🐷 Archers thread #127: Discuss the boars and sows of Ambridge here - or should that be bores and soused? You decide.

[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 live opposite Joy, 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/4197199--The-Archers-spoilers-thread-6-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.)

These threads normally last around a month. When I started the last one, we were bracing ourselves for the Mystery Play, but that storyline, which had never exactly set the airwaves on fire, fizzled out and has (I hope) gone away, never to return.

@LillianGish proposed a new thread title which I'll use instead as a scene-setter for this thread. What a carry on - Nurse (Ben), Sergeant (Harrison), Camping (Kate), Jack (either one of them), Regardless (all of us for continuing to tune tune in)

What a carry on, indeed! Other storylines sputtering away:

• Alice, Chris, Martha - Have they split up, and if so where is Alice living? Will there be a christening and who will be godparents? When will the Aldridges and Carters find out about Alice's drinking? Too much to hope that Alice will get blind drunk at the christening party in full view of the entire village, I suppose. I'm still clinging to my hope that she lamps Alan after a suggestion that they pray together.

• Will Rex find a new home for his pigs? If Elizabeth weakens, will the pigs escape and disrupt the Lower Loxley life drawing event on Monday? Might they stampede, knock Ross out and devour him?

• Will Jazzer go to work for Neil? (This isn't exactly a cliffhanger. Of course he will.)

• Will Justin bury Lilian under the patio? Not a jury in the land would convict him, I feel, if they were played a recording of that appalling cackle and her gloating about the daffodil photograph.

• Will the life drawing event on Monday be a brilliantly amusing interlude, exemplifying how to write character-driven drama, with both comic and more serious moments? Answer: No, obviously. I may have to listen from behind a cushion.

There are more. I find myself struggling to care.

Oh, and one final mention - I've proposed a webchat with the Archers editor. @MayIDestroyYou's idea. You'll find it here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/site_stuff/4231475-Webchat-idea-The-Editor-of-The-Archers-Or-another-Archers-production-team-representative

Over to you!

Adam was nearly nine when Jennifer and Brian married, and for a while feared that (like the other men in Jennifer's life) Brian would leave them, so he was distant and unfriendly. When Peggy found out that this was what his trouble was she told Brian, and Brian put a lot of effort into reassuring him and playing games with him and consulting him about things, and Adam came round. Brian also helped him with his choice of school and encouraged him as much as he could to go to university which Adam did (first Archer child or grandchild to do so, I think). The main blight on his childhood was his discovery that Jennifer was having an affair with John Tregorran, which upset him very badly.

He had a gap year in Canada, and after he got his degree chose to leave Ambridge and go away to Africa on various projects for thirteen years or so. His choice, and he made Jennifer very unhappy by doing it.

Debbie meanwhile mostly stayed at home apart from boarding school and one year at Exeter University, so it isn't really all that surprising that Brian knew her a lot better than he knew Adam and therefore had a closer relationship with her.

So Russ has gone into petulance overdrive
Whereas Adam sounds like a caricature of a bitter old man who feels that life has passed him by. And yet is only in his 50s.

Russ is much better written but I fear his ousting won't be any time soon

Good to hear Russ getting a telling off. Who was the first life model that he had lost?

Thanks Asking. Adam was in Newcastle or Africa I think when I started listening.
The Archers/Aldridges haven't seen much university have they. Only Adam, Alice, Pip and Pheoble have graduated, although David and Ruth attended what are now universities.

Lily, Debbie and Ben have dropped out.

@Taswama

Good to hear Russ getting a telling off. Who was the first life model that he had lost?

Whoever it was who had to be replaced by Lee, presumably: Freddie said something along those lines when he was at the shop getting the poster put up and asked Lee to step in. I don't think we were given a name.

Wasn't Adam's and Debbie's humongous school fee bills that prompted Brian to start letting folk dump their toxic waste for a fee?

I don't understand why it is impossible to get a new fish man. It isn't as if Jazzer or Ian had any experience when they started.
I expect that Will could pick it up with minimal effort. Bridge Fresh could sell the fish on their app. (My veg box firm started delivering all sorts of stuff to help other restaurant suppliers out).

Lily, Debbie and Ben have dropped out.

Being a nurse still involves university. It is a degree course.

Oops I mean Adam, not Ian (though he can't be very busy without hotel guests).

Where is Ian BTW?

@CaptainMyCaptain, you are right, but he has dropped out at the moment, unless he is still doing the Politics and Geography course.
The Archer/Aldridge graduates are all employed by family.
Ben presumably won't be.

Will would be a good candidate for the fishy job.

Madcats
Wasn't Adam's and Debbie's humongous school fee bills that prompted Brian to start letting folk dump their toxic waste for a fee?

Not at the time, no. It is meant to have happened when Adam was ten and at a small local prep school, and Debbie was seven and at the local school. In the year in which Brian had a heated swimming-pool installed. Hardly on the brink of poverty back then; that was retrospective invention for the recent storyline.

Delighted to hear Russ getting some form of retribution. I always felt he got off Esther lightly having a relationship with a student at school (albeit not one of his students). He's a real snobbish user and I can't abide him (bit enjoy having him as part of the programme as opposed to Pip).

I don't know why Esther popped in to my post, she replaced rather.

cameocat
Delighted to hear Russ getting some form of retribution. I always felt he got off rather lightly having a relationship with a student at school (albeit not one of his students).

He was the deputy head, and ought to have been in far worse trouble than just being asked to leave: given that position, she was his student, because everyone in the school was his responsibility. And he blackmailed Freddie. Thoroughly nasty bit of work all round, our Russ.

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime thank you for clarifying, I'd forgotten he was a deputy head. I was furious at the time that they just glossed over it and he only lost his job.

I'm sooooo bored with Alish's self flagellation. It's as if whiny self-pitying is enough rather than actually doing anything about her drunkenness.

I hope she loses it spectacularly at the christening party.

I hope the champagne will be flowing and that Alice and Emma have a slanging match. JD will drop her plate of rhubarb and ginger cupcakes and everyone will laugh at the gingerbaby biscuits.

Thoroughly nasty bit of work all round, our Russ
He does have redeeming features. Disliking and despising the locals, for instance.

There is that. His main redeeming feature is that he's not Pip.

@theThreeofWeevils

Thoroughly nasty bit of work all round, our Russ He does have redeeming features. Disliking and despising the locals, for instance.

Except Elizabeth. Who's one of the worst imo. All sweetness until she doesn't get her own way. Remember when JillNPhil were trying to divvy up Home Farm? Violent Elizabet thcweamed and thcweamed until she was nearly thick and everone rolled over because "She has a weak HEART!"

'The thing to remember, Alice, is that God loves everyone. Except Pip.'

I don't understand why it is impossible to get a new fish man. It isn't as if Jazzer or Adam had any experience when they started.
Adam does my head in with his pathetic pity-parties and suspicion where Brian is involved but I think that he may have a case this time. If Brian had told Adam to get rid of the aquaponics then there would have been an almighty row. But somehow - nothing to do with Brian because he couldn't get involved in interviews because of vested interests - Neil managed to poach the sole member of fishy personnel. Adam was left floundering with no customers and no staff so he had to admit defeat.
Brian is a wily fox.

Today’s episode was VERY heavy on religion. Some might say, perhaps a bit too heavy...

@Roysnewshirt

Today’s episode was VERY heavy on religion. Some might say, perhaps a bit too heavy...

To be fair, it was mostly about a Christening so it would be.

There was a heads up on All In The Mind that the net episode will be about MH in Soaps and that some Archers listeners will be on it.
I was only half listening so might have got details wrong.