I bought the bundle of glory that is an iPod Touch a while back and, having no music I wanted but unable to resist the urge to blag something from the iTunes store due to New Toy Syndrome (a condition that also explains why I own this), I downloaded the audiobook version of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. It had an unfortunate narcoleptic effect on me - nothing to do with the book itself, which is fantastic, but something more akin to a bedtime story. I’d press play and be depositing drool down my t-shirt within ten minutes, which made listening to it on the bus something of a gamble. It was also a bugger that, naturally, it would carry on playing after I’d dozed off and I’d wake up with no idea where I’d got to, and have to rewind randomly until I heard a bit I recognised. The next software update better include a snore-recognition capability or I’m having words (I’d settle for an saliva triggered auto-off).

Anyway, a combination of 8 hours sleep a night and placing Anna under strict instructions to prod me every 9 minutes and 30 seconds sorted it and I finished Small Gods, and decided I liked this reading-without-having-to-read malarky. So much so that I bought another Pratchett book, Reaper Man, and immediately hit a stumbling block that can be summed up like so - Sergeant Colon is not Irish. I don’t care if someone can produce a quote from Guards! Guards! that starts “Sergeant Colon, his strong brogue evoking the rolling hills of the Emerald Isle,” the man is not bloody Irish. Except that Nigel Planer, the audiobook reader (and, yes, Neil from the Young Ones), thinks he is, and voices him accordingly. He also gives the Bursar a speech impediment, maintains a doddery old voice for Windle Poons even after his undeadening and gives Mustrum Ridcully a soft, posh voice entirely unsuited to bellowing at things he doesn’t understand. It is, any right-thinking person will agree, a series of outrages that simply will not stand (Miss Flitworth is wrong, too, all reedy and shrill). EDIT: I should add that the voice acting for Small Gods is really good - Vorbis in particular is perfect, and giving Didactylos a Scottish accent works, somehow. Not sure about Om, mind you, especially when *SPOILER* he keeps the same grouchy old man voice even after everyone starts believing again.

It’s unavoidable, I suppose - the reader has to distinguish between speakers somehow, and avoid droning. And it’s hardly new, as anybody who’s ever watched a film adaptation and howled (f’r'instance) “Is that fucking pleb supposed to be Batman?!” can attest. It’s pretty much put me off buying any more Discworld novels though, I’m not sure I want to know what Carrot or Gaspode the Wonder Dog sound like. Anyway, silver linings and all that - it gives me more free time to write pointless blog posts.