Archers thread #150: For whom the sausage rolls: George over a Berrow, Fallon & Harrison seek new lease on life, is it all a Fête Accompli? Discuss The Snivelling Simpletons, sorry, 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, and of course we are always delighted to welcome back former or occasional listeners/posters. We don't all agree on all points, although we do mostly try to be civil about it. Most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you think people frequently miss their own weddings because of a morning quickie while in a plaster cast, 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/4636789-the-archers-spoilers-thread-7-cant-wait-for-702pm-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 title suggestions. I basically took @OverArmour's excellent suggestion and managed to shoehorn in snivelling simpleton, gloriously coined by @Eastie77Returns to refer to Lee in the first instance.

@WitcheryDivine suggested Recharging, Red Kites and The Man They Call Ron, is Ambridge becoming an earthly paradise or a hell on earth? which seems as good a place as any to kick off our discussions! Ron = Rob, a fortuitous typo on a previous thread. It does feel a bit as if we're marking time before he turns up again. Odd to do what could be a high profile storyline over the summer holidays when a lot of people will be away, but depending on your point of view, maybe that's a blessing!

Whither George? Is he shaping up to be Andrew Tate mark 2?

Everybody looking forward to Ferret Fun at the Fête? Me neither.

Over to you!

Yes, I noticed that too.

@greenacrylicpaint I don't think that would suit Brian at all!😂

It wasn't Matt: he was upset about it when he found out. It was his "associate" Hugh Melling who took Christine for all the money she got from selling Woodbine Cottage to Fallon and Harrison.

Melling had been accepted by the Ambridge community because he was at school with Justin's ex-wife Miranda's brother in law, which meant for some obscure reason that Justin vouched for him. (My husband was at school with George Osborne, but he certainly would not have given him the time of day let alone vouched for him. This idea that everyone who went to one school must be the same as/friends with everyone else who went to the same school at the same time is seriously weird to anyone who was ever at school, I feel.)

Christine having her broken hip was because Hilda tripped her up (I would say "she tripped over Hilda" but I am sure the malign cat did it on purpose) and afterwards Christine was afraid to be in the same house as the animal. We heard her saying this on air; it wasn't just an invention of Peggy's. Peggy paid for her care initially for no reason we ever really discovered except generosity to a friend, perhaps also guilt about Hilda's part in Christine's injury; at a later point Christine's son Peter was also helping to pay, having been told the whole story.

Oh @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime I was hoping you’d see my post and correct or confirm accordingly 😊. I have absolutely no memory of Hugh Melling! Am I right in recalling that the full extent of the swizzing was hidden from Christine?

Hugh Melling was Matt's employer/partner in the scam about a race-course somewhere on a Costa, I forget which. The scam itself made no sense at all, since it also involved Matt buying race-horses which on the whole people building a race-course don't tend to do when they don't actually have a race-course yet.

The full extent of the swizzing couldn't easily have been hidden from Christine when she found out by having no money at all. She was expecting payment from Melling Enterprises and got none; she had even I think booked a holiday in the expectation, and had to cancel it. That was the point at which she broke down and told Peggy what had happened ("What a fool I've been!") and Peggy promised that she would always look after her and she could always live with Peggy. Then Hilda intervened...

Then Hilda intervened...

The school George Osborne attended, contrary to MN and popular belief, was not Eton.

Christine was/is Peggy's sister-in-law.

Was the race course not in Costa Rica?

Oh, bits of that are coming back to me! Was it that Christine and Peggy conspired to keep it a secret from the rest of the family, then? Or maybe just Lilian? They were the only ones to know she’d lost all her money? I’m sure I remember some secrecy!

St Paul's, I believe. Has anyone mentioned Eton here? I have read that Osborne was miffed at not being sent to Eton.

I’m beginning to think the Rob thing is a set up too

George Osborne: another Gideon (until legally changing his own name at 13).

🙄

Nobody other than me on this thread. People have a tendency of calling Tory MPs/Ministers of being 'toffs' or Old Etonians.
Cameron's miniters was accused of 'they're all ex-Eton' when IIRC at the time only Cameron and Johnson were OEs (although other ministers were OE or privately educated)
There have even been women MPs who have been accused of having been educated at 'Eton'.

I don't have a crystal ball but I'm feeling that Rob is going to wind up being killed by Helen or Lee after being caught with the boys. His legacy will linger on for years with another trial, prison and appeals.

PedantScorner
There have even been women MPs who have been accused of having been educated at 'Eton'.

I suppose it's just possible that one of the 16 women who attended the school for one term in 1983, as they underwent preparations for their Oxbridge entrance exams, might now have become an MP...

Apparently some of his contemporaries at school most unkindly still called him Gideon.

I can't remember who they were but I think they would have been too young to have been there in 1983.

Why poke fun at someone because his parents gave him a name he didn't like, and decided to get it legally changed as a child? He must have been officially George for about 40 years now. Whatever I might think about him or his politics, I think it's unfair to comment on it. The name isn't awful, just not mainstream.

It's a shame that Mr Asking didn't go to Sherborne, he'd have been there with Adam. Did the teenage Adam sound so weary?

I stand rebuked.
(Sorry, any Gideons).

I agree with PP that Rob the annihilator would certainly be in keeping with his character and realistic when you look at the behaviour of abusers.

BUT tbh that should have been the storyline all those years ago. I don’t think we have the appetite for round II.

What happened to Hannah’s mother with dementia?

Hope it won't be too much like Richard and Gail and kids in Corrie rather a long time ago Although only Richard died - he trapped them in the car, then drove them all into the river.

Will mentioned Hannah's mum to George recently. He said he hadn't known about this, and George said he had, as it was all Hannah talked about. What an absolute peach George is. I assume Hannah goes back to see her mum as often as she can when off shift.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g I must have missed that. What a self-centred child he is.

@BerylBillings , your comment was in context, so I'm not rebuking you, although I can see that it might have seemed this way. People in real life do it to make fun.

I know someone who changed her name as a teenager. People often mention that she changed her name even though it was over 30 years ago. The new name is completely unremarkable, and the previous name absolutely fine but had been extremely popular in her mother's generation, but still she is Name-who-used-to-be-Anothername.

Is anyone else hoping that the Grundy's pull off the best fete ever?

It's unlikely though, isn't it? Eddie's already on the swizz by producing some sort of ramshackle tent and pocketing the money meant for the proper marquee. Left to their own devices, the Grundys will produce the equivalent one of those "Winter Wonderland" events* where it's touted as a magical experience and charged accordingly yet the reality is a horrendously muddy carpark, a hungover Santa who can't stand children and all the underpaid-and-pissed-off elves surreptitiously having a fag round the back of a dying Christmas tree.

(*Yes, I know there was the Grundy World of Christmas. I can't remember how the last one went.)

I hope Lynda and Joy's undercover sleuthing reveals the truth before Eddie turns the fete into another Grundy con!