Archers thread #112: Quelle beau de lollox! And yet we stick with it. Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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

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 Alf to stay around, 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 www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, 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 to @DoctorTwo for the thread title! I was strongly tempted by R4's suggestion of Wildlife on Four: Jonneh is wild at Lily, Phoebe rewilds by Occam, Joy is in the wilderness and David is bewildered by a marriage proposal.

So we did make it past Joe's funeral at last. Are we heading for a Christmas octogenarian wedding now?

But none of it is Ruth's damned business.

If someone is acting like an objectionable prick, it clearly is his mother's business - especially when he's living with his parents.

There is precisely zero point Helen getting back together with Lee unless she's prepared to tell him why she acted in the way she did. I was waiting during her conversation with Kirsty for some acknowledgment of that fact, but it never came.

There is precisely zero point Helen getting back together with Lee unless she's prepared to tell him why she acted in the way she did.

Well, there's that, plus we need her to tell us if his Bruce Lee posters are put up with blu-tack or in frames. It's a debate that needs settling!

Been away for a few days. You lot have been busy! I'm in Team Ruth. (Not a sentence I have ever written before.) Josh behaved badly. Nothing to do with thinking Bella was Johnny's property. It would have been the same if Pip had snogged Lee, assuming he and Helen had already got together.

Johnny is lovely but I think the SWs have decided that is going to be his Achilles' heel. Doomed to be hurt over and over again, perhaps.

The only SW I ever notice is Keri Davies because I follow him on Twitter and when it's his week he tweets about it.

Interesting back story! If she tried to get them to include any of that in TA it would be rejected as overdramatic.

SurpriseSparDay- just wondering...

What makes you think Philip might be, er... departing at Christmas?

Helen's getting even more annoying these days. She's either simpering like a lovesick teenager, "Oh Kirsty, do you really think he likes me?", or wetly admonishing Henry, "Henreee, don't push your little brother in front of that oncoming tractor it's rather unkind."

Or words to that effect...

Erm ... well ...

1. He’s pointless. Far as I can see his only plot purpose is to provide Kirsty with a permanent home in Ambridge. She has it now ...

2. Pretty much the first thing Kirsty mentioned when they moved into the new house was ‘the woman opposite, who lives all alone in that big house’ (précis).

3. Kirsty has started on the ‘our first Christmas together’ thing. And how enthusiastic Philip is.

All this makes me think he’s not long for this world ...

If they kill off Philip then the village won't have one of its stock characters, The Only Builder in Borsetshire. Will they draft in a replacement? They could reintroduce that chap they had previously ... can't remember his name ... began with a 'D' ...

I see, SSD. Well, you could be right.

But how does that woman opposite, all alone in her big house, fit in?

Well the woman was Joy, and we don’t know anything about her yet.

But it was the portent in Kirsty’s words that was important.

Oh, sorry! I thought Joy lived next-door, not opposite.

But, even so, I can't imagine she's going to bump Philip off.

Unless she asks him to help festoon her house in millions of power-guzzling Christmas lights and he electrocutes himself.

< New Intern, are you taking notes? >

I can’t be exact about the position of the house ...

And I wasn’t suggesting Joy would be instrumental in his death. (Though that might be quite exciting.) But presumably there’s a reason why the SWs have been so insistent on Philip’s advanced age. And Kirsty has mentioned how tired he gets ...

I have been known to be wrong, of course.

I do think it would be great if they utilised Bhatti's experience to involve more non-WASP characters as part of the main storylines, rather than just dipping in semi-occasionally like Usha, or turning up and disappearing like Anisha and Ifty.

(Apologies for hogging the thread all day.)

While I agree, Beveren that it would be good if Ambridge embraced a wider range of well drawn characters, I also feel it would be both reductive and insulting for the BBC ever to give the impression that non-white writers were there primarily to write non-white characters. (I know that’s not what you were suggesting!)

I think somebody did speculate months ago that the Gills might be of South Asian heritage from the name. Wikipedia tells me it's a common name in the Punjab. So that's an opportunity for the SWs to exploit if they ever wanted to (all of them, obviously). I don't know the Midlands at all - are there any wealthy Asian families living in commuter villages?

Unless she asks him to help festoon her house in millions of power-guzzling Christmas lights and he electrocutes himself. That's a bit of a stereotype, isn't it?

It would not necessarily be realistic to include more non-WASPI main characters - I don't know about Borsetshire, but around here the smaller villages are ethnically homogeneous.

It would not necessarily be realistic to include more non-WASP main characters - I don't know about Borsetshire, but around here the smaller villages are ethnically homogeneous.
Yep, Borsetshire villages near Birmingham are mostly born&breds or white Brummie incomers. It's a tiny bit more diverse in Hollerton, but not by much.

Which bit, MereDint?

The lights, or the electrocution?

They tell you who the script writer for the week was at the end of the omnibus as well.

are there any wealthy Asian families living in commuter villages?
My daughter's village is not very Ambridge like but its a smallish village close to a motorway with an old part and some new builds of largush houses. There are a few families of well off Asians who have chains of shops and send their children to private school. NE Midlands.

What a drama llama Elizabeth is. How long exactly will it take to type up a list of stories on LL headed note paper and press print?

After all Helen's snobbishness about people living on the new estate, what's the betting it's going to turn out that Lee's moved in there?

How is Jim’s nightmareishness manifesting itself? Why can’t Lizzie just let him get on with it?

It isn't. Lizzie was just awful tonight. I assume this is just another clunky plot device to allow Lynda to still be involved in Ambridge am dram.

And as for Phroebie's ridiculous reaction to Brian suggesting that at the very least they get legal advice. Words fail.

The personality transplant fairy has turned her into a rather dim and not particularly pleasant young woman.

The rewilding clunks on in its improbable way, but I’m here to BOOP last night’s change counting.