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The Archers #110: Game(keeping)'s up for Will. Game on for Lillian & Vince, Tracy & Oliver? Game over for Joe? Stay ahead of the game with all things Archers here.

959 replies

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 27/09/2019 13:41

Archers Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

Archers 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. Grin

Archers 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!

Archers 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 to LillianGish for the title idea. Very tempted to go with MrsGrindah's suggestion of It’s all a bit crap and boring at the moment but let's be positive, maybe things will look up in the coming days ... Hmm Also very taken with Lexi's Midnight Runners - Burpers, maybe? - from Madcats.

Not at all happy about Lily not going to university. Yet another bright Ambridge woman not fulfilling her potential. Why do they do this?

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Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 20/10/2019 11:10

It was skin cancer - melanoma. She had a mole on her back and I remember her saying to Brian (really twisting the knife) that if he'd made a different decision she'd have had somebody to check her back and it would have been spotted at a much earlier stage. Outrageous thing to say, especially given that she had a new partner for some years while she lived in Germany. I thought it was Munich, by the way.

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Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 20/10/2019 11:12

One more thing - I loathed the character of Siobhan, but she was very well written and acted, and the Brian/Siobhan storyline is probably my favourite in nearly 40 years of listening to TA. I was disappointed in the way they ended it, but the year or two of the affair and the first few weeks after Ruairi's birth were electric stuff.

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MollyButton · 20/10/2019 11:46

Actually Siobhan was exactly the kind of character that has fed my Archers addition over the years. She was just like a real person - you could think she was a bit self obsessed and selfish, but on the other hand you could see why others (Elizabeth) could be attracted to her and be her friend. She was neither totally evil or totally good, and depending on how she struck you and your interactions with her influenced whether you liked her or not.
I never quite saw why she was so against her Mother having too much control over Ruairi - but maybe that's because I hadn't grown up with her mother.

QuaterMiss · 20/10/2019 12:31

It was a golden age.

Still, with Ruairi, Freddie, Johnny and Ben they have set up an entertaining future as regards the male inheritors of the four houses of Ambridge.

Not so sure they’ve put equal effort into forging a female ‘gang’ in that generation, which is a pity. But of course they’ve been too busy curtailing the intellectual ambitions of the next generation of Archer-descendent women. Hmm

MikeUniformMike · 20/10/2019 13:57

Too true.

NewName73 · 20/10/2019 16:06

Many thanks Molly, Peat & Quater.

NewName73 · 20/10/2019 16:07

And Gaspode, hadn't refreshed the page!

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 20/10/2019 19:24

Brian and Siobhám's affair was surprisingly short, really.

Before her affair with Brian, Siobhán had a miscarriage of her husband's child on 16th July, 1999, then made an attempt to get off with Greg Turner who very sensibly turned her down flat but then idiotically chose Helen instead. Towards the end of 2001 she cast a couple of lures at Brian and reeled him in, him being prone to extra-marital affairs and all -- he had had two, at that point.

Brian's initial affair with Siobhán lasted for less than two months, from one incident in a Brussels hotel room on 10th December 2001, via another shag three days later back in Ambridge, after which nothing seems actually to have happened until she required him to go and see her on 25th January, 2002; and then on 4th February Tim found Siobhán trying on some earrings Brian had given her and immediately assumed she must be having an affair, though he didn't find out with whom. Brian at that point took fright and seemed to have decided to leave her alone; he broke his resolution on 19th February when she rang him and begged him to come round to see her because Tim was being so horrible about her having had sex with someone else, and then again on 20th and on 22nd, on which day Tim came home unexpectedly early and found him in the house with Siobhán, though not in bed only talking. Brian claimed to have brought round some wine he had brought back from Hungary as a present to thank Siobhán for her translating work but Tim saw through it. When Siobhán rang Brian next day and told him Tim knew who she'd been sleeping with, Brian definitely backed off, and she moved out and went to Lower Loxley where they didn't know who her lover had been and were sympathetic.

He actually hadn't seen her for a couple of weeks when she told him he had to come round to her new flat (which he hadn't known about and had trouble finding) on 25th March, 2002, and once he was had managed to find it told him that she was pregnant and that the child could only be his. He was horrified, and assumed she was asking him to pay for an abortion, but she of course was after a replacement for the baby she lost, and was keeping it and to hell with Brian's existing family.

Tim found out she was pregnant, and after she had a miscarriage scare and Brian wasn't around to see her so Tim went instead, he went and found Brian on 30th May, 2002, and punched him in the eye.

