🎄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?

@PoulePouletteEternellement

Justin's company bought the land. I've no idea who developed it, etc - but it makes no difference - whoever profits financially if she buys one of the houses, she would be funding that profit, entirely needlessly.

Presumably it's only Philip who profits, if the value of the house has gone up - and that's rather a big if.

They have a whole farm! Surely if she needs a house she can have one built anywhere on land she still owns
That idea worked so well for Tom & Kirsty ...

But it does totally makes sense. Why haven't TomTasha done it?

Because they are in a flat that can be cosy and compact when needed - not much cleaning needed etc, but that can magically expand if required, for example, to have a cocktail party for half the village.
Also, it has a convenient shop downstairs, and open all hours for receiving style and beauty purchase parcels.

Poppy is Poppy Josephine, after her great grandfather.

That's pretty.

I think we need to hear more of TomTasha.

I think we need to hear more of TomTasha

I couldn’t agree more! They laid the foundations for some excellent storylines eg the credit cards, the shoe shopping and Trevor the ex lurking in the background - and then just left them - and us - hanging...

I’d also like to hear a bit more on the CMR situation - how the hell has he just settled into being part of the furniture at LL?!?

He's so bland he blends in with the gallery walls.

Is he divorced yet. I think that Silly would be better off with Sexy Rexy.

I guess if they're reading this thread the SWs might be disappointed that Frilly's 21st birthday celebration raised no excitement amongst us. Perhaps because it seemed a little rushed (in conception) and mightily unlikely.

The thing about farmland is that some of has development potential and the rest of it is in designated greenbelt.

I have a friend that bought a few little fields on the outskirts of a city/greenbelt for little more than peanuts (he now has a few sheep too), in the hope he might be able to sell it on to developers in a decade or so.

And this sort of thing is why we need a proper agricultural advisor insisting on proper rural storylines.

But rural storylines don't pull in the punters.
They have an Agricultural Story Adviser.

And who is the Agricultural Story Adviser now that Graham Harvey has shaken the dust of Ambridge off his green wellies?

That would be Sarah Swadling, Asking. Weirdly, I remembered her name, but checked to be sure.

Graham Harvey was the Agricultural Adviser.

Until some time in 2018.

The Agricultural Story Adviser is a freelance journalist who worked on Ewe & Yours and works on Farming Today.

I was hoping to hear from Mrs Trellis just then.

Mrs Trellis is in North Wales, and unfortunately she can't pick up Radio Borsetshire.

Mrs Trellis might have been staying with her sister in Darrington

I had no idea.

Isn’t one Eddie-on-the-scam storyline tedious enough without bringing another one into the mix?

And Susan saying she doesn’t need her hobby radio show because Alice is (isn’t) going to have a baby. Wtf? Run Alice, run!

I don’t believe for a moment that Oliver would consider buying the extra birds at auction for Eddie. He might chuckle indulgently and say ‘your secret’s safe with me’ but he certainly wouldn’t get involved in the subterfuge.

Air time spent on Eddie is so wasted. He is over-exposed and the laboured and tedious acting put me off becoming a listener for years.

Oh i despise ‘incorrigible scamster eddie’ storylines. I don’t get who they’re meant to appeal to or why? Are they meant to make us chuckle and go ‘haha what is he like eh?’ They just make me feel sorry for clarrie and his dc being shackled to such a lazy piss taking waste of space.

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/dec/15/the-archers-weird-genius-peculiarly-english-epic

Quite a long read. Interesting to learn about the story that didn't happen.

Oh goodness - that was excellent. Thanks for the link, Captain. I kept wanting to c&p particularly good passages, but there are so many.

... it is the authentic material of its audience’s lives, of memory and emotion ...

is lovely, and what she suggests about the shared archive of the listening community. And Xiaolu Guo on the ideology of lethargy is one of the most stimulating and satisfying TA observations I've read in five decades.

Now. I am off to find a god to thank for removing SOC before he completed his campaign of ultimate ruination.