Talk:Foul Ole Ron

Not really an annotation as such, and I'm not sure how this can be verified, as it relates to a bit of Pratchett ephemera.

The Discworld Desktop Diary, I think for 2002 or 2003, one of the "365 pages that you tear off and throw away as the year gets older" variety, carried pencil/pen illustrations (by mr Kidby).

The one of Foul Ole Ron (don't ask me which day)had a striking physical resemblence to the idiosyncratic historian David Irving.

At the time, Irving was locked in lawsuits and libel actions in two or three different countries concerning his reluctance to accept the fairly certain fact that the Holocaust happened (a bit of a professional drawback in a historian specialising in WW2 Germany, you would think. More to the point, where does Irvine think six million European Jews suddenly disappeared to? Hard to hide, for instance, a UFO abduction of this magnitude)

As in losing his lawsuits Irving risked not only total loss of professional reputation but also financial debts that would have reduced him to the status of a Foul Ole Ron, I do wonder if this was deliberate... especially as Holocaust deniers appear to inhabit a plane of alternative reality that makes Ron look sane and on the ball. Mr Kidby's sense of humour, and an interesting bit of back-story to one of his illustrations?

(Irving lost all his court actions and spent time in an Austrian nick to boot, having broken their law on advocating denial of Nazi mass-murder, so he's in no position to sue this website should he ever read this)--AgProv 12:55, 3 May 2007 (CEST)

Ron is purported to have stolen Angua's armor in Men at Arms! I don't recall the episode and although technically as crazy as a bag of weasels, he never seemed suicidal. --Old Dickens (talk) 22:49, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Angua realised her armour had vanished after a Change. It was Carrot who suggested it might have been Ron seeking to trade it in for a bottle of Bearhuggers, and said he knew where to find him and get it back. Ron did witness her Changing and got to see her naked, an experience of the sort that previously had happened only on the inside of his head. AgProv (talk) 23:48, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Hum. Time for a re-read. --Old Dickens (talk) 23:56, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Reverse annotations

No one (and I'm looking at the British contributors here) has mentioned Mr Stink, a children's book and ensuing television play by David Walliams. "Mr Stink" is a street person with a weapons-grade odor and a clever dog for whom he begs sausages. He is a lot more coherent than Ron and seems to include elements of Ronald Atterbury; in fact the story draws on Johnny and the Dead as well. Closer examination could turn up several reverse annotations. --Old Dickens (talk) 03:25, 30 July 2016 (UTC)