Archers thread #113: Who’ll find some Magic Time this Christmas in Ambridge? Share the glad tidings (and bad writing) in The Archers! Election-free zone so far ...

[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 Hannah 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 @SurpriseSparDay for the title. I haven't heard 12/12 yet so must catch up now, seeking relief from the outside world.

And wasn't Phoebe pathetic tonight? Snivelling little brat

This.

She keeps dropping other people into deep shit and then whining "But I didn't mean it" when caught out. It was vaguely sickening that Brian ended up comforting her when she came so close to losing him his place on the board and a major source of income.

It's so bloody annoying that they had the chance to depict Phoebe as a successful, clever woman with a career of her own, and instead they've chose to show her as this whining, idiotic sponger.

I don’t think the SW team are good at depicting successful career women without them having some fatal flaw.

MUM, I'm wracking my brains trying to remember who Holly the person is in TA (I've just listened to an afternoon drama where the female protagonists were Holly and Ivy, so am a bit discombobulated anyway)?
AskingQ - darn it, I completely missed that! Was it a winter graduation ceremony, I wonder, or earlier than December?
Completely agree about Phoebe in last night's episode, I very childishly wanted to clock her one the moment she opened her mouth. I was also busy thinking how kind the much-maligned Brian was, as her grandfather.
I'm unsure about Gavin and Kirsty. She was stupid to interfere, but well-meaning and worried about Philip, and I think he is just downright unpleasant but I can see his point of view about her possibly being a gold-digger, though of course, we all know she isn't!
I still want to clock Phoebe.

It's so bloody annoying that they had the chance to depict Phoebe as a successful, clever woman with a career of her own, and instead they've chose to show her as this whining, idiotic sponger

TASWAMA. No female character escapes it.

Isn’t Holly a Grundy dog?

Also, Helen and Lee are obviously kissing their own hands as they made two separate kiss noises, which is logically impossible.

Still time to redeem this dreadful storyline. Phoebe can have a Road to Darrington moment and realise she is throwing her life away. She applies to assorted graduate recruitment schemes, claiming to have been on a post-graduation holiday for the last few months. She disappears to London or Edinburgh or somewhere else a long way off and rarely returns. Sorted. Let Pip and Rex sort out the rewilding mess, or better still, let the whole thing quietly disappear.

To be fair, Siobhan Hathaway was a person with a career in her own right. Although she had an affair with Brian, I don't remember thinking she was defined by her relationship with him, or any man. But she was an incomer, wasn't she, so that probably doesn't count!
I think Alice is supposed to be a successful, clever woman with a career of her own, it's just she's badly written!

Phirsty Killip. Sounds like a Shipmate of Jack Aubrey's.

There should be a special word for the creeping horror that spirals out and up from one's inner ear whenever Phoebe opens her mouth. That anyone anywhere could be that thick, wet, lacking in critical thought, basic communication skills, self awareness, could be thought to have a degree beggars belief. It has beggared mine, that's certain.

Also, Helen and Lee are obviously kissing their own hands as they made two separate kiss noises, which is logically impossible.
I was trying not to listen. Slurpy kissy noises on the radio - yuk!

Yes, incomers are allowed something of a career. Usha, Janet the Vicar, Caroline Bone/Pemberton/Sterling. Kathy. Jolene. Lynda, to an extent - she was a secretary in Sunningdale, which is how she met Robert, IIRC. Kirsty is a notable exception.

When it comes to indigenous women, it helps to have the surname Archer. Shula and Christine have made a success of The Stables. Elizabeth has done well with a business acquired through marriage.

That anyone anywhere could be that thick, wet, lacking in critical thought, basic communication skills, self awareness, could be thought to have a degree beggars belief

And not only that, an elite degree from an elite university, for which competition would have been fierce.

I know I’ve droned on about it before but I’m still aghast that someone else (can’t remember who - Roy?) had to suggest to Phoeble that she might want to read a few newspapers before her Oxford interview, to show some vague signs of engagement with the wider world. I don’t think it had occurred to her before.

Dh’s father would have called her ‘as dim as a Toc H lamp’

Elizabeth has done well with a business acquired through marriage

Elizabeth created that business from scratch though - she married the property owner when the property was going bust.

I remember Julia's endless objections to making it a business venue - first open to the public, then conferences then weddings and other events. That whole initiative was Elizabeth's to save Lower Loxley. Nigel was supportive but Julia did everything she could to stop it.

Thanks for that list, Gasp0de, for some reason the only one who came to my mind was Siobhan. (I suppose because I was thinking about Brian and Phoebe.) But we've both forgotten the successful farmer's wife, Jill, and the successful farmer, Ruth

Also where is Jenny? She was so ambitious for phoebe.

Now that was confusing.... I have R4 on in the background and The Patient is on with "old Pip". I had to google to be sure, but I had to pick myself to confirm I wasn't listening to an Ambridge Extra! It didn't help that Miriam Margoyles was a character called "Lillian".

Old Pip as "Charlotte" sounded even more annoying than "Phoebe".

"pinch", not "pick" - bizarre auto-correcting!

I was going to post something about Phoeble last night but couldn't find the words.
She is incredibly and incomprehensibly wet. She is 21 y.o. but sounds more like a 16 yo, and an immature one at that. It is unbelievable that she is the product of the rigours of the Oxford tutorial system.
Badly done, SW.

