🎄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?

Yes. I think it's a good thing SOC wasn't around for longer, reading that.

Thanks for the link, Captain

Agreed on all points!

On the spoiler thread, years ago, someone reported a gossip columnist (I think) relaying a purported overheard conversation in a restaurant where an obnoxiously noisy member of The Archers production team listed a number of plot developments planned for the next few years. The only one that didn't actually happen was LL burning down, and now we know why. Surely no Editor of TA would be stupid enough to talk publicly about top secret future plot developments? But if it wasn't SOC, I wonder who else it could have been.

Lovely article. I expect there will be more as we gear up for the 70th birthday (1.1.21). Can't believe it's been ten years since Nigel fell off the Burj Khalifa the roof of Lower Loxley.

Surely no Editor of TA would be stupid enough to talk publicly about top secret future plot developments?

Don't know about Editors, but I recall eating my lunch at the next table to some TA writers/producers outside a gallery once. I shushed my companion so I could listen in on what they were saying! (Too long ago to recall the details.)

Yes, we can expect wall to wall Archers coverage for the next few weeks. There's an article in either the Times or Sunday Times (so frustrating to be paying a billion £££ a year for a subscription but remain incapable of understanding the sharing thing) about Spotify setting up a rival podcast soap, then they expand on the topic in the leader.

Brilliant article Captain and yes, PPE, that quote stood out to me too. When i think back to definitive Archers moments over the years, i’m always transported back to where my life was when i was listening. When i think of “oi’m george’s FARTHURRRRRR” i’m back in my little flat where i lived then, tidying up my shit wobbly argos rack of vintage clothes on a sunday morning. Or when i remember The Scream, i’m gathering up and putting away teeny tiny bits of a playmobil pirate ship under a huge real christmas tree that was shedding needles like buggery. Or i remember the absolutely BRILLIANT time i had laughing my arse off putting the washing out on the clothes airer the night alice and chris announced their surprise marriage to their respective parents, and the impatient wait for the episode to go up on iplayer so i could immediately listen again. Or feeding baby ds in a huge and cumbersome high chair in the holiday cottage we stayed in when emma found out she was pregnant with keira. Or wiping the sink down and cleaning the breadbin out while kirsty got jilted at the altar. Not thrilling memories by anyone’s stretch of the imagination but snippets of my life, punctuated by the constant background of this show i love and hate.

Well remembered Gasp0de!
It was me who started the very first Achers Spoilers thread back in 2014 with the following post

OK, this was posted on another site on January 1st 2014

'Based upon a letter in the DM from a reader who alleged they had overheard "an obnoxiously loud member of TA production team" in a Birmingham restaurant. Believe it at your peril.

Rob is revealed to be homophobic.
Jill will move into Brookfield.
The Grundy's to move back to Grange Farm.
Tom will take over the running of Bridge Farm after Tony has an accident.
Lower Loxley may burn down, but that has yet to be decided upon.
Lynda is to stage Blithe Spirit next Christmas.

Or not, as the case may be...'

How much more will come to pass, I wonder?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/2237899-Archers-spoilers

And thank you so much for the lovely article, Captain

As soon as I started reading it I thought 'I can't wait to share this'.

Thanks for the link. I do read the Guardian, and love their Long Read pieces, but I hadn’t seen it yet. Just enjoyed it with my lunch.

Bit disappointed that this group was not namechecked in the list of online discussion fora- surely we are up there with those others? (Not being sarcastic).

I enjoyed the bit about the Doris actress starting to believe she really was Doris. The character is before my time though.

Bit disappointed that this group was not namechecked in the list of online discussion fora- surely we are up there with those others? (Not being sarcastic).
Yes, I was expecting that too.

From that excellent Guardian article:
"(Fry, after decades of muteness, was swept to her death by the Borsetshire floods of 2015, a flourish O’Connor told me he pinched from the death of Maggie Tulliver in Mill on the Floss.)"

What claptrap! And how very O'Connor, too. FF was not "swept to her death"; she was trapped in her car by the flood-waters, rescued and taken to hospital, where she died considerably later the day before she was supposed to be coming home of a heart attack. Nor did she die with her brother, as Maggie and Tom did, hence the "In their death they were not divided" epigraph. O'Connor was always a great one for inept homages which were not particularly comparable with what they were ripping off. I was very relieved by his departure.

