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?

Can someone point out the topical references to me? I’ve listened but had questions from DS (Is Freddie dealing again?) at the same time.

Also LOL at Langs

The tedious inevitability of Lynda assuming that Freddie was dealing drugs again could be seen coming from several miles away, waving big red flags and sounding klaxons, and with flashing lights for good measure. Is this really the best they can think up?

Isn't it only about a week and a half since Johnny first went to the gym? How come he's already got a source of steroids and is getting rages already?

Probably because the writers have absolutely no idea what to do with the programme and grab random ideas to try and make a story out of, no matter how ridiculous.

Can someone point out the topical references to me?

I noticed a reference to Storms Ciara and Dennis, Taswama. There were some comments on Twitter that when Lynda and Robert were watching the blackbirds last Sunday (and went off for their own pair bonding, as Lynda termed it), Ambridge was the only place where the weather was nice.

Can someone point out the topical references to me?
There was also reference to the Cabinet reshuffle. very relevant because, in the world of overinfestation, the ex Chancellor is the MP for Hollerton

Did not need Alistair and Shula spelling it out for listeners that Yakult was behaving rudely. Waste of air time.

Freddie falling under false suspicions is so f'ing fake ( soz for swear but alliteration, you know)

Kenton, in about one minute, mentioned storms Ciara and Dennis, got a brexit 50p coin, mentioned the goings on in #10 and something else which I've forgotten. It sounded exceptionally strange.

MereDintofPandiculation
Hadn't realised Nigel's death was simply because some editor wanted to "make an impact. Words fail me.
While Graham Seed was still raw and hurting from his abrupt sacking, he gave an interview in which he said that at least he had not found out about it happening only when he got his scripts for that week. Vanessa Whitburn rang him up before the scripts for that recording-session reached him and told him it would be happening, and when he asked (rather hurt), "Why me?" she replied, "I have to make an impact."

Then he had to pretend for several weeks that it wasn't about to happen, and not mention it to anyone.

nettie434 thanks for the link: I had forgotten that VW had written that blog congratulating herself on it.

Johnny first went to the gym on 28th January 2020, having just spent his Christmas money on a membership. he went with Lee, who had been given membership by Helen. By the following week, on 5th February, he stated that he planned to go every night. His bad temper manifested itself on 10th February, by which time he had also set up some gym equipment of his own in the Bridge Farm barn. So not rushed at all, then.

I was on the BBC board at the time it happened and saw the figures (collected over a month, I think it was) for who of the people posting there had enjoyed that episode and who had not, and who was in favour of Nigel being killed and who wasn't. The overwhelming majority on that board was certainly not in favour!

This steroids storyline is just lazy writing - and ridiculously implausible.

In fact, it's absurd. I'm very cross 🤬😡

For me it has helped to answer MereDints question, it's not us, its them.

Thanks nettie and kitchenfloor - if it was Kenton that would explain how I missed it, I do tend to switch off when he’s speaking.

I wasn't really listening, as usual.

Yakult was behaving rudely. When he was upselling to whoever-it-was, he was the complete antithesis of a professional that you might trust as having your best interests at heart. Simply can't square his sales technique with the story that he achieves all his selling targets where Alistair is an abject failure. Interesting though - I've had the same complaints about sales driven targets from my vet, who is the last remaining independent vet in the area.

VW had written that blog congratulating herself Sickening, wasn't it. And that reference to "SATTC" being in some BBC policy document.

She's completely unaware that to us Nigel was a real person - I was thinking about this as I thought it - there's a sort of dichotomy, the characters are real, but in a strange reality where you know what happens to them, what they do, isn't fixed as it is in real life, it could happen in a different way. A bit like those strange disturbing dreams you get just before you wake, and your re-run them two or three times with different endings, until you get an ending you can live with, then you can wake up. Nigel didn't have to fall off the roof, she could have re-run it (Maybe David "what are you, man or mouse?" could have fallen instead?) and given us an ending we could live with.

SATTC really was in a BBC policy document. We didn't invent it; we just used the initials rather than "Shake Ambridge To The Core", which was what was originally written.

I always felt it was unfair on David, really: he didn't want to do it, it wouldn't have occurred to him if Nigel hadn't asked him to in the first place, he didn't put it up there, and when they got to the roof he didn't at all want to go out on it when he realised what the conditions were like. He made one silly remark making fun of Nigel's obvious fear of his wife's vicious tongue and her requirement that the banner had to be got down at once -- though she said "I forbid it" too, when she realised Nigel was as usual going to do as he was told... Very bad luck that the piss-take had such terrible results, but that was really all it was, along with not at all seeing why he should have to come back and do it the following day when Lower Loxley Hall would be teeming with other people who would be just as good, including Kenton who put it up there.

The press release is even still up there: www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/05_may/27/sopps.shtml

given us an ending we could live with

Everyone posting here has evidently been able to 'live with' the ending as enforced by VW. I feel it was a mistake, because it was a storyline that didn't SATTC in any way at all; and I personally would cheerfully have drowned Nigel in any handy standing body of water. It's unlikely VW was thinking about long-term repercussions of the prat's 'untimely' (as in long overdue, imo) demise, as she must at that point have known that she was not going to go on in the editorial post for a decade or more. Short-term repercussions were uninteresting, on the whole.

It's a pity his widow still stalks the earth but hey, one cannot have everything

I do agree that it was rather rough on, and the lack of warning rude to, the actor.

Everyone posting here has evidently been able to 'live with' the ending as enforced by VW. OK, "live with comfortably". I think there's a lot of us here who are not living comfortably with it.

I think there's a lot of us here who are not living comfortably with it.
Count me in.

I wasn't listening then, so it hasn't made me feel uncomfortable. Having said that, it does sound a rather crappy way to treat an actor, and the comment about wanting to make an impact, is bound to rile people.

It's better and less rude that what was done to Tom Graham: he thought when Tom Archer was sent to Canada that he would continue to play the part when Tom Archer came back, and only discovered it had been recast (to the son of the actor playing Tony Archer) after Troughton Junior had already recorded his first episodes in that part.

Can I just take a moment to whinge that whilst they got the facts of laminitis (the thing that was wrong with a horse this week) relatively correct, the way the vet, farrier and owner spoke to each other about it was thoroughly badly written.

Shula would have known it was lami. Chris would have known it. Obviously Yakult () would have, too. Shula wouldn't have asked dumb questions, Chris wouldn't have been all weird and deferential to a vet and none of them would have talked in that weird way InSeRtinG ScienTifIC TeRMs wheever they could. Not even Yakult.

Begrudgingly boop for Alsastair and Yakult's heart to heart, it's the most believable Yak has been for a while. Boop also for Linda assuming Freddie was pushing drugs, j thought that was decent writing even if we've gone from salt of the earth Jonneh to angry roid head in a week.

Yakid is a genius term. Boop to that too.