🎄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?

Loved tonight's episode. Philip just gets more evil. The casual 'selling on' of the 'horses' is awful to hear.

I don't believe a word of it re: the business? Is he deceiving Gavin as he wants a reason to wind up the business & be shot of the whole thing, new start with Kirsty?

Character transplant Fairy has gone into overdrive

Gavin's going to crack and tell someone - probably Kirsty.

Or, oooh! Smugula!!

@BoreOfWhabylon

Character transplant Fairy has gone into overdrive

😂😂😂

@AmICrazyorWhat2, yes you are crazy. Nigel was he loveliest person ever.

Lovely but irritating!

I couldn’t stand Nigel.

Nigel was one of the few people in TA who wasn't perpetually squabbling with other people, or trying to get one over on them, or in some way being snide or nasty. It was a relief, for all his silly-ass persona. He and Neil shone like good deeds in a naughty world.

Well, no, there were other people I might have been prepared to have in my house, back before the Fall: Mrs Antrobus was a semi-professional Good Egg, for instance, and Betty wasn't a nasty person, and before she left school Alice was not unpleasant. And Phil and Tony were not nasty, just boring. I didn't have anything in particular against George and Christine Barford, nor Caroline, nor Jean-Paul, and there was no particular harm in Janet Fisher. Hayley was ok, too.

The ones who have survived the various culls have not improved with age.

OMG what happened to Marjorie Antrobus?

Back to Banjo, am I the only one thinking that Alice comes back, doesn't get the message about kissing spines, gets thrown? sustains life changing injuries? because isn't it a story line they haven't done?

Mrs A simply moved to The Laurels and was never heard from again; we were told rather later that she had died. I don't know whether the actor had become ill, or what; Mrs A was last heard on air in September 2004 as far as I remember, and Margot Boyd died on 20 May 2008. She was born in 1913 so she was quite of an age in 2004!

I'm sure there's been a serious horse-related incident before.

I am not sure that being a little bit kinder to slaves than his dad is an example of a compassionate person. I am not going to be nominating gavin for a Nobel peace prize anytime soon.

Yes ... But in the last two instances I recall - Caroline's pre-wedding riding accident and Christopher's kicking - there wasn't a life changing injury. In the first, poor Mark died, and Caroline changed her mind about marrying the vicar, and in the second the fact of Christopher being injured was enough to dissuade Alice from emigration.

So Alice receiving a long term riding injury would be new to me. I'm sure the birthday bridle bag must be getting ready for a starring role ...

I think she will fall off her horse, lose the baby, and then fall off the wagon.

I can’t see them wanting to add a serious injury into the mix when Alice already has alcoholism to deal with.

Has Pat wandered off to join Usha, Alan, Kathy and Jamie in the cereal cupboard? We've not heard from her for months.

If Philip is caught she will be homeless, won't she? Not if Helen buys Beechwood first (hopefully he won’t be caught until the sale has gone through)

If Helen and Kirsty move in together, and if Kirsty acquires a child or two, they could invite Hayley to come back as live-in nanny. (With Abigail, of course.) I'm sure she's progressed in her career in Birmingham, but she might welcome a return to rural life.

Er that otherwise wonderful scenario would require quite a lot of the Bedroom Fairy though!

I honestly cannot see Hayley wanting to have anything to do with Helen, who was completely vile to her.

Pat last spoke on Christmas Day last year. She has been in a couple of the repeat broadcasts, but in real time, almost a year ago.

It was more about me wanting Hayley's return, Asking.

But really - no Pat since last year? Truly? I thought I'd heard her before lockdown? I wonder what's going on - with the actor or the producers ...

Apart from repeat episodes, the last time Pat was in the cast was the week starting 22nd December last year. Truly. I was surprised as well.

May be Pat will die and Tony will marry Joy. I quite like her now and she would appreciate him in a way that Pat never has.

To summarise.... Helen is/was pretty vile to nearly everybody she meets. The only exceptions that spring to mind are Greg (suicide), Ian and Kirsty.

Builders are booked up for months round here, so Philip and his stable must be hopeless. Property solicitors are busy busy too.

The SWs do seem to have devoted a lot of airtime to the friendship between Joy and Tony, so maybe Pat will get written out next year.