Don't blame it on a Grundy, don't blame it on Route B, don't blame it on Sean O'C, blame it on the badgers. Discuss The Archers of Prudhoe here.

[PseudoBadger]

DDD - Nice to see so many smiley faces on an Archers thread. Maybe the last time ...

It would be interesting to know if Archers listeners are representative of MNetteres as a whole, or not.

I read their little blog but I'm still none the wiser. How do we have soooo many birds that they are spilling out of the woods and their deaded bodies are littering the roads of Borsetshire and, simultaneously, the Guns unhappy at the lack of sport?

Willyum really annoys me. He gets in such a tizz before every blardy shoot. Doesn't he know what he is doing yet? Is this supposed to portray deep-seated anxiety. As if I care. harrumph. I'm in Team Ed; it's about time he had a break.

I don't think it's possible for Will to be driven into penury as he has pots of cash from Great Aunt thingummy, even if he were to lose his job and tied house he would be able to live mortgage free in No1 the Green. I too liked the little rapprochement, but to be honest I have never really understood why Ed is nasty to Will when Ed was the one who stole Will's wife. He should be doing everything he possibly can to persuade Will to forgive him. I don't blame Will for crowing when it was revealed that George was his.

If anyone needs to be recast it's Will, not Tom, I never thought his acting was up to the emotional demands of the part. I think he's actually the son of the actor who plays Moike?

Snazzy graphics Dad^3. I'm impressed.

AAAh R4 the birds debacle was because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction What they need in an enormous fan to 'waft' them the right way!

Hooray for the birds is what I say!!

But surely with that many birds ... And don't you select your drives to suit the conditions? Or was that the point - to show Will as an incompetent gamekeeper?

I love the smiley face graph!

Jessie - When did Emma become a chattel? She absolutely, definitely was not stolen - neither personally nor politically.

Maybe the wind changed by the afternoon because they seemed happy in the morning. No one is god (even the weather forecasters get it wrong sometimes).

Gah, too late to be added to the late-thirties peak on the smiley chart. (Am one of those who listened under protest as a child, then started listening at university because it reminded me of home...)

I didn't hear the name of the silent incompetent shooter as Russian / East European, I thought he was called "Henders" as a public-schoolboyish short version of something like Henderson...

Thank you for the smiley chart, DDD.
We are a younger crowd than I expected and it's interesting how many people started listening at university.

Just delurking to add my age, 45.
Started listening because my mother listened to the film on a Sunday morning, I used to make the Yorkshire pudding batter and the theme tune let me know when to begin.
I always hated the added bit at the beginning when 'my old pal, my old beauty' did a sort of recap/setup

I'm puzzled about the pheasants too.
The wind was mentioned a lot but Will seems to attribute the failure to the large number of birds being too many to look after.
I do hope the reintroduction of Martyn and the frequent mention of the hopelessly bad shot don't mean more Damara plotlines and more peripheral characters taking centre stage.

Poor Adam. I wonder if he too is hankering after pastures new - or being written out.

pudduck yes I didn't hear the name "Henders' as Russian either.

Listening in the car last night I heard it as 'Hengist'! But I've listened to the whole thing now and it was Henders.

If I was Will, I would be saying something along the lines of "sorry about the bag. We usually have good sport here but Charlie Thomas insisted that we introduce some changes this year and they don't seem to have paid off yet."
I really don't know why all the yokels aren't getting together to undermine Charlie and get him sacked.

I think (I will ask my former beater dad when I next speak to him) that part of gamekeeping pheasants is you do some training them where there food source is so that they always fly in one directions (towards the guns) when they are scared up.
The implication being that Will did not have enough time to get so many pheasant used to going in one direction because he was to busy trying to stop them slaughtering themselves all over the road.

There were lots of birds but they didn't know which way to go, as soon as some of them went over the hedge, they all followed and none went in the direction of the guns.

I think Charlie is going to have big bully boy words with Will and Will is going to deck him. Or else Ed will and then there will be ramifications. a divide will open up between the toffs and the yokels and everyone will be made to take sides.

sorry that was meant to be "yokels"

Homesickness appears to be another common motive for taking to TA listening so the less familiar the cast and stories become then the less likely TA is to successfully fill that role.

I've been reading one of those fat historical novels that are over-fat because the author has done a huge amount of research and just has to cram it all in.
I think that is what is happening with TA. Someone on the team has been tasked with researching corporate business so it has to become a big storyline. Same applies to all things related to pheasants.
It's the task of an editor to control this and maintain balance and ,IMHO, this is what the editor is failing to do.

Yes R4 maybe Adam could join the yokels too (after all he got a tip 'as the chauffeur') No one as nasty as someone who has had his pride punctured.

apperntly
"Pheasants prefer to run rather than fly, but when driven will take flight with their distinctive ‘whirring’ wing beat and often accompanied by their strident ‘kok kok’ call. [..] it was soon recognized that their height of flight is directly proportional to the topography of a shoot in question. And that with higher hills and deeper valleys, birds would soar over a line of Guns. [..]

But sheer steep topography alone does not guarantee high birds. Judicious planting of cover crops, intelligent siting of release pens and a keeper who thinks like a pheasant - someone who is able to recognise that after the initial flush from cover, a pheasant next looks for sanctuary ie. safety and warmth. It is this combination that determines the height and quality of a high pheasant drive."

totally over infested in pheasant storyline

so..Will, does he or does he not think like a pheasant. I often think he is a bit of a kok

Good analogy unitarian. They should ditch the corporate - which they know stuff all about, and it shows - and stick to the agricultural Ministry of Information - which is usually fascinating, despite being clunkily thrown in.

Though surely there would be other birds as well as pheasants? Poor dim birds. The times they just walk into the roads round here.

Lovely infographic Dad3 !

I understood that the peasants were flying the wrong way?

There's quite a lot of information about gamekeeping in a book by DH Lawrence I once read. Unfortunately it is clogged up with a lot of irrelevant nonsense about the estate owner's wife.