🎄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?

@Prestissimo

I wonder if Gavin will report his Dad and Victoria to the www.modernslaveryhelpline.org/ once a handover date for the horses is set. He does sound like he feels really uncomfortable about the whole situation now, albeit that he’s obviously been complicit in the past. Bit of reverse Stockholm syndrome.

I was really pleased that Chris told someone too. Lots for him to deal with on his own, and Harrison actually sounded reasonably helpful.

wouldn't it be great if this storyline was wound up by someone (anyone) phoning the helpline and thus bringing it to the attention of the wider public

I' wondering if the Brad getting drunk on Jazzers booze was a way for getting Jazzer and Tracey to interact. The conversation sounded very RomCom ish.

If Jazzer and Tracey grew up together, why does Jazzer have such a strong Scottish accent?

They didn't grow up together. Jazzer lived on the Meadow Rise estate in Borchester, and met (or at least got to know) Ed when the Grundys moved there after being evicted from Grange Farm. At least, that's what I've understood. I guess we're supposed to assume he spent his earlier childhood in Scotland? Dunno really ...

I don't seem to have any recollection of Tracy's childhood / youth in Ambridge. Did I miss it during a rare period of not listening? Or did she not exist until she (AFAIR) turned up at Susan's doorstep with her children?

I think someone (Asking perhaps) queried above how Jazzer would know about Tracy's childhood. I'm prepared to believe they were either at the same school or hung out in the same teen places ...

@BoreOfWhabylon

MysticBore™️ predicts:

We have just heard the Ambridge Relationship Fairy fluttering her wings over Jazzer and Tracy and sprinkling them with love-dust.

They just don't know it yet.

I refer you to m'learned and prescient friend, Molly!

Tracy was born in 1975, Jazzer in 1984, so it seems unlikely they were ever at school together.

Jazzer was in the same class at school as Ed, not Tracy.

Jazzer commented that he knew that Tracey was buying drinks in the Cat and Fiddle when she was underage.

I’m always curious that Jazzer has such a strong accent given that he seems to have spent a fair chunk of his childhood in Borsetshire (think he first appeared around 2000, and had been living in Borchester with his single mum for some time?).

I'd forgotten the age difference!

Jazzer may have repeated gossip about Tracy, though goodness knows who he got it from; you'd imagine that by the time he arrived in Ambridge in 2005 the behaviour back in 1989 of someone who no longer lived there wouldn't have been high on the gossips' agenda.

And what would he know about the Cat and Fiddle? It closed in 2000.

Not to mention that there is absolutely no way the landlord of the Cat in 1989 would have allowed underage drinking there; he knew that Sid Perks was watching like a hawk just waiting to get him into trouble with the licensing authorities.

Jazzer appeared earlier than that - Ryan Kelly first played him in 2000.

Wiki also says that Kelly moved to the Midlands at the age of 3, so he’s worked hard on that accent (although it’s a cheesy Scottish accent - I don’t know any Glaswegians that talk quite like that).

Actually, just found an interview with Kelly by Peter White - his natural accent is dialled way down.

Yes; he was resident in Borchester, not Ambridge. He visited (and had Greg Turner beaten up) but didn't arrive in Ambridge until 2005 or possibly 06. He moved in because of getting a milk-round from Mike Tucker and it being a bit far from his mum's place in Borchester. And his mum chucking him out, which he tended to gloss over.

Interview here with Ryan Kelly about how he got the part.
His natural accent is Scottish. A bit softer than Jazzer’s but it’s undeniably Scottish. I am Scottish myself and have never doubted that, although he does use quite a few expressions that are a bit old-fashioned in the mould of The Broons. But those may be written in for him actually, because in this he actually comments that he refused to have Jazzer call Fallon “hen” because it would be an unrealistic way for a man of his age to address a friend of the same age.

It’s a really great interview. Worth a whole listen.

Jazzer is a bit Oor Wullie on steroids.

I don’t think that there is a huge difference between his accent and Jazzer’s @SabrinaThwaite, just the vocabulary.

Ah The Cat.....

I think it’s more than just the vernacular terms used, it’s much broader and harsher than the actor’s natural speaking voice. At least he didn’t go full Doric.

@SabrinaThwaite

I think it’s more than just the vernacular terms used, it’s much broader and harsher than the actor’s natural speaking voice. At least he didn’t go full Doric.

OK well we will just have to agree to disagree then! I think there are multiple factors at play- voice, characterisation, vocabulary and accent. I think that the other elements can vary to but the accent still remain consistent. Doric would of course be the wrong region altogether- even natives struggle with that.

What is fascinating is how Ryan maintained such a strong, unmistakeable Scottish accent whilst living in England from such a young age. He talks about being very close to his family and it seems that there is a real “Little Scotland” enclave in Corby where his family moved to, so perhaps he was rarely exposed to other accents growing up. But he was at boarding school in Coventry from age 5 at a school which I think took blind and partially sighted children from all over the country so fascinating that the variety of accents there didn’t affect his accent.

I'm Scottish too, and I'm astonished to learn that Ryan has lived in England all or almost all of his life. My family moved to England when I was 9 and I still have an accent (much stronger when I talk to other Scots, but many people notice it unprompted, so I don't think I'm deluding myself there). My brother was 6 and lost his accent overnight, but moved back to Scotland in his 20s and you wouldn't know now that he'd ever been away. My parents were in their 30s when we moved. They never lost a trace of their accents, and on retirement moved back to God's own country (their phrase ). I think people are surprised to learn they'd ever been away.

We've known other expat Scots with no trace of an accent.

It seems very variable!

Lots of Scots moved to Corby to work at the steelworks (which closed in 1980). I do think that Jazzer has exaggerated his accent to make it more Scottish for English listeners though.

There is a theory that you tend to lose an accent more easily if you move before puberty. My own DCs show no sign of losing theirs (which I’m glad about).

Just a final comment: I don't know why Jazzer would have been interested in someone he had never met having done something when he was five, either.

Tracy had left Ambridge by the time the Grundys got back from being exiled to Meadow Rise for less than four months in 2000 (26th April to 14th July) and Jazzer started to visit Ed, so there would have been no particular reason for anyone to mention her to Jazzer.

There must be a whole psycho-linguistic /sociolinguistic thesis out there (either done or ripe to be done) about how and when accents “fix” in people who move away from the area where it is native. Age must be one factor but I guess it also must depend to some extent on how much confidence an individual has, societal pressure to fit in, social perceptions of the accent (eg “Northeners sound thick”), family circumstances, accents of those considered to be role models etc. I left Scotland aged 18 to go to University in England but my accent has never changed and I don’t remember consciously trying to keep it. But then most people commented on it positively so I probably had no reason to modify it- quite the opposite in fact. I do, however, speak more slowly than I did as a child and use very little Scots vocabulary unless only with Scottish people. Jazzer sticking doggedly to his “braws” and “wee lassies” has always sounded a bit cod-Scottish to me, but then he’s also not supposed to be all that bright and that might suggest less awareness of the need to adapt his speech to the listener.

My son is 4. His father is English and we live in England and he goes to preschool staffed by people with a range of accents (Caribbean, Spanish, Norf Lahndan). His early speech was more or less RP but I’ve noticed he’s started rolling his “r”s and sounding more like me as his vocabulary has widened. I doubt it will last though!). He has a little friend in the same preschool with two Irish parents and that boy sounds Irish despite being born and bred in London.