Thread 99 (yes, 99!): Join us for spirited discussions of The Archers and its Top Blokes, whether you're Team Elizabeth (low spirits), Team Kate (Spiritual Home) or Team Toby (spirits =gin)

[Bittermints]

Thanks due to @PseudoBadger for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and to @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit. Thanks also to all those who contributed to the thread title.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other odd unusual views.

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

So, to business. What a fantastic two-hander. Massive BOOP points to Alison Dowling, the scriptwriter and director (and the therapist). I had more than a small tear in my eye listening to that.

I'm another one with a vote of thanks to chemenger for all that information on the last thread about distilling. I should know some of that because I went on a tour of the whisky distillery near where my parents live but I've forgotten most of it except how delicious the end product is.

I've just been listening to the podcast of a recent More or Less, in which the vexed question of Nigel's fall came up again. Someone had noted that the duration of Nigel's final scream could only be accounted for if part of it was during a slide down a pitched roof rather than vertical descent. Which is clearly incompatible with the parapets commented on by Leonard. So... the explanation is that part of the roof doesn't have a parapet.

If you're going to kill off a much loved character then you need to get every detail of architecture and physics correct.

Is always assumed a pitched roof - because for the first part of his fall he thought he could hang on ...

Yes to explaining Boops in OP. Also how to use ‘the bull’ emoji.
Elizabeth’s session- fantastic, she’s got a lot to clear. It’s going to take more than 6 sessions though, I hope we hear that she keeps going with it and is not fixed quickly.

I'm bored with Lizzie.

Just finished a huge catch up, the Elizabeth episode was a difficult listen but excellent.

Looking forward to some Kate and Justin gold and loving the fact that Ruari clearly has zero time or respect for her.

Corker from Lillian "there's nothing glamorous about a compost toilet"😂

Ruari and Kate clearly have no respect for each other - she sounded about 13! 'Princeling' indeed!

I've forgotten, where did Kate (and Alice) go to school? ££££ boarding, private day or state?

Was Kate actually trying to turf Ruari out of bed in his own room?

Kate went to CLC (IIRC) and was expelled. She then went to Borchester Green, where Debbie had been.

Kate was in Ruairi's room because Ruairi was meant to be staying at Brookfield.

Why didn’t Ruari stay at Brookfield after all? Was it to do with David breaking up the ‘fun’ ?

He had stayed at Brookfield but came back in the early morning, still drunk & had forgotten Kate was in his bed. I know Kate is dreadful but sleeping in her 15/16 year old ½ brother’s bed & relying on him not wanting his room back is pretty low.

TBF on Kate, she had been told by her parents that she could use Ruari's room, it sounds like they hadn't asked or even told him about it?

Oh CallMeRuss is back. What a waste of space and why can't Lily see It?

I think Lily is quite aware of his shortcomings but is still (inexplicably, but when was it ever rational?) 'in love' with him. She gave him short shrift over his attempts to sponge off her family, and seems to have arrived at the conclusion we did a while ago that she needs to bail out of university this year and start afresh in September.

Let's just hope she ditches Russ, that Lizzie and Freddie are ok(ish) by then and she can go and be a normal student.

So predictably Lily is now back from Manchester - I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she didn’t transfer to Felpersham at the same time as Ruari transfers to Borchester. She no longer sounds in the least bit smitten with CallMeRuss - I was waiting for him to suggest selling the Gwen John to pay the rent arrears. How long until Freddie gets out? Russ’s days are numbered.

The first appearance had some interesting hints that all was not well between Lily and Russ - slightly tetchy "where have you put my X?" "where have you put my biscuits?" "why don't you go and make some coffee?""that's just what I was doing". I thought we might be getting a subtle relationship breakdown over a few days or weeks. I was quite disappointed when they went into full scale argument over money.

Argh I hate CallMeRuss! Why hasn't he been properly "done" for seducing his pupil?! As for that bloody auto-phrase "I'm only thinking of your best interests", I could scream! 😂

Thanks for explaining the bull sign btw. I couldn't understand the random use of a nuclear reactor/set of kitchen scales 😂😂😂

I've forgotten, where did Kate (and Alice) go to school? ££££ boarding, private day or state?

Both went to boarding from memory but Alice insisted on going to the state 6th form college in Borchester. I have a vague memory that this was partly connected with her friendship with Amy. Brian was very opposed to it and I think they suggested private day sixth form places.

This is the 6th form college which got Alice 3 grade As and a place at a RG on a prestige engineering course and Phoebe into Oxford for PPE. The same one Brian thinks isn't good enough for Ruairi.

I think Kate was kicked out of school wasn't she? The scene with 40 something Kate calling dibs on Ruairi's room was ridiculous.

Glad that Russ has shown his hand about looking to Lily's rels for cash. Didn't take too long. Anyone would think he didn't have relations to call on. Or will his stay in TA be so short that they don't need to have been signalled by the SWs?

I think the main thing Brian remembers about the Sixth Form college with Alice is it is where she got together with Chris I think, and married a Farrier rather than someone more "appropriate".

That first scene with Lily/Russ and Elizabeth was very strangely written. It's inconceivable that Lily would be talking to Elizabeth about her depression diagnosis in front of Ross. (The real Elizabeth would have been incandescent with fury at such a thing. Particularly as he's still enough of an outsider for her to be surprised that he arrived with Lily.)

But otherwise they have set up the Lily and Russ situation beautifully. Both of them know that, now he's made himself virtually unemployable, he's dependent on her for the roof over his head.

She's still saying 'we' though ... I do think the LL Art Gallery is possibly his only legitimate hope of redemption. But if that doesn't happen I suspect (because the SWs signposted it as the thing that brought them together) the Gwen John will be the price the gods of youthful recklessness make Lily pay to be rid of him.

The third possibility (which we've touched on before) is that Vampire Russ will set his sights on the LL female who has greater access to its material returns, and who is currently even more vulnerable than Lily ...

Aaargh! Words can't express how much I hope you're wrong there, QuaterMiss.

Re schools:
Adam went to Sherborne, like Brian (and Charles Collingwood) and thence to Newcastle, where he graduated in Agricultural Economics and then fled to Africa for many years

Debbie went to Cheltenham Ladies' College and thence to Exeter to read French (and English?), before she dropped out because of Simon Gerrard

Kate went to Cheltenham Ladies' College too, but was expelled and then went to Borchester Green. She has almost no qualifications. More recently, and totally implausibly, she was accepted at Felpersham to do a postgraduate certificate course on the strength of having copied and pasted, i.e. plagiarised from the internet put together a handbook for volunteers at an AIDS charity. Did she ever complete that?

Alice was sent to the previously unmentioned St Margaret's, a private girls' day school, until she insisted on leaving for the sixth form because she couldn't do the A level subjects she wanted at 'St Mags' (eurgh). As mentioned above, she did brilliantly at Borchester FE College, as did Phoebe, but Brian was aghast. He came out with one of his all-time classic lines when they went to look round - can't remember it exactly now but it had to do with whether the other students would have opposable thumbs. Thence to Southampton and then, disappointingly, to Felpersham for her Master's.

Now we learn that Ruairi has been at a Catholic boarding school called St Francis's.

Usefully remembered B !

I'm a bit about the sudden requirement for Catholic faith in Ruairi's education. Was it because there's no Archivist to remind them about Sherborne? Or - is there a game afoot that will only play out over years? I rather like the thought of naughty, disdainful Ruairi maturing into the priesthood ...

I simply can't believe nobody has even hinted to lee about Helen's recent past.