🎭 Archers thread 125: Ambridge Mysteries! The Case Of The Missing Pandemic. Where Is Pat? What Is Lynda Snell's Kompromat? Follow the clues and discuss The Archers 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’d love to be in the Mysteries, 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 for thread title ideas to @Roysnewshirt and @Witchwife. Apologies if I’ve forgotten anyone else.

Do we think the Mysteries replace the usual fun storylines around giving things up for Lent? Light relief while we wait to see if the SWs go for realism and tragedy when Alice’s baby is born, or bottle out (as it were) and go for everything being fine? Will Jazzer and Tracy get back together again? (No bookie in the land would take money for that, of course they will.)

Over to you!

Anna Tregorran was both a lesbian and Carol Tregorran's daughter, but she seems to have been a transient character and her sexuality seemed shoehorned in to provide a very minor "twist" when we all found out Max was a woman. Sorry to go back up the thread a bit there!

Was an utterly pointless SOC thing that had no impact whatsoever on the story of Ambridge.

But that's equally so with Alistair's sister. The information on her relationship status was just not integrated into any wider story.

Sometimes I really wish the SWs had writing tutors ...

Carol Treggorn was only there to give employment to an actor whose name Sean O'Connor was sure all the oldies he assumed were his audience would recognise from her having been in a Beatles film, in any case. Her daughter whose name had been changed, presumably because he didn't know what it really was was even less important.

An unemployed barrister. Or I assume unemployed, since she did all those hours and hours of unpaid solicitor-work which in reality would have been no part of the barrister's business.

After studiously googling FAS and modern slavery outcomes I am not prepared to research how to snort a piece of penne.

Is it a particular SW that comes up with these storylines?

What was Anna originally called @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime?

Her name was either Anna-Louise (baptismal) or Ann (chosen by her). Never Anna. She was in the programme in the seventies and early eighties.

BBC says she was known as Ann when she was little, @ILoveShula. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/252Qh6WyTtbhBLBRxFBBdR0/carol-tregorran

It's a bit harsh to say only people who had watched Help! would know Eleanor Bron. She's had a long and successful career as an actor.

@ILoveShula - I didn't remember this and am not sure if it is revisionist, but found it on a BBC website, AQATT may remember differently.
"The Tregorrans

In December 1966, John proposed again. After some thought, Carol accepted. They married quietly on 1 February 1967.

In 1968, John was offered a lecture tour of America. He wasn’t impressed when Carol said she had too many commitments to join him. She in turn was hurt that he was intending to go without her, and that John accused Carol of putting her ‘hobby’ before him. He was away for six weeks.

John turned down a second tour the following year, as Carol was pregnant. On 23 September 1969, they had a daughter Anna-Louise (known as Ann). Jill Archer is one of her godparents. Ann moved to Cardiff in 2007."

Then she came back as Anna in 2014 and after, I think.

Ann Tregorran came back into the cast as Anna Tregorran on Friday 15th April, 2016, appeared 38 times in total, and last spoke on 7th December 2016.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
It's a bit harsh to say only people who had watched Help! would know Eleanor Bron. She's had a long and successful career as an actor.

I did not say this. I said that it would be what O'Connor (who seemed to know frod all about most things) would have supposed.

equally so with Alistair's sister
Ah, the Proffer's Dyke.

Jim has to be the Really Stupid Person's idea of a retired academic. Which tells you a lot about either Them or what They think about Us.

Presumably there are academics who are like him, full of Latin tags they more or less understand and too stupid to temper their conversation to their audience -- but in fifty years of having to do with universities I have not met them. Not even the high-powered likes of A.L. Rowse or Frank Kermode would have been capable of setting a pub quiz so stupidly stuck in their subject as the man Lloyd. Andreski might have done it deliberately because he found it funny, but he wasn't a pompous self-satisfied ass even slightly, and he'd have shared the joke. Most would have declined to set a pub quiz at all, and found someone else to do it for them.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime and @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g, thanks. i wasn't listening back then.

Agree tat people would have heard of Eleanor Bron.

I don't find Jim that odd. Having spent my early academic career surrounded by public school and grammar school/Oxbridge graduates of the 50's and 60's there was a lot of Latin, literary references, singing of Mozart in the toilets and shunning of television going on. Quips like "this sentence could not be more prolix" appeared on the blackboard in the coffee room regularly. They all spoke at least two living foreign languages and at least one dead one. They were not, despite my description, pompous, they simply came from a different world. Their blind spot was, for some reason, drama, I could out-Shakespeare them quite easily and could also beat some of them in 20th century poetry. We're all engineers so we know we're better than most people at most things so competitive Latin translation gave them something to argue about amongst themselves. I really miss those colleagues.

They were not, despite my description, pompous, they simply came from a different world.

My own mother once called me pompous. Was the beginning of the end of my not-academic career. (Where everyone else really was pompous.)

The academics I hang out with now are far, far more interested in how much money their agents can secure them for public engagement activities than they are in spouting Latin. Jim would be a definite oddity.

The academics I hang out with now are only interested in their own narrow research areas, they are often as dull as ditch water. Most don't read books, go to the theatre or have any hobbies (except sometimes running and talking about running) and look down on those who do enjoy anything but getting grants and writing papers that nobody except their rivals will read. I'm quite jaded with academia. One of them once said they couldn't see the point of listening to the radio. (Another, to be fair, said they listened to Gardeners' Question Time to improve their English).

We're all engineers so we know we're better than most people at most things so competitive Latin translation gave them something to argue about amongst themselves.

But that's fine, if they're all like that. Would they have expected Jade to understand and join in?

I'm still incredibly disappointed that they cast this actor to play Jade as crude, uneducated and paranoid ...

Why on earth couldn't she have been capable of wiping the floor with Jim in the field of classical knowledge. Really, I have a good mind to write to the producers ...

@EBearhug

We're all engineers so we know we're better than most people at most things so competitive Latin translation gave them something to argue about amongst themselves.

But that's fine, if they're all like that. Would they have expected Jade to understand and join in?

To be honest they would have found Jade as unappealing as she has been painted by the SWs. Having seen them deal with the excesses of engineering students with humour and patience they had impeccable manners. I didn’t really listen to the repellent Jade so I can’t comment on what precisely Jim said. I could imagine my colleagues might have said something cutting that flew straight over her head, for their own amusement, without doing any injury. I can’t find it in me to care if someone was openly rude back to Jade though, I would want to repel her in the hope she never wanted to meat me again. I agree it would have been much more fun if Jade was less of a cliche and could join in with Jim, maybe leaving Jazzer left out.

was it maybe a way of getting Covid-drenched snot squirting in the direction of an elderly man? Thank you for spoiling my evening. Jim is my favourite character. I can think of much better people to be picked off by Covid.

In case you were wondering, Cicero mugs are a thing. I think Jim would have eschewed the English language ones for something like this

"I reckon I'd make an excellent Jesus"

Has Mia fallen out with her dad ..?

Loving the gender-neutral casting and the confusion it's causing Clarrie!

Just so I am forewarned, is tonight’s episode dominated by the mystery briefest?

Borefest.