How JK Rowling flummoxed Stephen Fry

about oh long time ago now in the 90s um my agent called me up and said there's a children's story uh would you do an audiobook of it it was called harry potter and the philosopher's stone unless you're american where the word philosopher would terrify you and it's called harry potter and the sorcerer's stone in america so i went along to the i i read it and i thought it was rather good it was about that i was this boy who oh it turns out he's a some sort of wizard and he's always he goes to school and he's taught all these spells and i thought this is good um so i went along and i met the the author who's introduced me as just joan rowling and i met her and she was really nice and we shook hands and i started reading it and and it was it was good fun and then on the second day second half day or whenever when i'd finished um i said to her do you know what i think i think this is pretty good i think it's gonna do well she said well actually um i've already finished a second one and i i said good for you um i the way she tells it i'm a lot more patronizing than i like to remember but but by the third one this had become something of a phenomenon as you can imagine and and by the fourth it was insane uh the the second one was a chamber of secrets the third one was the prisoner of azkaban but i remember in that book and this is thing about reading when you read a book for recording i can usually go fairly well without making too many mistakes i mean some actors are slower and some you know quicker but i try not to yeah thank you i'm not i'm not saying this to show off because actually this i come out of this very badly um but there was one phrase and this is what happens that tripped me up it was just three words it's ridiculous three words and and i i couldn't say it and and the three words were harry potted it i still can't say it harry potter did it did harry you see i can say harry and i can say pocketed and i can say it but i can't say harry pocket did he did it i always and so we were doing it i was going harry pocket did it and joe joe rowling wasn't in the studio because this was the third book i think uh the azkaban book um and there were the dementors and everything and and i did everyone started laughing at the engineer in the studio i said look i said can we come back to harry potter did it um at the end of the day maybe i'll we'll just try it so at lunch time i call up um joe rowling and i say joe now she had very i think wisely from the beginning even when it was just one book she had wanted the audiobook to be complete unabridged not condensed in any way as sometimes audiobooks are because she felt that if children were reading it and listening at the same time they would be annoyed if they were if it was different and so she wanted so it was very important that we got it exactly right um so i called her up and said look um do you mind i can't say harry potter would it be okay if i said harry put it in his pocket and she there was a big pause in line and then she said no and in her best witch's voice and i could just hear the smile in her voice when she said it so i managed to get it out but this is a mark of the woman the phrase harry potter did it appears in every subsequent book

Channel: ling emily

Views: 723,549

Rating: 4.922833 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: r84pbPbBAFY

Length: 3min 29sec (209 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/benowillock]

The trick is instead of saying "Harry pocketed it", say "Harry Pocket Tidit" fast

[u/Z0idberg_MD]

I was convinced he was going to talk to her again and say "Oh I was able to finally nail that line!" and she would say, "Oh? good for you"

[u/TimeRemove]

It is too bad the Stephen Fry version is so hard to get outside the UK. His voices are absolutely fantastic.

In fact this is a general pet peeve of mine: Alternative readings of audiobooks are often hard to get. For example The Martian was originally read by R. C. Bray who is just a pro voice actor it is great, then Wil Wheaton redid it when the movie came out, and it was a substantial step-down, but try to find the original/R. C. Bray version today.

[u/badaccount99]

Stephen Fry has a history with messing up lines...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUVBXb4XIqE

[u/uuresearch]

JK Trolling

[u/Thefriendlyfaceplant]

I also like to read books while listening to the audiobook at the same time as well. If I do either alone then my attention slips but requiring to do both keeps me locked in.

[u/alex_dlc]

This article claims JK Rowling debunked this story although I'm more inclined to believe Fry than Rowling.

https://ew.com/books/2017/05/30/jk-rowling-stephen-fry-petty-revenge/

[u/slightlyforthwith]

You think that’s hard, try saying “I haven’t edited it yet.”

[u/XHF2]

I like that JK Rowling accepts biology.