Feet of Clay

1

The original working title for this book was Words in the Head.

“Feet of Clay” is a biblical reference. The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar had a dream in which he saw a statue whose head was made of gold, but lower down the statue the materials got progressively more base, until the feet were “part of iron, part of clay”; the statue was shattered and destroyed by being struck on the feet, its weakest point. Hence, colloquially, the expression “feet of clay” has come to mean that someone regarded as an idol has a hidden weakness.

[frontispiece] The mottoes and crests are mostly explained in the book, but for completeness they are:

Edward St John de Nobbes: “capite omnia” — “take it all”

Gerhardt Sock (butcher): “futurus meus est in visceris” — “my future is in the entrails”

Vetinari: “si non confectus non reficiat” — “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” (a saying popularised by Lyndon B Johnson, though possibly older)

Assassins Guild: “nil mortifice sine lucre” — “no killing without payment”

Rudolph Potts (baker): “quod subigo farinam” — “because I knead the dough”

Thieves’ Guild: “acutus id verberat” — “sharp’s the word”

Vimes family: “protego et servio” — “I protect and serve”. In the centre of the crest is the number 177, which — we learnt in Men at Arms — is Vimes’ own badge number.

2

The font used by the golems in the UK editions is clearly designed to look like Hebrew lettering. For some reason, the font used in the American editions is not.

The golem itself is a creature from Jewish mythology, a man made of clay and animated by Kabbalistic magic. The one thing it cannot do is speak, because only God can grant the power of speech.

3

One episode in the life of the golem of Prague — the best known of the mythical creatures — tells that the golem was ordered to fetch water, but never told to stop, thus causing a flood. This is very similar to (and may be borrowed from) the classic children’s story The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Der Zauberlehrling, a German poem by Goethe), also used in Disney’s classic animated film Fantasia. A spell used to animate a broom to speed housework gets out of control, leading to a frightening procession of hundreds of brooms bringing water from the well. The French composer Paul Dukas based the music on Goethe’s poem. A more direct reference appears on p. 99, and elsewhere as a sort of running joke.

4

‘Buy the farm’ is military slang for ‘die’

5

A reference to Conan Doyle’s Baker Street Irregulars. See also the entry for the City Watch in The Discworld Companion.

6

It is said (after Benjamin Franklin) that in life only two things are certain: Death and taxes. However, the line before this kicks off a running gag that demonstrates than this is really one certainty too many.

7

‘Cheery’ would fit in very well with the names of the Seven Dwarfs in the Disney Snow White film. Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, Happy, Doc and Sneezy.

8

One of the first things Sherlock Holmes tells Watson, when they first meet, is that he has written a treatise on this subject. This contrasts oddly with Vimes’ distrust of ‘clues’ in general (see the annotation {65}).

9

A running gag from Lords and Ladies: the place where the sun does not shine, on the Discworld, is a valley in Slice, near Lancre.

10

Tinkerbell via ‘clinker’, which is one type of mining by-product.

11

Echoes the anti-drugs campaign slogan ‘Just say no’, championed most famously by Nancy Reagan in America.

12

A long-running series of British commercials for a certain brand of bread emphasised the Yorkshire origins of the manufacturer. This slogan is in a parody of a Yorkshire accent, presumably for similar reasons.

13

Possibly a reference to the Australian story of The Loaded Dog.

14

There is an Australian or New Zealand species of bird (frogmouths and small brown owls, respectively) that go by the name of ‘Morepork’. And New Zealand, to a British viewpoint, are ‘some islands on the other side of the world’. Thus the morpork could be compared to the New Zealand brown owl.

15

The shield design described is the Ankh-Morpork coat of arms, not shown in the front of the book (but on the cover of Streets of Ankh-Morpork).

16

The names of the heralds are adapted from terms used in English heraldry. ‘Pursuivant’ is simply the title for an assistant herald. English pursuivants include the Rouge Croix (cf. Terry’s Croissant Rouge) and Bluemantle (Terry gives us the ‘Pardessus Chatain’ or ‘Brown Overcoat’).

Senior to the pursuivants are the kings of arms, although none really corresponds to ‘Dragon’. This has been linked with ‘Dracula’ — the most famous vampire of all — which is itself a title meaning ‘little dragon’. It also harks back to Guards! Guards!, in which a dragon actually became king of Ankh-Morpork, albeit briefly.

