Archers thread #115: Johnny's in the gym, Josh is in a jam, Rex is riled, Kate's with child - 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 to share a camomile tea with Kate, 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 @LillianGish for the excellent Bert Fry tribute title!

I don't think this thread will get us to Easter, but we should be well into Lent before we need a new title. I wonder if St Stephen's will have a new oh-so-interesting Lent initiative this year. When did we last hear from Alan?

Thanks Gasp.
Poor Harry and William, losing their mother at 36. I doubt that she was a saint but she was a real human being.
Poor Poppy, Mia and Jake. Nic was no saint either. She smacked George and was the hit-and-run driver who knocked Tiger.

She also had a really annoying voice.

Who did? Diana or Nic?

Oh sorry: Nic!

Hello everybody, I am de-lurking again.

What i don't understand is why Lynda is doing all this protesting when she doesn't seem to spend any time in the B(ull) anyway? I can't help feeling that if the village had provided a few more regular customers then the name change wouldn't have been proposed.
And Lillian is being a bit out of character at the moment.

(and just for interest i was a childhood archers listener and then came back to it when i had kids and listened to it while at home)

QBL for the Lynda Snell/B @Ambridge storyline. BOOP for Kate, as I felt for her after she got a negative after POAS.

It's a bit more complicated financially, Gasp0de; there is a "History of the Bull" at ambridgereporter.org.uk/Bull_History.html which goes into the ins and outs of who bought what bit of it when.

Your account of who is related to whom is spot on! And Wayne is still there, as far as we have heard to the contrary.

I think my mother was absolutely accurate, actually.

If DiPoW had not stupidly refused to wear her seat-belt after getting into a car being driven by someone who was extremely drunk, she would not have died. Since nobody else forced her not to wear it (indeed, her unfortunate bodyguard asked her to) she it was who got herself killed.

The only person in that car who was wearing a seat-belt was also the only person in that car who was not killed. There's a moral there somewhere...

I'm ̶S̶p̶a̶r̶t̶a̶c̶u̶s̶ with AQATT's mother. Though I didn't notice about the omnibus as I was busy that day.

Do you think Lower Loxley has a trenching tool (still with blood on) hanging over a fireplace in front of the tea table? And Nigel's father made the younger Pargetter's run so he could practice on his hunter?

Sorry, couldn't resist 😀

Hmm. You believe all that?

Thank you @nettie434 that’s really helpful background. So a bold old he’ll yes to Why Jolene and Lilian tolerate Kenton's interference is beyond me, unless he has been employed as bar manager or similar. He behaves like a part-owner. @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Kenton is such a 🛎🔚

Believe "all" what, MUM? DiPoW died of the impact in a car which collided at speed with a concrete pillar: clearly a fact. The only person in that car who was not killed by that impact was wearing his seat-belt; the three in the car who were not wearing their seat-belts died: also fact. That not wearing a seatbelt was the proximate cause of three avoidable deaths (by god that car was solid! but as the Mercedes Benz spokesman said afterwards, "Even our cars are not designed to deal with an impact of such a nature without harm.") seems a fairly small and obvious thing to me, not in the least complicated or difficult to accept as fact.

Wear your seatbelts, ladles and jellyspoons; seatbelts save lives.

By the time of her death, Princess Diana was becoming increasingly annoying. I can still remember the feeling of irritation at seeing yet another artfully posed photograph of her staring winsomely into the middle distance, or dripping mascara over some unfortunate heart surgery patient. It was a bit of a standing joke that when there was some major disaster the Royal Family had to scramble someone quickly to get there, otherwise she'd be grabbing photo-opportunities drooping over the victims' hospital beds. She had reached that point when the papers were seeing through her and printing increasingly critical stories - I well remember the embarrassment when one of the Sunday papers didn't manage to pull one of them in time to stop it going out in the edition that announced her death.

I don't think I'd really got into the Archers at the time, otherwise I might well have been with AskingQuestions' mother in being irritated about the omnibus being cancelled.

You believe all that?

Go on then, MUM: tell us what you 'believe'. Doesn't strike me that there is much room for doubt about what caused the deaths, but I do enjoy a good theory.

Love the thought of the LL entrenching tool and the wretched twins being hunted over the estate (if only).

I thought the bodyguard was not wearing his seatbelt and is actually offended that it has been said he was. As that would mean he wasn't doing his job properly.
And a lot of the "grief" was in fact guilt, that we'd treated real people like characters in a soap opera. Which makes me pleased that hair salons are boycotting certain magazines.

But the Archers is supposed to be relief from these issues.

Diana was like most of us, a mixture of good and bad. She did a very stupid thing and paid for it with her life. I felt very sorry for her boys and her family. I was irritated with the mass hysteria that followed. I don't see those as contradictory. I did take pains to speak about her respectfully, though. Speaking ill of the dead, except when it's clear humanity is well rid of them, is surely better avoided.

She was beautiful and privileged, but human.

I don't think the driver was drunk, and I think she was killed. Not thought about it too much but it won't be the only highly-publicised death that might have been covered up.

Diana was privileged but not very well educated, she did a lot that was silly. I do remember her doing a lot to help the acceptance of people with HIV who, at the time were treated like biblical lepers. If she could hold dying patients' hands and cuddle babies with AIDS then maybe there wasn't so much to fear. It made an impact.
At the end of the day, she was a human bring with two children who loved her and worthy of some respect. I also hate the vilification in some quarters of Meghan but that's another thread I suppose.

So all the people who tested the driver's blood, including the French police, were lying? Interesting theory.

As someone I know who was in the business at the time said, "Christ, if we had decided she needed killing we wouldn't have made such a cockup of it. There is a perfectly good, deep river just there, and that car would have sunk like a stone, no survivors. We wouldn't have relied on her being too fucking stupid to do up her seatbelt. How incompetent do you think we are?"

(He said the same about Hilda Morrell's death, that it was a mess no professional would have had anything to do with, and was shown some years later to have been right.)

I don't really "get" the need to seek out complicated, difficult and frankly implausible explanations for something straightforward, unless (like Fayed) you have a motive for wishing it not to be remarked that your employee was responsible for the deaths, and that you still employed him as a chauffeur even though you knew he drank and used drugs. Or like the press, you really did not want it noticed that your papperazzi hounds had chased her to her death.

She was educated privately. I haven't commented on Private Education threads, but of my friends who were privately educated, some had poor schooling but turned out a bit 'posh' and have done well for themselves.

The vilification of Meghan has shocked me but mainly in how quickly she went from Princess-to-be to Wallis-incarnate. It was obvious to me that she was suitable.

Back to TA, Jerlene started out as tart-with-a-heart but she and Lil seem to overlap in lots of places.

not
NOT suitable. She's American, divorced and has a centre parting.
Slim, successful and stunning.

She lost me at the ripped jeans and boyfriend shirt.

Sorry, brain is a bit awry today.

Froggy and Lilypad would be a good long name for Frilly.

Jolene started out as a woman who knowingly broke up a marriage with a small child in it. Sid also broke up his and Kathy's marriage, but he would have had difficulty committing adultery all on his own.

Not sure that was much of a demonstration of her having a heart, gold or otherwise, to be honest.

Actually and for those of us with long memories, Doreen "Lily of Layton Cross" Rogers started out as a person who showed every sign of elbowing Clarrie out of Eddie's affections. Pity for Clarrie's sake that she didn't succeed!

I remember.