🧱 Archers thread #128: Alice lobs a brick, Emma hurls brickbats, Neil is a brick. Cement your relationship with 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 collect superhero figures, or other unusual things.

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.)

Apologies for not using any of the suggestions offered for this thread's title. I'll paste them in here instead to get us started.

I like the leeway pun here from @ThePawtriarchy: Bacon, Bores and Booze. Elizabeth needs convincing, Helen needs some leeway and Alice is in crisis.

@nettie434 gets to the nub of what's been happening recently: Beechwood, Batman and Booze: Rex's pigs and Helen and Lee have new homes but will Lee's collection of action figures plant the apple of discord in their sylvan idyll? Alice's alcohol problems continue to cause friction between the Aldridges and Carters. Has anyone warned Borsetshire Children's Services what awaits them?

Great one liner from @PseudoBadger - ‘Nobody puts Captain America in the corner’.

And a timely bit of advice from @JanFebAnyMonth: If this evening’s episode has raised any issues for you, please call the BBC Helpline post on this MN thread for details of organisations which might help you.

So, off we go again! We may get back to five episodes a week before the next thread. Here's hoping that it's Friday we get back, not Sunday.

Well, because Jack's actor Denis Folwell died unexpectedly but the character couldn't die just yet, Jack was put in a sanatorium in Scotland from July 1971 until his death on 12th January 1972, and his death was not all that expected; Peggy spoke with him on the phone on his birthday, 17th December, but was in the cast every week running her pub in Ambridge. So she didn't spend days and days at his bedside near the end of his life, and she didn't witness his last days nor his death.

According to Norman Painting the original plan to deal with Folwell's death was that Peggy should come home one day and find him dead in the fatal Ambridge Killer Armchair, but Broadcasting House intervened and said no. The twenty-first anniversary of the programme was coming up, and they felt that the death of a major character would not be a good way to celebrate it. He was to be "kept alive" as a silent character until after 1st January 1972. The December phone call was recorded by the cast-member best able to imitate his voice, Edgar Harrison. Painting in his Forever Ambridge explains "... we felt that in this macabre business of keeping a character alive, casual references were insufficient. He had to be heard. And so Jack became first seriously ill; then better; and finally well enough to be heard talking on the telephone to Peggy." I vaguely remember rumours that Christmas of his being able to come home soon.

Since poor Painting had just been landed (by the death earlier that same year of the survivor of the two original scriptwriters, Ted Mason, and by the other new scriptwriter Brian Hayes having other commitments) with writing fifty scripts in eighty days while this was going on, his memory of it all was probably distressingly clear, and that is what he said happened. He was writing in 1974, so 1971-2 will have been fresh in his memory.

@FoxgloveSummers
Meant to say BOOP for Peggy and Lilian - and the very believable revealing of long ago secrets
Came on to say that exact thing!

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime
The shame is that the secrets Peggy revealed didn't actually happen. Apart from that it was fine.

Way before my time, what happened?

I think that Lillian will tell JD all the history, the money will be provided for a likely futile rehab stay, and Peggy will be forgiven.

@Atichen I totally agree with you. My partner and I have collections of Discworld characters, and Dr Who memorabilia. Our home definitely reflects both our personalities.

Mm but even so the stuff about his reaction to the drugs killing him is possible.

Not all rehab fails, a friend did six months of residential drugs and alcohol rehab and has been clean for more than a decade.

It was fine in the light of current information, certainly. Just not part of the programme in 1971-2.

Tony has his train set. Helen loves her father; she's been known to roll her eyes over the trains, but that's all. I think Helen regards Lee's superheroes in the same light as her father's trains.

She knows that having a nerdy hobby is compatible with being a good partner and father, so why should she object to Lee's figurines?

I don't understand why Lee would leave his "collectors item - pristine boxed for a couple of decades" superheroes out to get damaged by sunlight and dust.....and small boys.

This week's writing feels a bit rubbish, but that might be because I don't like Lee.

@Madcats

I don't understand why Lee would leave his "collectors item - pristine boxed for a couple of decades" superheroes out to get damaged by sunlight and dust.....and small boys.

This week's writing feels a bit rubbish, but that might be because I don't like Lee.

Because they have just moved in and are cramped for space, and because he is a bit dopey and didn't think that his collectors item was also a toy irresistible to small boys.

Or because he didn't realise that Helen has brought up her sons to have absolutely no respect for anyone else's possessions.

The twenty-first anniversary of the programme was coming up, and they felt that the death of a major character would not be a good way to celebrate it.

Fast forward 25 years:
*The fiftieth anniversary of the programme was coming up, and they felt that the death of a major character would be a good way to celebrate it."

Argh bold fail

I think Nigel's Plummet was the day after the 60th anniversary because there was no broadcast on Saturday 1st January 2011; for the 50th all they did was have David go missing all night on 31st December of the year before it because he was lying underneath a heifer in a half-flooded ditch.

I had a kind of feeling I had got it wrong

Father’s imprisoned for violent assaults of mothers usually retain PR, so I’ll continue assuming that Rob retains it for Henwee

Eg here:
commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2017-0258/

And here
www.familylawgroup.co.uk/site/blog/flg-news/when-can-parental-responsibility-be-removed

I don't think that covers "marries the mother of an already-born child and signs the necessary paperwork for PA before he is divorced for physically and mentally abusing the mother, and found by a family court to be an unfit person to have any contact with the child". I do slightly wonder how that would work, especially since Rob then left the country and as far as we know left no way to contact him.

Bloody hell, the Aldridges’ problems are only just beginning.....

Apologies, but I felt a little swear was appropriate as I listened to that exchange, mouth open....

Nah ... Not buying it. That all just sounded painfully scripted.

But then, Ruairi's eighteen. Something was bound to happen.

Both as stubborn and mulish as each other... awful!

Good to hear Rex gently encouraging Phoebe to allow Roy to be a proud dad.

Yes they were both being ridiculous - well, Adam more so maybe, Brian’s timing just seems very inappropriate.
So is Ruari’s sojorn with A and I to be cut short or at least become a trifle difficult?

And Ruarie gently rebuffed Adam's attempt to offer him the lifeline of support around his sexuality.

he was lying underneath a heifer in a half-flooded ditch
To be fair, the Dopeys do have form for al fresco 'ticklin''