17

Kosher butchering involves a special method of bleeding the animal, which would ensure that there was plenty of spare blood around. The name ‘Long Hogmeat’, however, is a bit more disturbing: apart from the question of how ‘hogmeat’ could be kosher, it also sounds suspiciously like ‘long pig’, which is pidgin for ‘human flesh’.

18

1688 AD in England was the date of the ‘Glorious [bloodless] Revolution’ when the Catholic James II was deposed in favour of the Protestant Willem van Oranje, Stadholder of the Netherlands. He married Mary Stuart and became William III. “Old Stoneface”, on the other hand, is clearly modelled on Oliver Cromwell, who ruled the Commonwealth (Republic) of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland from 1652 to 1658, at one point refusing Parliament’s offer of the crown. Among his many reforms, he championed religious freedom and tolerance, extending even to Jews, who were welcome in England for the first time since 1290.

19

More Latatian. “Excretus Est Ex Altitudine” — Shat On From a Great Height; “Depositatum De Latrina” — Chucked Down The Toilet.

20

From an old nursery rhyme:

21

Uberwald (on The Discworld Mapp spelled with an umlaut over the U) is ‘Over/beyond the forest’ in German. In Latin, that’s “Transylvania” — a part of Romania traditionally associated with the undead (most prominently, Count Dracula).

22

“peace in our time” — Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, in 1938.

“an empire that will last a thousand years” — Adolf Hitler, on the Third Reich.

23

The original Apple Newton was the first PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) capable of doing this, and was even supposed to improve its recognition of the individual owner’s writing with practice. In practice, it didn’t work too well. Hence the joke:

24

In our world, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations attributes this saying to Louis XVIII.

25

This idea has been used in many detective stories, but most famously in Blade Runner, where the main character is able to blow up a reflection in a photograph far beyond plausible limits.

26

A curious method of administering poison, most famously mentioned in Hamlet.

27

Crushed glass would theoretically work as a means of killing someone, because it forms jagged edges, but in practice the pieces are always either too big to go unnoticed or too small to have any effect. Aqua fortis is nitric acid, a very fast-acting poison if ingested… Cantharides is Spanish Fly, better known as an aphrodisiac, but quite poisonous in large doses.

28

The most obvious red herring. One of the most popular theories regarding Napoleon Bonaparte’s death is that he suffered arsenic poisoning from the green colouration in the wallpaper of the bedroom of the place in which he was being held. It has been suggested that microbes, present in the humid conditions of St Helena, could absorb the poison from the wallpaper, then be inhaled by the prisoner, giving him a small dose every day. The wallpaper is green, and the pigment involved is copper arsenite, known in Napoleon’s day as “Paris Green”.

29

The equivalent in England today is called the Sealed Knot.

30

A conflation of “Roundheads” and “Ironsides”, two names for the Parliamentarian soldiers of Oliver Cromwell, clearly the model for Suffer-Not-Injustice Vimes.

31

Burke’s Peerage is a book that lists the hereditary titled nobility of the British Realm (the Peers of the Realm, hence the title of the book). It contains biographical facts such as when they were born, what title(s) they hold, who they’re married to, children, relationships to other peers, etc. For example, under ‘Westminster, Duke of’ it will give details of when the title was created, who has held it and who holds it now.

Also, ‘twerp’ and ‘berk’ (also spelt as ‘burk’) are both terms of abuse, with ‘twerp’ being relatively innocent, but with ‘berk’ coming from the Cockney rhyming slang for ‘Berkshire Hunt’, meaning ‘cunt’.

32

There’s an old joke about Abdul, who builds roads, raises cities, conquers nations, but is forever remembered as Abdul the Goat Fucker as a result of a youthful indiscretion.

33

Posts made to USENET have a header field labelled ‘Organization:’. Terry Pratchett’s own posts give this as ‘Disorganized’.

34

Curiously, Carrot seems to have taken Vimes to the Dwarf Bread museum before treating Angua to it.

35

Littlebottom, in dwarfish, is “Sh’rt’azs”. In British slang, ‘shortarse’ is a vaguely affectionate term for the vertically challenged.

36

Igneous’ shop has several parallels with a shop in the Sherlock Holmes story of The Six Napoleons.

