💥 Archers thread #118: Back in time for The Archers - catch up with the catch up until the scriptwriters catch up! 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 think Philip Moss is in line for Employer of the Year, or other unusual views.

Spoilers: OK, there aren't likely to be many for the foreseeable future, but when we do have some, 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/3853783--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-5-Cant-wait-for-7-02pm-Join-us-here, 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 title! This thread starts at a very odd time for The Archers, longest-running soap opera in the world. No new episodes expected till late May , and when we do get them they're not going to sound like normal, as the actors are recording separately at home and the BBC is attempting to cobble it all together. Tough times for the sound effects team!

The BBC is filling the gap by repeating key episodes from the last 20 years. Some of us here will have heard them before, but not all, by any means, so if you want background on what you hear this is the place to ask.

Over to you! I must try to catch up with the repeats at some point today.

R4, Can't get used to the disappointment of realising that it's Friday and 19.03 and it's Front Row?

I miss the looking forward to a cliffhanger.

Tony's 60-odd! he'll have learned at least half of his vocabulary from people outside his family, and is long past the time when his working vocabulary would be constrained by his parents

I really don't think vocab works on the one in, one out principle, MereDint. Although in the case of my child, spelling was learned for a test and quickly diskarded. Sigh.

And do you not have days when you use a word outside your day-to-day vocabulary just because it fits/because you are talking to yourself/whatever? I am often early in the queue to bash the SWs, but Tony's use of 'barnet' while (boringly) soliloquising did not strike me at all as out of character or incongruous. Although - and I have no way at all of substantiating this - I did think "someone's going to pick up on that!' - and here we all are I suppose that in itself could be taken as evidence for the prosecution, but I prefer to think of it as a bit of authenticity being drizzled into Tony's otherwise rather bland discourse.

Marking place

I really don't think vocab works on the one in, one out principle, MereDint. I don't think I said it was, did I? I was merely saying that one's vocabulary is not learned just from parents, or filtered according parents' ideas of what is acceptable, and by the time you're Tony's afge and have lived 40 years away from parents, your vocabulary is likely to include a lot of words that either they don't know or they wouldn't approve of. So, no, not in the least surprising that he knows "barnet" and uses it.

Apologies, MereDint. I misread /misinterpreted your post and we appear to be in agreement.

Tony really is an economy-sized pillock, though.

Just by the way, Tony was born on 16th February 1951, so he'll be seventy next year.

Come on peeps. Some of us are more than ready for a name change and don't want to slough off the old skin mid-thread. Shift yourselves and fill this one up a bit more speedily. Pretty please.

Is Natasha also bipolar? It would seem to be where this is leading?

I think so. It could also tie in with the bouts of extravagance.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Just by the way, Tony was born on 16th February 1951, so he'll be seventy next year.

I wouldn't have posted this without that tweet from PPE but I was going to say Tony is nearer 70 than 60. I think Tom actually mentioned that in his monologues, which are rather more reminiscent of his Sausage King days. Yes, I have remembered the actor has changed but so has Tom's character. I quite like the return to Self Aggrandising Tom.

Is Tony now going to have to fork out to Borchester Burns Unit - he can't ask for retrospective sponsorship can he? Soosan is bound to follow it up. I hope she does anyway.

This week was much better than I had anticipated. Helen was excellent (I can't warm to her but the characterisation was excellent) and I thought both Tony and Johnny wittered on quite creditably in their usual way.

We've got a lot less than usual to witter on about discuss with our usual incisive insight and wit, PPE!

I wonder when TA will get back to normal. I'm pointlessly wondering this about all sorts of things at present. I feel a bit as if we're all plodding across the Sahara with no landmarks in sight in any direction.

Tony said lots of people who heard the broadcast had agreed to sponsor him retrospectively, so presumably the burns unit will get its money that way.

Yes, I thought this week was good. It was actually a productive use of the soliloquy format to hear a bit more about what goes on inside Helen's head in relation to the whole Rob saga. However, when she was thinking about that, it would have been good if she had spared a thought for its effects on Henry.

