🎄Archers thread #122: Deck the Hall with Eddie, Freddie 🎵 'Tis the Season to be jolly (but orange juice for you, Alice)

[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 love Bert Fry’s poetry (as I do), 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/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 @C8H10N4O2 for requesting an annoyingly cheerful thread title which might take us up to Christmas and to @Prestissimo for the title suggestion. I was strongly tempted by @LillianGish’s suggestion: Eddie’s turkeys, Freddie’s show, village green with lights aglow, Stir Up Sunday, Deck the Hall, Merry Christmas one and all - with apologies to Bert Fry and @R4’s suggestion Wassail to the Ambridge Not-A-Panto where Freddie gets nine LESSONS in directing from CAROLe Lynda. Top work, all!

Three days to go until we can return to Ambridge.

My list for Father Christmas

In the next few weeks I’d like:

• Freddie’s show to be a huge success

• Philip and Gavin to be driven out of the village with pitchforks into the waiting arms of the police, and the three ‘horses’ rescued and taken in by kind people who will help them turn their lives around

• Pip to take a perpetual vow of silence and leave for a nunnery

• a terrific Grundy Christmas (although the travails of Alice and Chris will overshadow things)

• Alice to lose the baby, as this seems the least grim option for us listeners; she leaves Chris and makes a fresh start of some kind

What do you all want for Christmas from The Archers?

Ah, my personal @-summons to give me the comforting knowledge that these threads continue. I really, really should listen to some episodes and get back into TA. I miss you guys.

Thanks, Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

We miss you, DDD! I have to warn you, though, there's been nothing comforting about the main storyline this last week.

Just checking in.

Thanks Gasp0de

I also hope the poor little Chrysalis never makes an appearance and that Alice leaves, dries out and, after a period of prison visiting, makes a new start with Gavin.

Thanks Gaspode - can't believe how quickly that last thread filled up in the end. Would be interesting to have some stats from DDD to see if we are getting back up to speed after the monologues.

so excited to have a thread title - thanks @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Thank you, Gasp0de! And Prestissimo for the title.

(Though if things carry on at this rate we may get through this thread before Christmas.)

What do I want from Father Christmas?

There's too much going on at the moment - but surely, surely Lily needs to get rid of the useless 'artist' who scuppered her academic life.

And, once the slave-masters are driven out, wouldn't it be lovely if at least one of the horses finds a home in Ambridge and becomes a regular character?

But try as I might, I can't see a happy near-future for Kirsty ...

A small token of my esteem for the NHS, @Prestissimo! Must have been a tough year for you and your colleagues.

Thanks for the new thread.

Thanks for new thread!

My brain read the title perfectly well, then wanted to code it as:
🎄Archers thread #122: Deck the Hall with Eddie, Freddie 🎵 'Tis the Season to be jelly...

(Oooh Ive made an italic Christmas tree.)

Thank you for the shiny new thread and good title options.

I've been "at home, mostly", seeing few of my friends. When an approximation to normality resumes I can't wait explain how I kept myself amused:

"baking bread and learning about modern slavery, alcoholism and FAS".

That ought to silence a coffee shop!

Place marking!

I'm fairly cavalier about admitting to being an Archers obsessive but it's a red letter day when I meet someone else who also confesses to being a listener! Some of my parkrun fans fit the bill, but obviously that's all on hold at the moment.

Thanks @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g.
I still love Shula, still love Alice, and still can't stand Pip.

DYAC - friends! I have no parkrun fans, far too slow for that.

Someone asked on another thread if Radio Borsetshire was a BBC station.

I work with a lot of local BBC radio stations (PR) and can categorically say No!

It is more like a community radio station, of which there are many.

I think Radio Borsetshire is a misnomer - it really should be Radio Ambridge. As far as we know Susan is the only presenter, I think?

I’m pretty sure they have played a “BBC Radio Borsetshire” jingle before. Didn’t Susan win the presenting gig in a competition, then they let her stay on because she was a hit during lockdown?

For my Ambridge Christmas I would like to hear Chris apologise profusely to Emma for doubting her and Jenny and Brian to get a new house with a half decent kitchen.

Radio Borsetshire is supposed to be a BBC local radio station! A million years ago Brenda Tucker, Roy's sister, got stellar A level results and decided to take up an offer of a trainee post at Radio Borsetshire rather than go to university. For years the production team threw in stories that made use of Brenda as a trainee journalist, without ever grasping the nettle and accepting that after a few months in Borsetshire IRL she would have been transferred to a big city, if she'd been any good, that is. (I assume. What an odd training scheme otherwise.)

Eventually, Brenda realised she was in a dead end and went to university - Bournemouth, which IRL has an excellent radio journalism degree progamme. However, that was no good. A bright, ambitious Ambridge woman can't be allowed to leave, so Brenda's mother Betty was killed off and Brenda dropped out of her course to return to Ambridge to look after her Dad and to some extent her brother. She transferred to (where else?) the University of Felpersham to do marketing. She got a part-time job with Amside Properties (Matt and Lilian's business) and improbably moved to a full-time position there after she graduated.

She briefly worked in Leicester during the week and returned at weekends, but that didn't work as she and Tom Archer, with whom she was living, didn't see enough of each other. Instead of seeing this as a wake up call to move on, she gave up the Leicester job and went back to AP for ages, with Lilian treating her like dirt, because there had been a brief interlude years earlier when Lilian had a toyboy who transferred his attentions to Brenda (for a few days, before disappearing).

Eventually she and Tom split up and she finally escaped to London. Last heard of engaged to a Russian oligarch's son, wearing a huge diamond engagement ring, and doing some unspecified job in the City earning megabucks.

It could all have been so different if the BBC production team in Birmingham had made the effort to ask their colleagues in local radio what would actually happen to someone like Brenda. Another lost opportunity.

Well I never! I stand corrected...

Having said all of that, @UnnamedWisteria, the production team has form for simply forgetting/changing inconvenient facts if it suits their plans, so maybe Radio Borsetshire is now a community station.

See also: number of bedrooms in assorted dwellings, location of the Cat and Fiddle pub of beloved memory (now converted to flats).

For Christmas I would like to know which family is now living in Brian and JD's old house.

As depressing as the storyline is I would very much like to see a realistic story line for Alice and for a Chris to become a modern and very capable father. They made Will fail after Brenda and haven't put him back on track yet. I am not sure what messages they are trying to send out!

I also think emmmur may build bridges, she is after all with an ex drug addict so surely she can offer her brother some real support.

I just think that this is going down the route of Ambridge Health Fairy intervening and the child being born with zero ill effects from constant heavy drinking during and beyond the first trimester.

I think part of the issue with FAS is that it's not easily identifiable, especially not from birth and that it may rear its head in behavioural issues years later, I think the physical (facial) signs of FAS are the most severe and telling but possibly not from birth?

I would like a complete Ambridge Lego model village.

According to a little google, even in alcoholics the chance of having a baby with FAS is about 5%.

I would like a complete Ambridge Lego model village.

Yes!

Having lived in the countryside all my life I try to picture what village it would be most like, I've certainly never lived in a village so well catered for!