Holmes encounters a pottery/stonework shop staffed mainly by Italians, who were also hiding out from the law and various other enemies, and is eventually asked to leave by the back door to avoid bothering the staff, which is locked with a large padlock. The figurines were also being used to conceal contraband.

Terry comments: “My flabber is ghasted. I really did think I made that one up. I mean… I had the pottery already in existence from previous books, and I knew I’d want to bring it in later so I needed a pottery scene now to introduce it, and Igneous already had a rep as an ‘ask no questions’ type of merchant, and I needed somewhere clay could be stolen and the golems would have had to break in, the padlock replacing the lock they’d busted. And I knew that I’d need a way for the Watch to put pressure on Igneous; ‘hollow items’ for drugs and other contraband is a cliché, which ought to mean that his staff are somewhat outside the law. In other words the scene is quite a complex little jigsaw piece which slots into this plot and the ongoing DW saga in various places. I’ll just have to pretend I knew what I was doing…”

37

The perfect name for an undead bar. Puns on “beer”, which you would normally associate with a tavern, and on “bier”, which you would normally associate with being dead. Also puns on Cheers, the fictional Boston tavern in the long-running US TV comedy of the same name.

38

The theme song of Cheers contains the line “sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name”.

39

From the Gershwin song ‘I Got Rhythm’: “Old Man Trouble, I don’t mind him”.

40

A very appropriate name. Argus “the all-seeing” was the name of the many-eyed watchman from Greek mythology, who was tasked by Hera to keep an eye (so to speak) on Io, a human priestess who, after her seduction by Zeus, had been transformed into a cow in an attempt to keep Hera from getting suspicious. No such luck.

41

There have been a number of suggestions for the derivation of this name. The root “ken” in Hebrew means “honest, truthful, correct”. “Cenogenesis” is a biological term meaning the development of an individual that is notably different from its group (such as happens to Dorfl in the book). Alternatively, for the atheists, there’s the “ceno” in “cenotaph”, from the Greek “kenos”, meaning “empty”.

42

Unadorned Facts and Battle Call are plays on The Plain Truth, published by the Worldwide Church of God, and War Cry, published by the Salvation Army.

43

All he golems’ names are Yiddish, and Dorfl is no exception, although I’m not too sure what his means. It could be a pun on “Stedtl”, which means “ghetto” — Stadt is German for “town”, Dorf for “village”. In Austria, ‘Dorfl’ is indeed a word used to denote a small village.

44

Or in English, ‘Judas goat’, named after the disciple who betrayed Jesus.

Judas goats are used by slaughterhouses to lead sheep to the killing floor. The sheep cannot easily be driven, but the herding instinct will make them follow the goat.

45

“Chem”, pronounced “shem”, is Hebrew for “name”.

One common euphemism used by Orthodox Jews for “God” is “Ha-Shem”, literally: “The Name”, which ties in to that part of the Golem legend which involves writing the name of God on the Golem’s forehead (the other variant has the vivifying word being “Emet” (Truth)).

46

Ending sentences with “already” is a common mannerism among Yiddish-speaking Jews in Anglophone countries. Rhetorical questions are another mainstay of Yiddish conversational style.

47

Jewish holy days do, indeed, run from sunset to sunset. Cf. Genesis 1:5: “The evening and the morning were the first day.”

48

Thomas Paine wrote a justification of the French Revolution entitled The Rights of Man

49

Another red herring. Putting poison on the pages of a book, so that it is self-administered to the reader in this way, is an idea famously used in Umberto Eco’s medieval mystery The Name of the Rose.

50

Young Men’s Pagan Association. Refers our world’s YMCA youth hostels. YMCA stands for ‘Young Men’s Christian Association’, and is often made fun of (e.g. Monthy Python and their ‘Young Men’s Anti-Christian Association’). The YMCA runs summer courses for children, and presumably for adults as well.

In our world the YMCA somehow became associated with the homosexual scene (I think quite a few people singing merrily along to the Village People’s disco hit ‘YMCA’ would have been very surprised to learn what the song was really about), hence the “studded collars and oiled muscles” bit.

51

From the phrase noblesse oblige, meaning “rank imposes certain obligations”.

52

Another Old Testament reference.

