's a nice place, he says, but you wouldn't want to live there.

"Would I actually live in Discworld? No, because it's made up by me.

"It would be too much of a job. And people would come along and bang on my door and smash my windows.

"No, I'm very clear - it's a lot of fun and for a few hours it's a nice place to visit, but this is where I eat and sleep."

Hogfather is released on DVD, priced £19.99 as a two-disc DVD boxset and £24.99 for a limited collector edition