🍾 Archers thread 123: Goodbye & good riddance to 2020 – to Philip too? The Archers is 70 on New Year’s Day – celebrate or vent about it here!

[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 wish we heard more from Shula, 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.)

So! 2021 beckons. Big anniversary next Friday, 1.1.21 (and to mark that we have episodes Tuesday-Friday next week). What would we like to see happen? I may be in a minority of one, but I'd like a nice gentle character-driven episode. I don't think we'll get that, but I really, really hope they don't kill someone else off, just for the headlines.

[Title edited by MNHQ at OP'S request]

One could argue that using someone else as therapy is in itself a form of exploitation

But Phillip wasn't a bystander. He was using Jim and Alistair to - as he thought - deflect the blame onto Gavin. I don't trust that DC Tanner (who also arrested Helen) not to be taken in.

Jim taught at Stirling University Chemenger.

@nettie434

One could argue that using someone else as therapy is in itself a form of exploitation

But Phillip wasn't a bystander. He was using Jim and Alistair to - as he thought - deflect the blame onto Gavin. I don't trust that DC Tanner (who also arrested Helen) not to be taken in.

Jim taught at Stirling University Chemenger.

Well, Jim taught at a fictional version of the University of Stirling because the real one doesn’t offer degrees in classics. (I am from there and thought it a very weird choice when there are plenty of others in Scotland that do).

The care home is a different tree @ILoveShula- the Laurels.

Ooh that’s interesting, it was the same DC who arrested Helen and Kirsty? Would she not remember Kirsty as a witness online Helen’s case?

CheetasOnFajitas Definitely Stirling so that was a slip up not to choose a university that did classics. I am fairly sure that it is the same DC - her interviewing style is definitely similar. You are right that it is strange she doesn't remember Kirsty (or indeed vice versa). It would be understandable if their previous encounter had just been a burglary or something routine, but not a major incident.

The Laurels is the home for the elderly, The Elms is where Alan tells people to volunteer to help the homeless. (And neglects his seven congregations to serve lunch on Christmas Day.)

I don't think Philip said anything to Jim or Alistair which would be of the least use or interest to the police: there was nothing new there.

A flea-pit has always been a non-posh cinema, but they used sometimes to be slept in by the homeless during the sixties; for sixpence a tramp (as such people were then called) could be in the warm for hours on end, and since they were never full he was unlikely to get ejected until the place closed and the lights went on. Maybe that was what Philip had in his mind? Or maybe the scriptwriter simply got it wrong; it was Adrian Flynn and Katie Hims this week, so I think last night would have been Katie Hims.

Yes, I do definitely remember them saying Stirling too @nettie434- was quite exciting for me to hear my home town referenced in my favourite programme!

I don my know where that random word “online” came from in my post by the way.

If it is the same DC, I guess that Kirsty’s involvement with Helen’s case is not relevant to the slavery case, so no real need to mention it when talking to Kirsty, and maybe police are trained to approach each new incident as a separate matter without any preconceptions. But it is quite a big contrast to go from supportive credible witness to accused, mixed up with a dodgy man.

Chemenger
Jim was a university academic, wasn’t he? It’s hard to do that job and not be fond of young adults and realise their vulnerability.

Um, really? the academics I have known have managed not to think much of the vast majority of the students they are obliged to try to teach, and have not found them as interesting as they find themselves.

Did you feel that I wasn’t sufficiently authoritative on the name of the old folks’ home @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime?

DC Tanners was the one who persecuted Josh, but not the one who arrested Helen; that was PC Hunter.

The one who interrogated Helen was DS Madeley, and she is now the one who doesn't want Burns on the case -- probably because she has met him before when she was looking into the hit-and-run on Matt, and knows how useless he is. (No, investigation shows that was DI Janet Thorpe; all the senior police officers in Borsetshire are female. And at the moment it seems as if the only member of the police force who is not a detective is Burns.)

Definitely Stirling so that was a slip up not to choose a university that did classics.

Or a deliberate choice, though as we never knew him when he was employed with them, it wouldn't be so important.

CheetasOnFajitas
Did you feel that I wasn’t sufficiently authoritative on the name of the old folks’ home @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime?

I was answering ILoveShula's question, COF. I had not yet read this page at the time.

Incidentally, about Jim having been at Stirling: when the editorial team realised (I think it's possible that rather a lot of us noticed about that, and jeered) that Stirling doesn't offer Classics, they back-pedalled and made him a professor of history instead of classics, which is what he had been when he was introduced. And these days he was just a professor, with no subject specified at all.... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/5H7fR4sHmfJvmcnlqS5jsvp/jim-lloyd

It is The Laurels not The Elms.

Maybe saying Classics at Stirling was deliberate. I wondered why they didn't invent a university.

They already have Felpersham uni, but it would not be realistic for us not to have heard more of Jim previously, had he been there.

Stirling doesn’t teach Jim’s field of history either, it does not matter, it’s just a radio programme. The reason that it stood out so much for me is that Stirling is a very “modern” university where the best-known courses are things like aquaculture, PR, business and economics. It’s also famous for its modernist 1970s campus. For me it really jarred with the image of Jim that they were trying to portray, but the vast majority of the audience would have had no prior knowledge so no problem.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Chemenger Jim was a university academic, wasn’t he? It’s hard to do that job and not be fond of young adults and realise their vulnerability.

Um, really? the academics I have known have managed not to think much of the vast majority of the students they are obliged to try to teach, and have not found them as interesting as they find themselves.

I won't take that personally.

I am doing you the honour of assuming you are not an adolescent, and do not suffer from the adolescent's self-preoccupation! Seriously, if you worried all the time about their feelz, how would you ever get any teaching done?

If the police go round the homeless asking if any of them recognise the photos of the lads , and someone says "I already told the woman I didn't recognise them" how soon will the police track down Kirsty?

I do hope she has given the police a copy of that photo! There may not be all that many photos of Moss's three not-employees.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

DC Tanners was the one who persecuted Josh, but not the one who arrested Helen; that was PC Hunter.

The one who interrogated Helen was DS Madeley, and she is now the one who doesn't want Burns on the case -- probably because she has met him before when she was looking into the hit-and-run on Matt, and knows how useless he is. (No, investigation shows that was DI Janet Thorpe; all the senior police officers in Borsetshire are female. And at the moment it seems as if the only member of the police force who is not a detective is Burns.)

The occifer not wanting Full-Thickness Burns on the horse case is DCI Pemberton, who I think was referred to as 'he', although I might have imagined that bit. Pemberton, definitely.

gooo on Jim! tell that little fanny about himself.

Jim Lloyd used to have a page on the University of Stirling website.

Well done Jim. I didn't really understand where he was going with Phil, so I'm not surprised that Alastair took a while to twig.

I have never associated a cinema with the term 'flea pit'. Flea pit for me just means a dirty, bug ridden place, so I also assumed he meant the homeless shelter.

I have never heard it used to mean anything other than a cinema.
www.thefreedictionary.com/fleapit

I would describe a grotty hotel or bedsit - indeed anywhere generally - as a flea pit, I wouldn’t think of a cinema specifically.

Jim was great but that was a very soap scene, wasn't it! I was reminded of Nick and Dot Cotton for some reason...