I do sort of agree with you about SOC’s “homages” @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime but the ferrets/Jude the Obscure one was quite accurate. JTO and Joe shocked me in equal measure.

I looked for mention of this thread, too. But on reflection it's probably preferable not to have hordes of anti-MN people descend upon us ...

"Done because we are too menny", you mean? But Joe killing the ferrets was back in 2000, Cheetas, well before O'Connor got his mitts on the programme. We have to give that one to Whitburn -- and it was very well done indeed. And had consequences, too: if it hadn't happened, Eddie would not have been in such a state that he shouted about Sid's behaviour with Jolene at Kathy and to the whole pub. When Freda died, the general feeling conveyed was a sort of muted "oh dear, poor Bert."

JTO and Joe shocked me in equal measure.

... No, for me the Hardy story materially changed me as a person. Despite two and a half decades of life and TV and everything, (at the time I read it) it showed me a level of personal, human tragedy I'd never fully contemplated before. Can definitely say it shook me to the core.

The ferrets gave me a real fillip of pride in TA though. As well as making me cry.

(Since reading The Portrait of a Lady in my 30s I can never, ever trust another human being. It totally ruined me. Don't think anything in TA has had quite that effect, so far.)

It’s credited to SOC in the article, but he was a scriptwriter then, not the editor.

@PoulePouletteEternellement I was probably too young when I first read JTO, and had no experience of being a mother, so possibly it had less impact on me than it should have done. It was still horribly shocking though.

" O’Connor was then a young scriptwriter" is also interesting; he doesn't seem to have been given credit for his work, in the Genome. Nor does it get mentioned on his Wikipedia page, though that claims that he introduced (and reintroduced) a number of characters who don't seem to have made their appearance while he was working for the programme.

He was the director for Joe killing the ferrets, but the episode was written by Caroline Harrington. genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/121364eeed3c48a3aba03fa7198fe355

And oh dear, how like a TA editor to get "all shall be well" just that little bit wrong....

[quote AskingQuestionsAllTheTime]" O’Connor was then a young scriptwriter" is also interesting; he doesn't seem to have been given credit for his work, in the Genome. Nor does it get mentioned on his Wikipedia page, though that claims that he introduced (and reintroduced) a number of characters who don't seem to have made their appearance while he was working for the programme.

He was the director for Joe killing the ferrets, but the episode was written by Caroline Harrington. genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/121364eeed3c48a3aba03fa7198fe355[/quote]
I suppose it’s possible the journalist misinterpreted what he said when she interviewed him.

I was not aware of “the Genome”. Will not click as I suspect it may be a rabbit hole!

The Genome is a complete cow to consult, because while you can find when programmes were, you have to click on each one in every week to find out who was in the cast that week; it gives computer-scan of each page of the RT, and ways to get to it. But on the whole I think it is accurate, except when it gives nothing at all about cast, writers and the rest for an entire week.

That link is to an individual entry: The Archers for that date happens to have the credits in it.

The Wiki page says "In the late 1990s, O'Connor worked as producer of the long-running radio drama The Archers, storylining and directing the programme. He re-introduced several popular characters including Kenton Archer, Adam Travers-Macy and Lillian Bellamy, as well as introducing Fallon Rogers, Ed Grundy and Emma Carter"

No mention of being a scriptwriter, and consulting the cast-lists indicates that while Kenton did turn up again briefly in August 2000, Adam arrived in 2003, and Lillian in 2001 for Nelson's funeral.

I think he tends to make the most of any possible thing; I have read CVs like that when I was hiring.

Thanks for the interesting article.
Yesterday's episode was nothing to write home about.

Back to Grundy comedy capers. I suspect we'll have to wait a bit longer for anything more on the horses or Chrysalis stories.

Hi everyone,

I'm ben absent from the threads for some time, and also took a break from TA (after many years' obsession). I've been listening fairly regularly now for the past few weeks, but I missed the bit around the aftermath of the GG accident. So sorry if this has been done to death, but I don't understand why Blake, Jordan, and the other one allow themselves to be kept in slavery. Does anyone know? I've been trying to work out if they're supposed to be intellectually disabled, but it doesn't seem like it. They're not foreign so it's not a visa/passport thing. And Philip never seems to have anything to blackmail them with. So why do they stay? How is he able to manipulate them?

I think they were homeless and living on the street at a young age, Philip doesn't pay them cash but provides food/accomodation.