Fast falls the eventide for Joe Grundy, the darkness deepens for Ed - will he be fenced in or is there still time for acts of pennants? Abide with us and discuss The Archers, thread #104!

[GabrielleNelson]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads and @DadDadDad for being our resident statistician and keeping the ball rolling when Pseudo stepped back a bit and more recently when someone forgot they had promised to start the next thread, ahem.

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 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 this thread, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks also to LillianGish for the splendid thread title. As actor Edward Kelsey died last month, we have probably heard Joe Grundy for the last time, or will do very shortly. RIP Mr Kelsey; many thanks for creating a wonderfully vivid character, gnarly toenails and all.

As pointed out on the last thread, we're getting very close now to the 100th birthday of June Spencer, who plays Peggy Woolley. What an achievement! I hope the team manage to squeeze Peggy into that day's episode, come what may.

Thanks DDD, good to know you have access to secret lists of actors and it's not just pure magic!

You live and learn. I didn't know Mr Gently Benevolent and Herc from Cabin Pressure were played by the same actor, until today. And also the Fairbrother father. The three of them don't sound at all alike to me, I'm obviously the sort of person who's easily fooled by a dodgy accent (this may be the time to admit that I was embarrassingly old before I had to have it pointed out to me that the actors in Allo Allo were not, in actual fact, really French).

IMDB is not a secret list - it's one of the biggest sites on the web! It's also one of those places like Wikipedia that sucks you in as you follow links and end up forgetting what you originally came for.

My 17yo DS has recently "discovered" 'Allo 'Allo (one his schoolfriends had the complete boxed set ), so I've been re-enjoying the silly humour, especially the catchphrases "It is I, LeClerc", "I shall say this only once" etc.

IMDB saves you from all those conversations that go, "Oh, what have I seen her in before? You know, she was in that thing with the actor from Eastenders who played the brother... There was that crime drama with that woman who was in those adverts..."

Dunno how I managed not to kill certain members of my family before IMDB came to just give us the information and work out all the random characters and programmes which your mind has loosely linked with no useful identifying details.

“Oh, what have I seen her in before? You know, she was in that thing with the actor from Eastenders who played the brother... There was that crime drama with that woman who was in those adverts..."

You’ve watched telly with my mil then! Do you also spot wigs, hairpieces and weaves?

i LOVE when Julian Rhind- tutt's dulcet tones as Rumpole appear, I am a massive Green Wing fan and my mind tends to wander to him in his scrubs with the cut out bottom....

Did anyone notice the Minibus this week was all mothers worrying about their children except for Frilly worrying about Elixabeth?

Rumpole is Leo McKearn to me.....

Yes I spotted an actor in a Johnny English film who I recognised (not Roman Atkinson) and was able to work out he’d also been in Blackadder. Which led me to read the parental guidance for Blackadder on IMDb and discover its U / 6 in lots of countries but 12 in the UK.

Should I now be feeling miffed that no-one acknowledged my response to lass's response to the Anthony Head pun?

I spotted it.

I knew the word play had been acknowledged by some but I raised the point as there were a few posters who didn't know who Anthony Head was.

I hope Lily is inspired to leave as well. Back to Manchester, sans CMR

I so hope Lily is inspired to leave, never to be heard from again. She can leave CMR behind at LL to woo and win Elizabeth, which would be extremely amusing. She can come back to LL to combust in indignation if and when that happens.

"Rumpole is Leo McKearn to me....." Yes, to me too, on television, Bert - and Patricia Hodge was "his" Portia. I've enjoyed both Benedict Cumberbatch's and Julian Rhind-Tutt's portrayals of Rumpole in the more recent radio series, though.

Leo McKern was a friend of my dad’s-I have a toy rabbit he gave me when I was a baby.

The whole Camilla things is weird. Presumably the family has been in reasonably regular touch with her for Freddie to have decided she was the person to go to when he wanted to escape, so how come they weren't already aware what a cow she was? And why has she apparently not set foot in LL since Nigel died?

She can leave CMR behind at LL to woo and win Elizabeth, which would be extremely amusing. She can come back to LL to combust in indignation if and when that happens.

Unfortunately, I don't think CMR is likely to be interested in Lizzie as anything other than a means of enabling his 'art'. I fear Lizzie is becoming far too emotionally dependent on him though.

Dunno how I managed not to kill certain members of my family before IMDB came to just give us the information and work out all the random characters and programmes which your mind has loosely linked with no useful identifying details

Galton & Simpson wrote a TV play on this very subject called 'I Tell You It's Burt Reynolds'. Leonard Rossiter is the one so insistent that it is Burt Reynolds, and arguing heatedly with everyone else, that he ends up phoning Hollywood - no small matter in 1977. If he'd had IMDb it would all have been so much easier

I Tell You It's Burt Reynolds

I'm going to call it quits on the recognising actors thing. I just tried IMDB, as recommended, and found it very difficult to get any radio information. For Anthony Head, it said that he was Herc, but only right at the bottom of the 'other' section which was a mish-mash of various media in no discernable order (chronological, by type of performance, by size of role ...), and I couldn't find anywhere that said he was Robin Fairbrother or Gently Benevolent. I had watched a couple of the things that it said he was in on tv, but I don't remember his role in them. There is a picture and he looks vaguely familiar, but not at all like Robin or Mr Benevolent or Herc, too thin for all of them. I'm going to leave it to you experts and bow out of this. Clearly website navigation is as alien to me as voice recognition!

While I was an undergraduate there was an argument in the college bar about who sang Come On Eileen. It resulted in a broken nose (not mine). This was in the present century. It's hard to remember, sometimes, how new things like smartphones and instant googling of everything are.

I don't like IMDB, I usually find Wikipedia better

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Head

You might have better luck with Wikipedia, Fink . All Anthony Head's credits are on there, including the radio ones.

@GabrielleNelson is this you??

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3590510-to-not-get-loan-for-share-of-property-that-i-do-t-want?trending

ITWSBT!

I agree the Camilla episode was awful.

I'm sure Boden must do polka-dot shoes, now which character do we think is most likely to be a Boden fan?

Anthony Head will always be Gold Blend guy to me....

Also someone upthread said you can buy a stately home for £1 million.

You absolutely can't. You'd need upwards of £5 mill for a decent place, unless you are very up North.

You're not wrong, grumiosmum. I went looking at Worcestershire property prices on Rightmove out of sheer curiosity, found that even somewhere described as a farmhouse was pushing £4 million. Bit of property porn, anyone?

Nice gardens but the interior is a bit Oka for me.

Thanks both, yes I can work my way around Wikipedia with relative ease. What originally brought this up, and what still baffles me, is not so much how, knowing an actor's name, I can find out what else s/he's been in, but more how anyone listens to TA or something (which doesn't have end credits) and thinks ' Oh, that's [actor's name]'. Like, how do you know it's Anthony Head or Eleanor Bron or whoever (let's assume for a moment that I had heard of those people, which I hadn't, but that's another issue) when you hear them on the radio?

Well in DDD’s case he probably has an algorithm but the others probably just recognise the voice, the same way you recognise people when they phone you. Are you familiar with the Shazam app? It will blow your mind