Esau sold his status as Abraham’s firstborn son to his brother Jacob (Genesis 25:29–34) for a bowl of stew (pottage). Hence, a mess of pottage is the proverbial price of a birthright. This phrase was parodied by CS Lewis, who accused H. G. Wells of selling his birthright for “a pot of message” (that is, abandoning the purely imaginative books he did so well to push his political ideas).

53

Iago would rather be robbed than slandered in Othello, act 3, scene 3:

54

The copper within days or hours of retirement has become a police movie cliché; traditionally, anyone who starts talking like this is likely to die within the short time left. Two examples occur in the films Lethal Weapon 2 and Falling Down.

55

Another golem name: “Zhlob” is Yiddish for “boorish glutton” (or gluttonous boor). Probably Slavic in origin.

56

Terry used this joke in a talk at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1994, but he was talking about a shift charge engineer in a nuclear power plant…

The standard analytical technique to prove arsenic in chemical mixtures involves mixing the sample with zinc and adding sulphuric acid. If arsenic is present, this produces arsenic hydride as a gas; burning the gas, and holding the flame against a cool porcelain surface, leaves a black precipitation of metallic arsenic.

57

Refers to the regrettable trend among software producers to inflict a happy Thought For The Day on their users each time they open the software.

58

In Daniel Pinkwater’s book Lizard Music a major character is the Chicken Man, an apparently homeless man who walks around with a chicken perched on his head (under a hat). The Chicken Man is a lot more together than The Duck Man — he periodically does little street shows featuring the chicken, who does tricks. According to Pinkwater, the Chicken Man was based on a real person who lived in Chicago.

59

One of the truly frequently asked questions on alt.fan.pratchett is “Where does this phrase come from?” (Foul Ole Ron also uses it, in Soul Music.)

The answer concerns Terry’s experiments with computer-generated texts:

“It was a program called Babble, or something similar. I put in all kinds of stuff, including the menu of the Dragon House Chinese take-away because it was lying on my desk. The program attempted to make ‘coherent’ phrases (!) out of it all.”

One of the other things Terry must have fed it were the lyrics to the song ‘Particle Man’ by They Might Be Giants:

60

A dybbuk, in Jewish mythology, is a demonic spirit that possess the body of someone living.

61

From Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Act 3. Although it can’t be easy to see the stars through all that fog.

62

Terry is challenging the Sherlock Holmes school of detection as being “an insult to the glorious variety of human life.” P G Wodehouse does the same in one of his Psmith stories, in which Psmith observes the local plumber sitting in his garden, dressed well because it’s Sunday and reading Shakespeare because he likes it, while Psmith is studying the “How To Detect” booklet that says a plumber is unlikely to dress well/read Shakespeare.

63

Another dig at Holmes, who said precisely this.

64

The description of Vetinari’s drawing matches the cover of the original publication of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, possibly the most influential work of mainstream political theory.

The book argues that for people to come together in a society, they cannot help but create a structure larger than themselves, which must have a controlling intelligence of its own, i.e. some sort of governing body. Hence, although political power derives from the common people, it must be superior to them.

65

See the annotation {28}.

A number of people also wrote to say that they were reminded of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892), about a woman who is indeed driven mad by wallpaper.

66

Alberich the dwarf forges the Ring that is the centrepiece of Wagner’s interminable Ring Cycle, based on Norse legend. Tolkien uses the same source, and his One Ring is not unlike Alberich’s.

67

See the annotation {49}.

68

This is another multidirectional pun. First, in German, the word for ‘council chamber’ is Ratskammer. Second, it’s an anagram of Star Chamber, a special civil and criminal court in England. Created by Henry VII in 1487, abolished by the Long Parliament in 1641 following abuses under James I and Charles I. The court took its name from a star-shaped decoration in the ceiling.

The decoration in the ceiling of the Rats Chamber — a group of rats with their tails tied together — is called a rat king. According to Maarten ’t Hart, in Rats (translated from the Dutch), some 57 rat kings have been found since the 17th century, although several are of dubious authenticity. They are often found alive, and can contain as few as three or as many as 32 members, although seven is the commonest number. Members are of both sexes, and almost always of the same age group, which may be young or adult. Rat kings are generally formed of black rats (Rattus rattus), although there is one occurrence of field rats (found in Java) and several of squirrels. No-one knows quite why they form, although one theory is that black rats (which have longer and more pliable tails than other breeds) get something sticky on their tails, and get tangled up when they groom each other, or while playing or fighting.

