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]

They are discussing the Tom Archer sacking on Feedback now!

Nobody grilled.

Glad I RTFT before posting as I agree with Molly and mink on Rob and H and the hair do. Wasn't there talk - not sure where? some website or other where K's actress was talking - that maybe Kirsty and Tom will have another run at it in the future? But I am less sure it will be soon, if ever, and I'd think they might have a longer gap before introducing new voice/actor for Tom. In the past there have been huge gaps, I think, between 'voices'.

Where I live there are certain parallels with Ambridge - except it's rural Scotland and not England. I believe this is an important difference. Farming-wise it's crucial as we have many sheep and cows, and relatively little arable. Old families aplenty (including landowners); new-comers who have been here 30 years. We are defintiely 'new' having been here 12 years and DH is English - so he will never belong. But we luvs him so he don't care about all that. Thanks to Lord Beaching we have no train service - but Hollerton Junction is 10 miles away, with a vague bus link. So if you don't have a car you go further (20-24 miles to bigger stations/towns). It's a longish commute to a city and some people do it, but many people work locally, are self-employed/ work from home, work off-shore (oil industry), are retired, or work in public services). We are in the old market town with several villages around, but it's smaller than Borchester - e.g. no Underwood's. Grey Gables on the edge of town, complete with naice but muddy country park. Lots of golf courses in the area. Not sure where there's a LL but there must be. Local am dram has more than one Linda Snell (acc to ds1 who was involved for a while and couldn't stand the 'divas') . No alpacas that I know of, but there were two peacocks for a while. We have Borchester Green in the town and several 'cathedral schools' in the area. Several pubs (it IS Scotland!), some you go to, some you don't. So not like Ambridge where everyone goes to the Bull. Churches - but a few now de-consecrated.

The woman who 'does my eyebrows' grew up here - and lives in a local village. From time to time she lets slip some detail of my family that I didn't give her, so I guess we are gossiped about . She is a great source of what I like to think of as 'local history', e.g. which local tradesman is the illegitimate son of the local undertaker cos his mother put it around a fair bit. Who is married to who. Which families were linked by marriage generations ago. There are two big local families with same name - but they do not talk !!- and it seems the falling out was generations ago. I could go on .......

And - crucial detail - we have new road talk too. For us it's not the fear for farmland but for local small shops, as at present a trunk road goes through town - so the concern that businesses will be affected is real. But OTOH the road would be safer and less polluted if we had a bypass. Something we have that A does not is a famous Hollywood actor and the family are still here. Have I just outed myself?

Feedback is repeated on Sunday, is that right? I've missed most of it.

Don't know about "outing" Basketz but your eyebrows have prompted me to wonder why Ambridge has no hairdressing salon. Even the medium size village I lived in supported one. And while the rich pensioners can afford to go into Borchester I'm sure some of the people on the new housing development (Meadow Rise or ??) would be glad of something closer to hand.

In fact I've often wondered why they didn't suggest beauticianship as a career for Emma perhaps.

Feedback ignored my missive!

Basketz, I'm guessing you live near C***? I've got family up that way, I think. They were farmers, not sure if they still do that. Should pay more attention when my mum talks at length about family members I've never met!

YY, Emma as beautician would be ideal - she'd be ace at 'local history' and anything she didn't know she could ask her ma.

This place has at least 6 hairdressers - but then we are more Borchester than Ambridge. But there is a village near here which I've often thought was like Ambridge. It has a local (Spar) shop, a mix of private and rented/council housing, a primary school, 2 pubs, but no hair salon. It is 5 miles from Hollerton, with several farmers and lots of incomers. Including artists/crafts people (I've said this before).A GG down we the road. What it does have is a part-time GP surgery - run as a satellite of the bigger town's surgery. Maybe that says more about rural health in Scotland than in England. I think we do have that better. Oh, and we have rivers that flood too.

Is Meadow Rise not in Borchester though???

