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Desert Island Discs is a long-running BBC radio programme, in which celebrity guests are asked to pick eight records to be stuck with on a hypothetical desert island.
Terry was himself a guest on 9 September 1997, and chose the following list:
‘Symphonie Fantastique: Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath’—
Berlioz, London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Eugene Goossens.
‘Thomas the Rhymer’—Steeleye Span.
‘The Race for the Rheingold Stakes’—Bernard Miles.
‘The Marriage of Figaro: Voi che sapete’—Mozart, Petra Lang, ms; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam/Nikolaus H arnoncourt.
‘Bat out of Hell’—Meatloaf.
‘Silk Road Theme’—Kitaro.
‘Great Southern Land’—Icehouse.
‘Four Seasons: Summer’—Vivaldi, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra/Itzhak Perlman, v.
+ [p. 109] “An’ I expect you don’t even know that we happen to produce some partic’ly fine wines [...] yew bastard?”
Expresses a phenomenon known in Australia as ‘cultural cringe’—a nagging inferiority complex, based on a deep-seated suspicion that perhaps the country isn’t quite on a par with Britain or even America when it comes to “culture”—with the result that the cultural “high points” get aggressively promoted, while the regular beer and suchlike are regarded with something close to embarrassment.
+ [p. 109] “*This* is what I call a knife!’ [...] ‘No worries. This [...] is what I call a crossbow.”
Two film references for the price of one. The competitive knife-sizing is straight out of Crocodile Dundee; Mad’s move of trumping the whole issue by pulling a crossbow comes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Harrison Ford pulls a revolver on a show-off swordsman.
+ [p. 112] “Er... there’s a great big spider on the toilet seat.”
Spiders on the toilet are a big problem in Australia—it’s always worth having a good look before you sit. A small number of people per year, apparently, suffer nasty bites from redbacks (a kind of black widow) when sitting on the toilet. A mid-90s UK TV commercial for Carling Black Label (a brand of beer) showed an English tourist in Australia faced with this problem.
There is also a well-known Australian folk song that goes:
“There was a redback on the toilet seat
when I was there last night
I didn’t see him in the dark
but boy I felt his bite
And now I am in hospital
a sad and sorry plight
I curse the redback spider
on the toilet seat last night”
+ [p. 124] “Everything is so completely selfish about it.”
Possibly a reference to The Selfish Gene, a book on evolution by Richard Dawkins. The term has stuck in the current consensus about the mechanics of evolution.
+ [p. 129] “”Tie my kangaroo up”. Bloody good fong.”
Rincewind’s version of the famous Rolf Harris song ‘Tie me kangaroo down’. Of course, in Rincewind’s case, what he really wants is for someone to keep Scrappy away from him...
+ [p. 129] “[...] playing Two Up. [...] Kept bettin’ they wouldn’t come down at all.”
See the annotation for p. 200/151 of Soul Music. Back in The Colour of Magic, Rincewind witnessed a coin being tossed in the air and not coming down at all.
+ [p. 131] “The purple cart rumbled off. Painted crudely on the back were the words: Petunia, The Desert Princess.”
The scenes with Letitia, Darleen and Neilette resonate with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the 1994 movie about two transvestites and a transsexual crossing Australia in a bus.
+ [p. 133] “[...] enquiries as to whether it required something for the weekend [...]”
“Something for the weekend”, in barber’s shops up until the mid-20th century, meant ‘condoms’.
+ [p. 136] “You’re not going to say anything about woolly jumpers, are you?”
The punchline to an ancient joke about crossing a kangaroo with a sheep.
+ [p. 137] “Why Snowy? That’s an odd name for a horse.”
Because Banjo Patterson, poet and author of many fine Australian tales, wrote a narrative poem called The Man from Snowy River, telling of a man who rode a creature “something like a racehorse undersized”.
Patterson’s other writing credits include the lyrics to ‘Waltzing Matilda’, which gives him a strong claim to have invented the idea of the Australian hero, which is what the old man is trying to turn Rincewind into. See also the annotations for pp. 145, 146, 148, 170.
+ [p. 137] “Why din’t you tell him about the drop-bears over that way?”
Drop-bears are the standard story to tell gullible foreigners. Basically a sort of predatory koala that has evolved to drop, leopard-like, out of trees onto unwary (non-native) bushwalkers.
+ [p. 145] “Old Remorse says [...]”
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