I missed that bit BashStreetKid. The new format does need more attention but I can't get out of my old habit of doing something else while listening.

The 🔮 and I are locked down in our bubble but frankly it can get a bit wearing. I do not want to listen to prognostications all day and every day. It's also quite annoyed that several predictions have had to be jettisoned along with the scripts.

It says that The Ambridge Health Fairy will eventually cure Gnasher's bipolar after a ramping-up of her symptoms, near-bankruptcy, and lots of drama before Tom eventually learns The Truth. There will be a brief period of "Treatment", after which it will never be spoken of again.

The new format does need more attention but I can't get out of my old habit of doing something else while listening. That's probably why I'm profoundly bored by the whole thing, then come on here to find you lot have been listening to a completely different programme.

Most of the people I have known with bipolar disorder have functioned well when they took medication which had been worked out for them after trial and error for a few months or years -- in one case only when he was allowed to decide his own dosage based on his own feelings, though: when he was put onto a fixed dose by a new doctor who didn't listen to him, it didn't work and he killed himself a few months later after trying with increasing desperation to get the doctor to attend to what the patient said, but he was the exception. It seems likely that the "message" of this Natasha-has-bipolar storyline, if it does happen, will be "take the medication you are prescribed, because it works". And the trial-and-error bit will not need to happen because the doctor will get it right first time.

It will be as annoying as "Jill/Kenton has a malfunctioning thyroid" was; neither of them had to have any adjustment made to their dose of T4 during the first year it was being prescribed, neither needed T3 instead and found it very difficult indeed to get the prescription changed, neither has had to have regular check-ups at the endocrinology department of a hospital or even blood-checks, and neither has had any trouble with their dosage since they were first diagnosed, during the course of more than forty years. This breezing through it with an unaffected life simply is not the experience of anyone I know with a malfunctioning thyroid.

I'm profoundly bored by the whole thing
[lightbulb moment]
You know that "show, don't tell" thing. That's why I'm not enjoying most of the monologues. There's no subtlety, no interaction, no light&shade. Just people droning on with their internal (mostly negative) thoughts.

I have a diagnosis of bipolar. I'm dreading it being a storyline.

I don't think would be thinking nasty things about Jennifer's roots. Woukd he even notice?

And I want to know about Phil, Kirsty and the horses!

I don't think Tony ...

I quite like the new format.

And I have Hypothyroidism. I have never seen an endocrinologist, I have had my dosage adjusted (both up and down), but it really isn't dramatic. Now my dramatic health problems would be interesting to portray, but then so far now one really knows what is going on there - and I'm becoming more bolshy about doctors fobbing me off that "everything is fine now". But in a script they like to have a diagnosis in mind even if it takes a while to get sorted.
They don't have long conversations about dental check ups either - but I assume everyone in Ambridge has them.

I have not personally met a single person face to face who was happy with his or her treatment for hypothyroidism, so I am delighted to hear it is possible.

Perhaps because I am unlucky enough to have Hashimoto's, which though it is common in the USA seems not to be here, I have been in and out of hospitals and as a result have met a very large number of people who like me have had to fight (while wading through porridge, feeling exhausted the entire time, and putting on forty pounds in weight) to get even a diagnosis let alone a treatment. Mine came in the end from a private practitioner whom I saved up to visit, in despair and the third year of treatment that did not work, and who sent me back to the local hospital with questions to ask and demand answers for. My being found a correct dosage after diagnosis has only taken eight years so far; they will probably get it sorted before I die of covid.

It says that The Ambridge Health Fairy will eventually cure Gnasher's bipolar after a ramping-up of her symptoms, near-bankruptcy, and lots of drama before Tom eventually learns The Truth

Tom knows about Natasha's father, so I really hope that if that story does develop he catches on reasonably quickly.

A friend of mine has Hashimoto's and has suffered similar problems to AnyQuestions. At one point when the NHS was economising and wouldn't let doctors prescribe branded treatment things got so bad that she was on beta blockers, which cost several times more than the NHS were saving on the thyroid medication. She too only got sorted out by going to a private practitioner.