Brian then fell for Siobhán all over again and saw her quite often before Ruairi was born in November that year, less then eleven months after they had sex together for the first time. Just before that Christmas Debbie saw Ruairi at the LL twins' birthday party and thought he looked exactly like Alice at the same age, and then discovered that Siobhán was using one of Brian's monogrammed handkerchiefs to mop up the baby's possets, put two and two together and confronted him about it when he got home later that evening. He was forced by her to tell Jennifer, and then by Jennifer to make a choice between her and Siobhán: he chose Jennifer, and Siobhán took herself and her baby off to Ireland before the end of the year.

Brian didn't hear from her again until she sent him some pictures of Ruairi at the end of January, then an email notification on 14th May that Ruairi was being christened on 18th, and then a thank-you for a christening present (sent over with Nigel and Elizabeth, who went along) and some photos of the christening (which got him into trouble with Debbie again when she saw them).

He didn't see Siobhan or the baby again until that September, when she tried again to get him to choose her and leave Jennifer, failed, and hospitalised him by grabbing the steering wheel and running the car they were in into a telegraph pole. She left the country on 3rd October, 2003, while he was still in hospital, for a job in Munich. That was the end of that.

MikeUniformMike · 20/10/2019 19:31

Some signposting this evening.

Fink · 20/10/2019 19:57

Hopefully it will finally come out that it was George who stole the church money that Alf was unfairly accused of taking. It always annoyed me that they dropped that SL with nothing more said about it.

R4 · 20/10/2019 20:06

Jim is going digging for Joe's old LPs. Are we in for a re-run of the Only Fools and Horses storyline where the impoverished Grundys find a valuable item that has been hiding in plain sight for years.

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 20/10/2019 20:16

Given Alf's letting slip that he knew exactly where the money was kept, and then rapid subject-change, I reckon we know who took it, Fink.

FannyCann · 20/10/2019 20:19

Wow AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

I bow to your encyclopaedic knowledge. I couldn't even give such a comprehensive account of my own romantic history with DH!

Good to refresh the memory though. I was very gripped by it at the time.

BoreOfWhabylon · 20/10/2019 21:03

Asking didn't Brine go off ostensibly to the Countryside March but slip away to meet up with Shove? I can't remember the details but istr he got/nearly got caught out?

birdsdestiny · 20/10/2019 21:08

Did Brian love her? I had babies around that time so my archers listening was erratic to non existent, was she someone he could have left Jenny for?

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 20/10/2019 21:25

Yes, he loved her, and yes, he came very close to leaving Jennifer and starting again with Siobhan and Ruairi.

Yes, he and Siobhan had a tryst after the Countryside Alliance. Grubby!

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BoreOfWhabylon · 20/10/2019 21:26

He was completely besotted.

He loved Jenny but was In Love with Shove.

Still is, imo.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g · 20/10/2019 21:26

There was something in France as well, IIRC. He was possibly on his way to or from Hungary, or pretended he was on a business trip.

I also dimly recall an encounter at a conference, possibly in Paris - after they'd split up? David may have been around as well.

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StationView · 20/10/2019 22:49

Yes, Bore. A coachload from Ambridge went to the Countryside Alliance march and Brian sloped off to buy prams (or something similar) with Siobhan.

There was great amusement at the time because someone on the actual march was carrying a placard which read Jennifer, Brian is having an affair.

BoreOfWhabylon · 20/10/2019 23:24

Grin Grin Station, I remember that now!

EBearhug · 21/10/2019 00:14

Wasn't the Countryside March the same week John Archer died?

AskingQuestionsAllTheTime · 21/10/2019 00:28

John Archer died in 1998, before Siobhán moved into the village in 1999.

My knowledge in this case came directly from Lowfield; I simply went through looking for instances of the name "Brian" during the relevant period, then did it again for "Siobh" -- sometimes it is spelt Siobhan and sometimes Siobhán, in Lowfield, so I miss out the last two letters if I am searching for her.

Brian was in love with having a son, rather more than with Siobhán, was my feeling. He would have got bored and so would she.

birdsdestiny · 21/10/2019 07:51

Thanks everyone. Perhaps it would have been more interesting to keep her alive. Poor Ruairi.

QuaterMiss · 21/10/2019 08:04

Perhaps it would have been more interesting to keep her alive.

But, as Brian chose his marriage, it would have meant no Ruairi in the day to day story as he would have remained with her. With both outside Ambridge.

Of course the inheritance thing would have bubbled underneath - but it’s much more potent and conflicted with Jenny loving Ruairi but necessarily needing to protect her own children’s positions in the hierarchy.

MollyButton · 21/10/2019 09:19

What I'm now confused about is: How did I miss John's death in 1998 (I thought it had happened earlier when I was out of the country)? When I have very very clear memory of Siobhan - I must have been listening at least intermittently from the start of the whole thing.

To add context DC1 was born summer 1996, DC2 Autumn of 1998.

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