Pratchett and his wife, Lyn , who have been married for 44 years, live in what he calls “a Domesday manorette” south-west of Salisbury. I would dearly like to have seen his allegedly mouse-infested office with its six computer screens, gothic lectern, dusty books and assortment of skulls, but for some reason he is going to meet me “half way”. When I turn up at the Hilton Metropole hotel in Birmingham, a disappointingly un-Pratchett- like conference centre near the airport, there is something odd going on. A character in a long black cloak and cavalier’s hat with ostrich feather is hobnobbing with a group of over-made-up women. Another face-painted woman, wearing a wisp of green gauze and not much else, drifts by, causing no eyebrow to be raised. There is a peculiar hum about the place, as though a pantomime is about to start.