There were important local stories that had to be moved off the front page but the editor Arthur Church came up with what

There were important local stories that had to be moved off the front page, but the editor, Arthur Church, came up with what we considered a marvellous Solomon-like judgment: I suppose the moon shines on High Wycombe just like everywhere else.There is probably a similarity between Discworld, the setting for my books, and High Wycombe, although the second does have an independent existence, just off the M40. Both sets of readers are taken into a world about which they have a lot of background knowledge. Discworld started, and became successful, because I took a variation on the classic post- Tolkienian fantasy universe but wrote it as if I was on the local paper. We had some first-class photos of the Earth taken from the moon during one of the Apollo missions. Both of you take for granted that High Wycombe, for example, is an important place and the centre of the universe.

You learn that the reader is an integral part of the process. The newsroom was all a bit low-rent, because with journalists how can it be anything else? It was full of characters, one of whom had been off to fight in the Spanish Civil War but got on the wrong boat and ended up in Hull. I’d discovered a world into which I fitted perfectly.I soon had the formula for how to cover a murder, a big court case, a row – indeed, how to start one. The residents of the estate are not going to be “up in arms” until you’ve phoned them up. Life became a series of cliches because it is a series of cliches. I finally found that I knew how to do this – there was no more fear.

The revelation was that here was something that I was good at, I hadn’t had many opportunities before For years I had struggled with maths and school work. By the time my school friends were leaving university, I was inordinately proud of not only feeling competent with the English language, but proven competent – people were paying me money every week to continue.On a local newspaper there is a complicity between the writer and the reader. I would work all day Saturday with my only free time during the day on Sundays. Swotting for A-levels, I would have spent three hours a night doing my homework, so bogging off to cover Seer Green Parish Council seemed easy in comparison – and I got paid for it.The chief reporter had the oldest typewriter I have ever seen, made out of cast iron, with cherub-like shapes coming out of the sides. Anyone who aspired to practically anything in South Bucks would sooner or later find my moped coming up their drive Sometimes I was out seven nights a week. But it took me all of 0.5 seconds to decide not to finish my education and leave a year early. I hated school, it was the Sixties after all – although in High Wycombe we were having the1950s reheated.

My parents were supportive; after all, the paper was one of the pillars of the local community.As a trainee on pounds 8.50 a week, I worked incredibly hard. The classic way was starting on the Pig Feed Advertiser and working your way up. However, being quite good at quick writing, I decided it was my best option. So at 17 I sent a letter off to the editor of the local paper informing him that I hoped to leave school next year, with three A levels, and asking if there would be a job going.

He wrote back that he didn’t know about next year but he had one right now.It would have been nice if the Bucks Free Press had been in a grand office with oak panelling, but it was a fairly nondescript Sixties high-rise, though the phrase hardly applies in High Wycombe, it probably had five or six storeys.The editorial offices were at the top, with the front office downstairs, next door to a Chinese restaurant. The time: 1967

The place: High Wycombe
The man: Terry Pratchett, authorI DON’T remember making a coherent decision but always knew I would make a living with words. I was a fairly bookish but bright enough to know that it would be foolish to assume that I could pay the bills that way; at that time the number of people in the UK making a success out of writing science fiction could be numbered on the fingers of one hand after a bad industrial accident.Journalism was rather unfashionable and as we did not have “the media”, there were few jobs on offer. Sliding Doors, a recent British romantic comedy, contains a scene in which the hero entertains the heroine by doing Monty Python sketches in the pub.