The dog days of summer are approaching Ambridge. Freddy’s being hounded and Brian is in the dog house - can Jenny take the ruff with the smooth?

[PseudoBadger]

Thanks to all for the dog ideas, and special mention to Ppeatfruit.

Discuss the Archers here!

Utterly bored to the tits with Ruth. God, that character is dull.

Well she is surplus to Archer requirements now isn't she?

Goldenpips is making the decisions and spawning the future of Brookfield - she seems to be DopeyDave's partner now more than Ruth.

Jill is goddess of the kitchen and Mother-in-Chief

Its only time before Ruth joins Ben in the cereal cupboard.

Utterly bored to the tits with Ruth. God, that character is dull

The advantage of listening on iplayer on catch up is you can adcance on 20 second fast forwards bursts . I haven't heard anything Ruth or Pip have said since the pregnancy was announced.

Brian said she would need the agreement of all the partners to be bought out, so unlikely

I only know about Scots law but under Scots law that is bollocks. You cannot set a anything up which would deny one owner or partner an exit. A partnership might say the exiting partner or owner must sell to the other partners in the first instance and might make the exiting partner wait for their money. It can't say they can't sell at all unless all the other partners agree.

Perhaps someone with English law knowledge can comment but the idea that it requires the consent of all the other partners seems absurd.

It’s interesting that, apart from that brief personality transplant interlude surrounding the move North, the booting out of Jill and the trip to New Zealand, Ruth is probably the most life like and realistic character in the whole show. Which just goes to show how dull real life is......

Ruth is probably the most life like

Speak for yourself. I can work and run a home. I can even cook more than frozen pizza, bought in a panic on emergency run to the convenience shop because I'm incapable of planning. And I never locked my DC in the cereal cupboard or forgot that they needed an education.

I like Ruth. So what if she's a crap cook. She's a farmer.
Pip, on the other hand, I can't stand.
David and Ruth give her far too much leeway.

I don't really understand the hatred towards Ruth.

I don't particularly like how she and David parent their children but that is 50% a David issue. And bearing in mind she's had the in-laws getting stuck in with their own agenda, including spoiling Pip.

And she is a farmer, not a 'farmers wife' like Jill. She doesn't automatically defer to David, but often leads the way in innovation. Not easy in a family that is so established and thinks pretty highly of itself.

Not sure where you got “like R4 from lifelike* R4! I think the point that Bert was making is that she is flawed as are many people in real life and that most of her character traits are fairly banal/identifiable ones as opposed to more cariacaturish characters like Lynda or Susan.

I think the point that Bert was making

You just had me scratching my head thinking I'd missed an episode with Bert Fry

Must engage brain.

I don't dislike Ruth but I hate the way that the once sparky feminist Ruth has been buried under the Archer clan as a spare part these days. She may have led much of the innovation on the farm but she gets precious little credit for it and is mostly punished in story lines when she stands up and asserts herself.

All the sniping about her rubbish housekeeping - what is David's contribution? When did he last go shopping or cook the dinner? The LSWs can't decide if they want her to be a farmer or a farmers wife but give her tedious, self effacing lines tip toeing around the Archer clan.

“Speak for yourself. I can work and run a home.”

I am pretty invested in The Archers, but even I can distinguish between “life like” and “like me”...........

And as for what happens to feminists once they reach Ambridge, they either “diminish into wives” or become caricatures. Because TASWAMA.

When was Ruth a feminist? I must have been in the baby years when that happened as I missed it entirely.

She's a farmer married to a farmer not a farmer's wife. I would say she treats her children the same regardless of sex, but that isn't true as she, as does David, treats Pip much better than Joshnben.

When was Ruth a feminist? I must have been in the baby years when that happened as I missed it entirely.

When she first turned up as a student doing her industrial year on the farm. David was full of objections when Phil employed a woman (which predictably turned into lurve). She was making her way as a woman on a male dominated course and from a non farming family.

She kept her own name when she married but was overruled and eventually gave up, there wasn't even a discussion of Pip's surname when she was born. She took a farming role on the farm and declined to be the farmer's wife in the mould of Jill.

Not a feminist in the campaigning style of Pat but in the getting on with it and standing her ground sense.

Decades in the family has scrubbed all that out of her.

Thanks C8. I like to think of kirsty as a feminist but not sure there are any others around.

When did [David] last go shopping or cook the dinner?

Ooh, Miss! Miss! I know, miss!

It was November 2006 when Ruth went off to Oxford for her (anticlimactic) rendezvous with Platemeter Sam.

Iirc it was spag bol. Again.

www.theguardian.com/culture/tvandradioblog/2006/nov/07/didrutharcherdothedeed

11.5 years ago! It feels like yesterday.

The only people who ever cook or do anything even remotely house related at Brookfield are Jill, Ruth and Pip.

On the subject of the vanishingly rare times there are any references to men who aren't professional chefs* cooking, for some reason I've always treasured the memory of Alice and Brian sharing a moment when she said how much she liked it when he made cheese on toast on the hotplate of the Aga (or something like that - I've never had an Aga or a Raeburn so only have a hazy idea of how they work).

*Men on TA who are paid to cook - Ian, Jean-Paul, Shane, Wayne, short order chef at Jaxx whose name I've forgotten.

Men on TA who are not paid to cook but do: Robert, Tony (Christmas Day), David (spag bol moment mentioned above), Brian (cheese on toast moment mentioned above), Rob (special meal for Helen, awful consequences, sorry), Tom (trying out kefir recipes) - anyone else?

There may have been references to Toby and Rex cooking, but only in the 'Aren't men HOPELESS! ' way the SWs seem to think we're all going to find endearing.

FWIW, my husband can barely cook, but it is his only weakness. He can do almost everything around the house (and does). I like cooking and eating, he doesn't like cooking and does not drool over food, so I do it.

Alistair did recently, iirc. When Smugs was felled with a life-threatening head cold.

I'd forgotten that, Bore.

Jim and Jazzer must sort some sort of food out for themselves. Ditto Tom and Johnnie. But the basic TA rule is that if a man has a female on the scene she will do it.

Rex cooked dhal when on a tight budget. I wonder if he has offered it to his South Asian-rooted girlfriend?

Didn't Phil used to bake a mean lemon drizzle cake in his retirement?

Didn't Phil used to bake a mean lemon drizzle cake in his retirement?
Yes, and he experimented with Thai food too, as I remember.

The occasional foray into hobby cooking isn’t comparable to the day in day out grind of feeding a family. In our society the latter does usually fall to the woman in the house, regardless of what else she does work-wise.

When Ruth dashed off to Oxford for a new plate meter, wasn’t young Pip involved in the catering? I seem to recall an episode when she was cooking in her mother’s absence. Maybe it wasn’t that though.