DEATH comes to us all, he offered Mort a job but the bastard took Terry with him!

Sad days all round as Sir DiscWorld left us after a long struggle with Alzheimer's.

It's been an odd couple of weeks. My own personal life has had the odd blip with some fairly naff family news involving, oddly enough, Alzheimer's and Asperger’s looming large, an exam I was stressing over (with no need, as it turned out) and some show business people being professionally arsey. And one of my literary favourites, another one, left us.

I read my first Pratchett completely by accident, buying a copy of Dark Side of the Sun to see me through a train journey to that London. It turned out to be one of the best Sci Fi books I'd red, so I looked for more and found Strata, still, to me, one of the best Sci Fi books I've read and obviously the seed for the DiscWorld. Both books screamed Pratchett's disdain for so much of what makes up out so-called civilisation ad the oceans of hypocrisy and unfairness that runs through it. Kin Arad is still my fave TP creation. Rincewind, the Luggage and DEATH come a joint second though.

I won't go on about the content; every reader will have his or her own, unique, relationship with the DiscWorld and the ever-moving forwardness of it. Have a debate with any one of them (us, maybe) about the representation of the Patrician and how he illustrates [insert your own ideology here]. No, this isn't about wot he rote at all. Neil Gaiman once said that Sir Tel wasn't a cute little old man telling tales, but that he was angry as hell about everything. I think that shines out in his tales. Sadly I never got to meet the an but all who did said he was a 'good bloke', always ready with a witty or pithy phrase, happy to meet the people who made him rich and liked him and so on. I saw his documentary on taking ones own life and it moved me to streams of tears, and I still would like to think it will happen; that one day we will have mastery over our own exit.

It has left me, however, bloody annoyed. It's less than a year and a half since my all-time favourite author was nicked by DEATH, Iain Banks. Another advocate for equality and being able to architect ones own exit and, in my mind, the finest SciFi writer this country has produced. There was a decent interval between Douglas Adams and these two but honestly I have no idea what I'm going to be reading now. Yes, the loss of others brings out our own, terrible, selfishness. I imagine I'll get by, somehow.

So it was with interest that I earned of the situation regarding Jeremy Clarkson. now JC has a tremendous worldwide following. The popularity of Top Gear is unchallenged in its genre. I know Game of Thrones is the most downloaded telly in the quadrant but the brouhaha over JC and the Cold Meat Platter has been extraordinary. I'm sure that everyone knows, if they care that much, many don't, about the alleged this and that and I'm sure it'll all come out in the wash (although as it's the BBC wash I still suspect whatever remains of the garment when it's removed will be a soiled grey).

As you might imagine, social media has been alive with pro and anti-Clarkson rhetoric with arguments put forward on both sides as to the reasons why, and why not, JC should be re-instated or burnt as the anti-Christ. I found myself included in a twitter thread about the popularity of Top Gear, with someone posting that it was 'the most popular show on BBC2, when Robert Llewellyn (Kryten in the ever popular Red Dwarf) making a statement about Red Dwarf being the most watched show, ever, on BBC2. I made a throwaway remark about the tense of this statement; was, not is, and was subjected to a three day long bombardment of, largely, piss-taking nonsense, from another member of the cast. All this because Red Dwarf holds the record for the highest audience figures, 8 and a bit million, for one episode. TG has a worldwide audience of some 350 million and brings in more money and is in competition with far more channels than Red Dwarf had to contend with in its day.

Whatever, statistics apart my pint was that Top Gear is the most popular show BBC2 has, had, to date. My problem is that the two cast members in their robotic mewling about my statement of relative popularity began treating me as if I'd said their program was rubbish, with this petulant post from one of the cast topping the list of rubbish responses;

"Let’s kill this once and for all. It’s boring. No one ever watched Red Dwarf, ever. No one.”

It would seem that one is not allowed to like two popular programs that one always has to be superior to the other in the most extreme way.

The fragility of the ego is a topic often covered in Sir Terry's world but I find it hard to imagine him arguing that if you liked a book by another author, who may or may not be more popular than he, that you would be calling him rubbish.

I shall, no doubt, return to Ankh Morpork regularly, mow that there are to be no more sojourns into the mind of maker. There is a hole where the DiscWorld used to be. I won't miss the Long Earth series one bit though. Sorry Sir Tel!