Small Beginnings

If trouble comes knocking, be out.When your very existence is treason, employment opportunities are thin on the ground. But when one of the biggest crime lords in the city makes The Pan of Hamgee a job offer he can’t refuse, it’s hard to tell what the dumbest move is: accepting the offer or saying no to Big Merv. Neither will do much for The Pan’s life expectancy.Short(ish) listen at 2hrs 20mins.Approximate film rating, PG.ASK THE AUTHORQ – More K'Barthan stuff. Is there a reason for that?A – Yeh, there is logic in my madness. I get a lot of requests for it and at the time I started this series, doing some shorter, simpler books about characters I already know fitted neatly into my lifestyle. In Unlucky Dip, our hero meets Big Merv for the first time and manages to avoid being concreted into a motorway support: but only in return for working for him as a gofer. The main series of novels starts a year or so after that. People wrote to me asking me what The Pan got up to in that year as a gofer. So ... I thought I'd tell them!Q – What influenced you?A – Blimey! Where do I start? I love British satire and humor (or humour). I love wit; funny epic series like the Discworld novels and comedic sci fi like Douglas Adams but I also love Monty Python, Little Britain, the Fast Show, Fr Ted, Not the Nine O'Clock News ... Porridge, The Two Ronnies ... and it's all in there. I love Red Dwarf, StarTrek - especially the really cheesy original series - and Dr Who. I LOVE Dr Who. But I also love Spaghetti Westerns, Historical Novels and James Bond. It's not just that it has to be a gripping tale that zips along quickly. It has to do some serious genre mashing. It has to be difficult to categorise because otherwise, for me it's boring, because life is about more than one thing. So it's Douglas Adams meets StarTrek and James Bond - with a smidgeon of Dr Who.