Emma would be the kind of beautician who would comment on your large pores and sniff over eyebrows that she thought were too unkempt.

Not sure I would want to use her.

I drove home slowly listening to Feedback. Mr O'Connor declined the invitation to be interviewed so you can bet your life he won't come and visit MN.

Yes a mobile hairdresser could be lucrative - that would have been better than upcycling

I just used "Meadow Rise" to fill a gap - simply cannot recall the actual name of the newest housing development in Ambridge. Though you wouldn't have to live there to want a local salon.

Ha Ha, Mimsy, if you PM me the family name I could probably tell you all about your ancestors. Funny story, DH was in a local paper shop and an elderly lady came in to buy the local rag. She said to him in passing 'My GS is on the front cover'. Talk about name-dropping - there was one picture on front cover. It may have been FHA as in prev thread.

Zero, on the old BBC Archers MB the 'new' estate (must be about 10 years old now!) was nicknamed Badger's Leap which is why I always think of it. Can't for the life of me think what the boring real name is.

Bazketz, I would if I had any idea what it is! IIRC, we're talking about my grandpa's brother's daughter, so it's her married name. No idea what it might be.

FHA?

Is it glebelands?

God carol is annoying. Good to hear Ian but think we are only hearing him so we are sad later when Adam cops off with Charlie

I can't quite believe Jill would have a decaf cappuccino

More stupid story about the move. Yadda yadda bees blah blah BORING!

Losing the contract - well that was totally expected.

And Debbie is being thrown under the bus I guess.

Why would Brian not know all of this?

'It looks as if the archers really are leaving ambridge'

Suggests the program is moving too!

I'm a fervent, if very infrequent poster the last archers thread I posted on was about Tom's wedding but came on to register my disappointment with the recent changes.

(But what I really wanted to do was to answer one of D^3's earlier questions about whether there were any listeners outside the range he'd collected already- I'm 27 so just fall outside of it!)

I don't get why they're allegedly trying to slim down the cast. Surely if they only pay actors as and when they're actually needed, it doesn't matter whether they have 10 cast members or 50. And a wider range of characters must lead to a wider range of potential storylines, mustn't it?

They seem to be stripping out the old cast and replacing them with new characters, icimoi.

Johnnie's not exactly an O'Connor addition as he was 'there' in Leeds ages ago but the business types are, IMO, an unwelcome addition. I could do without Carol too.

I'm not yet convinced they will sell Brookfield though and there now has to be a strong chance that Debbie will come home to defend her position but I'm not sure if Adam's getting the chop from the cast, as well as from BL.

Great bar chart DadDadDad and you can add another smiley to the early fifties row. I started listening in my late 20s thanks to DH not actually recognising the existence of any other radio channel.

Have you considered further analysis to correlate current ages with ages when people started listening? If younger listeners started listening at a younger age than older listeners did that'd support SoC's strategy, wouldn't it (perish the thought)?

Maybe Sean O'C heard his target audience (i.e. the young people) have shorter concentration spans due to web games etc. So he needs to make stories vair simple and with few characters. Of course we all know he should stick with keeping us oldies happy and provide what we like. RTFT, Sean!! Since he will have heard all this on Radio 4 he is shooting himself in the foot, in a sense.

Surely they cannot bring in a new actor for Debbie. TG has such a distinctive voice.

Mimsy, FHA = famous Hollywood actor.

toothless - well, if we had enough listeners' data and collected it over a number of years, then we could construct a lapse rate model over the years and answer all kinds of interesting questions to see whether lapse rates are duration- or age-dependent.

Well, that's the kind of analysis I do at work on insurance policy-holders, but I'm not sure you are paying me enough on this thread to make me arsed to do all that here...

Aha!

guineapiglet, not Glebelands, Grange Spinney. Found it on this useful slideshow of Ambridge places on the BBC website.

I'd be very sad if Debbie were to be recast. However, if S O'C is keen on big names, he could hardly do better than keep her. Her career seems to be going very well indeed.