"she came so close to losing him his place on the board and a major source of income."

I don't think they can actually strip Brian of his shares in Borchester Land, so doesn't his income remain whether he is on the board or not? I mean, I don't think he is paid for being a member of the board.

As well as Holly being George Grundy's dog, Holly was the name of Kenton's one-night stand who led to his being kicked out by Kathy; he couldn't resist boasting about her to Nigel, and Nigel told Elizabeth, who immediately went and made sure Kathy knew about it. Then Kenton's temporary estrangement from Kathy became permanent at once and he had to find some other sucker to house him.

Phoebe's graduation was honestly was so mentioned-in-passing that I can't remember exactly when it was. I do know that Roy was in the cast in May, and then there was a gap until two weeks during August, two weeks in September and one week in October, and then he wasn't in again until last Sunday, and it was definitely said by him, so autumn is when it must have been.

The women in Ambridge who are Archers or Archers connections do well because they start out with something from somebody else, not by their own exclusive efforts.

Jill and Ruth got Brookfield to be farmer's wife or farmer in because of their Archer husbands; Peggy got a pub to run because of her Archer husband's Aunt Laura buying it for them; Lilian got a business because of her Archer Great-Aunt Laura giving it to her, and then money from her husband; Jennifer got money from two husbands in a row and position from the second one, though she did train as a teacher and work as one for about a year first; Christine got bought The Stables by Phil and Ambridge Farmers; Shula got a house and then The Stables from her family; Elizabeth got a house from her husband without which she would have been unable to run a business (before that she was an unsuccessful journalist and a telesales girl without qualifications, living with her parents); Kate would be nothing and have no business without the land given to her by Daddy; Helen is a complete leech on her parents at Bridge Farm; Lily is not old enough yet to have made her own way but she is clearly going to end up in Daddy's Business as run by Archer Mummy. Even Jolene only still has her half-share in a pub because Kenton's family lent her the money to stop her going bankrupt and having to sell it.

The only Archer-related women I can think of who have not been very much helped by their family connections are Pat, who is Tony's partner and with him built up their business from scratch because his mother actively refused to help them; Alice, put through university at Daddy's expense, living rent-free in a house of Daddy's, and thus very much helped by Daddy, but now said to be a competent businesswoman although there is very little evidence that she is; and Debbie, who was given a job on Daddy's farm and in the business Daddy owns a slice of and in another business Daddy owned a slice of, so that she had three lucrative jobs all at the same time and ran two of them by phone but who finally seems to be being independent at the age of fifty apart from her 1/5 share in Daddy's farm.

I don't know where Aunt Laura Archer got her money; she may have earned it all by herself, but my bet is it was either her parents' or her husband's originally, simply because she was born in New Zealand in 1911 and pre-1950 was not a time at which it was all that easy for a woman to make a large fortune independently in that country.

@Jaichangecentfoisdenom
Phil and Kirstie are on Location,Location, Location.
Phillip and Holly are the morning tv people.

Phoebe's graduation was honestly was so mentioned-in-passing that I can't remember exactly when it was.
I can't remember-exactly either but I know that it felt like a shoe-horned reaction to us (and, presumably, the rest of the internet) shouting for a few months at the SW asking, "did she graduate or not!?" because "not" seemed more plausible, based on evidence

I don't think Brian was comforting Phoebe so much as giving her advice about the world of business. He realises that she has learned some hard lessons, and that young people at the start of their enterprises have to learn their own lessons. He seemed to me to be advising her as an equal, and doing it without patronising her. I hope he mentors Phoebe, but with a light touch.

The only Archer-related women I can think of who have not been very much helped by their family connections ...
What about Meriel? Kenton is no use to anybody, least of all his daughter.
How old is she now?

Yup, I clean forgot Meriel. Out of sight, off-air, out of mind.

(When is the last time Kenton mentioned her, anyone? The last one I can remember is after Ye Grete Fludde when he discovered he wasn't after all going to be able to pay for her education out of the money he had done nothing to earn but had not yet frittered away, and threw a wobbly about it and blamed his brother.)

Meriel was born in early-to-mid 2001. I can't remember the exact date, and I am not even sure we were told it: Kenton rang his parents and let them know but possibly on the day after. Phil and Jill were told Mel was pregnant in August 2000, and they were sent photos which arrived on 11th June, 2001.

So Meriel is eighteen-rising-nineteen, and probably at university if she is going to one, which was the plan when Kenton talked about her in 2015.

Kirsty’s intervention with Gavin felt as over-engineered as Tom’s outburst at Christmas - an outburst which she criticised him for when it was reported to her by Helen. I could easily believe she might have had a conversation with Philip about it, but not that she would have summoned Gavin (who she barely has any sort of relationship with) for a secret dressing down. QBL. Phoebe is beyond annoying - that’s why I nominated her to leave in DDD’s poll. The SW engineered the “drama” of her acceptance at Oxford, but failed to think beyond that initial success. Realistically she wouldn’t stay in Ambridge - the entirely unconvincing rewilding project is a torturous way of trying to find her something to do and so it staggers on in its uncompelling way.