Apparently, a modern artist decided to make a work of art depicting a rat-king, and even put it on the internet. See Katharina Fritsch: Rat-King (Rattenkoenig), 1993 http://www.diacenter.org/exhibs/fritsch/ratking (which also has an essay on the rat king through history).

69

“Mrs Palm(er) and her daughters” is a euphemism for male masturbation.

70

Caligula, Emperor of Rome from 37 to 41 AD, famously appointed his horse Incitatus as Consul to show his contempt for the Senate.

71

Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte, 1763–1844, was a French general who became King Karl XIV John of Sweden and Norway. The youngest son of a French lawyer, Bernadotte joined the French army in 1780, becoming an officer in 1792, during the French Revolution. Recognising his brilliance in the field, the Emperor Napoleon eventually elevated him to the rank of prince. In Sweden, where Gustav IV had abdicated (1809) and been succeeded by the childless Karl XIII, Napoleon supported Bernadotte as heir to the throne. In August 1810, he was elected crown prince as Karl John. In 1813 he joined the allies against Napoleon.

72

Another parallel between Omnianism and Christianity. See Matthew 5:5.

73

Similar to Stargazy pie, a Cornish dish that has fish heads poking through the pastry all around the edge of the dish.

74

This phrase relates to the act of distempering a wall — another oblique hint at the wallpaper theory.

75

The expression “cooking with gas” dates back to an advertising campaign designed to persuade people of the advantages of gas over electricity.

76

In the movie Top Gun, the pilots boast that they ‘feel the need; the need for speed.’

77

By the time Vimes has this idea (see the annotation {28}), he already knows enough to dismiss it in fairly short order.

78

The joke as adapted by thee goode folkes of

alt.fan.pratchett

This Klatchian walked into a pub carrying a small piano. He puts in on the bar and has a few drinks. When it comes time to pay up he says to the publican, “I bet you double or nothing I can show you the most amazing thing you ever saw.”

“Okay, but I warn you, I’ve seen some weird stuff.”

The Klatchian takes out a tiny stool, which he sits in front of the piano. He then reaches into his robes and pulls out a box, about a foot long, with tiny air-holes in it. He takes off the lid and inside is a tiny man, fast asleep. As the lid opens he wakes up. Instantly he jumps to the piano and plays a perfect rendition of ‘The Shades of Ankh-Morpork’! Then, as everyone in the bar is clapping, he jumps back into the box and closes the lid.

“Wow!” The publican says, and wipes the slate clean. “If I give you another drink, could you do it again?” The Klatchian agrees. This time the little man plays the Hedgehog song, to thunderous applause.

“I gotta ask, where did you get that?”

“Well, a few months ago I was travelling across the deserts of Klatch, when I suddenly came across a glass bottle. I picked it up and rubbed it and lo and behold, out popped a Genie. For some reason it was holding a curved bone to his ear and talking to it.”

“‘Genie,’ I said to him, ‘I have freed you, and in return I ask only three wishes.’”

“‘Huh?’ The genie said, looking at me for the first time. ‘Oh, OK, three, whatever.’ He then started talking to the bone again.”

“‘Genie, I would like a million bucks!’ I said to him.”

“Did you get it?”

“Not exactly. The genie kept talking to the bone and he waved one of his hands. Instantly, I was surrounded by a million ducks. Then they flew away.”

“What was your second wish?”

“I said to him: ‘I want to be the ruler the world!’ the Genie was still talking to his bone, but he waved his free hand and a piece of wood appeared, with inches marked on it.”

“Oh, a ruler. It sounds like the genie wasn’t paying much attention. Did you get your third wish?”

“Let me put it like this: do you really think I asked for a twelve-inch pianist?”

79

Another Yiddish name, from Hebrew, meaning ‘crazy’.

80

Most correspondent feel that the “extreme cases” are exactly the kind that the heroes of the television series The A-Team for years encountered on an almost weekly basis.

81

Moses parted the sea to allow the Israelites to escape the pursuing Egyptian army, who were then all killed when the seas collapsed on top of them… (Exodus 14:21–30)

82

Parodies how people introduce themselves at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous.

83

The monster breaking into pieces and then reassembling itself is probably best known from Terminator 2, but there are earlier references. In The Iron Man by Ted Hughes (1968) the iron man/robot falls over the edge of a cliff and breaks into many pieces. The fingers put the hands together then they pick up an eye and start putting the rest of the body together.

84

…unless, of course, you want a small fireball. This trick is used in the 1959 film The League of Gentlemen.

85

See the annotation {4}.

86

Although there are a few fictional uses of this method of poisoning, Terry himself explains that his source was an “attempt on the life of Leopold I, Emperor of Austria, in 1671, which was foiled when the alchemist Francesco Borri checked up on the candles. He found the candles in the bedchamber were heavier than similar candles elsewhere and found that two and a half pounds of arsenic has been added to the batch.”

87

Catchphrase from the Dixon of Dock Green TV series.

88

… whose letter Carrot read way back on p. 108, where he gives his address as Park Lane. Kings Down is a short walk away along Long Wall. Presumably they are on the same beat.

89

Contrary to popular belief, the saying “Today is a good day to die!” was not invented by Klingons. It’s a traditional Siouxan/Lacotah battle-cry.

90

In Robocop 2, our hero (Robo) jumped on the back of the ‘Robocop 2’ and tried to open its head.

91

The way the king golem is driven mad by the number of rules in its head reminded many people of a scene in Robocop 2, where Robocop is rendered useless by programming with several, partly conflicting rules. This slightly tenuous connection is reinforced by several further similarities between Dorfl and Robocop.

Never mind Robocop, however: one correspondent has posited that the entire candle factory sequence is a clever amalgam of the endings to both Terminator movies. I will let him explain this to you in his own words — I couldn’t bring myself to paraphrase or edit it down:

“The candle factory itself, with all the candle production lines is reminiscent of the robotics in the automated factory that Reese activates to confuse the Terminator. Throughout the candle factory scene, Carrot is Reese, Angua is Sarah Connor, the king switches between the original T-800 when fighting Carrot and the T-1000 from T2 when fighting Dorfl, who is the ‘good’ Terminator from T2.

Carrot is shot early on and has to be dragged around initially by Angua, much like the injured Reese has to be supported by Sarah. The following fight between Dorfl and the king is similar to the big T2 confrontation between the two Terminators, in which one of the combatants is able to ‘repair’ himself and thus has an advantage. When Dorfl is ‘killed’, his red eyes fade out just like a T-800s, but he is later able to come back to life. The T-800 achieves this by rerouting power through undamaged circuitry; Dorfl does it by getting the words from elsewhere (heart as opposed to head).

In T1, Reese finds a metal bar and tries to fight an opponent he can’t possibly beat — exactly as Carrot does. When Angua finds herself facing the injured king, it is similar to the scene in T1 after Reese’s death, when the torso of the Terminator pulls itself along after the injured Sarah, grabbing at her legs (which the king also does to Angua). Then, Detritus’ shot at the king, which has no effect, is like Sarah’s last stand against the T-1000, when she runs out of ammo just at the crucial point. When it appears that the seemingly invincible king has survived everything and is about to finish the job and kill Carrot, the thought-to-be-dead Dorfl makes a last-gasp interjection which finally kills the king — much like the resurrected Arnie appears just in time to kill the T-1000 in T2. Oh, and finally, the molten tallow that Cheery almost falls into is, of course, the molten metal at the end of T2.”

92

From the 70s TV series The Six Million Dollar Man: “We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

93

Another echo of Robocop.

94

Another parallel between Omnianism and Christianity. See Genesis 2:7. (In fact, the idea of God as a potter and humans as clay is a recurring metaphor in the Bible. See, e.g., Job 33:6, Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:6.)

95

Parallels a famous saying of Voltaire (1694–1778): “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

96

The first two of these were also the first two of Robocop’s prime directives.

97

Terry himself describes what he envisages happening next:

“While I wasn’t planning to feature this in another book, I suspect the sequence of events, given Dorfl’s character, would run like this:

I want more golems on the city payroll. How else can they resurrect the fire service?”

The names of the golems, again, are Yiddish. “Klutz” — a clumsy clod or bungler (from German); “Bobkes” — beans, but only metaphorically; something worthless or nonsensical (from Russian); “Shmata” — a rag, or piece of cloth; used both literally and to describe a person of weak character (from Polish).

98

Rhyming slang: china plate — mate, friend.

99

Another Robocop line.

100

However, Dorfl has just told Vimes that he will never be off duty…