Archers thread #156: Fireworks in Ambridge! Helen gave Lee a rocket, but Grey Gables is a damp squib. Is the writing on the (church) wall?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, 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're irresistibly attracted to George Grundy, 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 to @OverArmour for the title suggestion, which I have tweaked a bit. I was strongly tempted by Less GGP (Grey Gables Peril) More GPP (Guinea Pig Plot), which was a plaintive cry from @PuppyPerson some days ago, but if Poppy has found new homes for the baby guinea pigs that may be the last we hear of them for some time, sadly.

Surely in the life of the next thread we must hear more from or of Rob, or Ron as some on this thread prefer to call him? <taps foot> Will Kirsty snap and tell Helen a few home truths? Will Pat's shotgun finally be brought into play? We can only hope ...

Also, will we ever find out who owns the other 60% of Grey Gables? Why is Adil AWOL (to use the other bit of OverArmour's title idea!)? Why aren't we hearing from Roy? Will GG ever re-open and will Emma get her Big Chance at last?

So many questions! Over to you.

I didn’t think she’d been so irritating last time we heard her @Bruisername
But you could be right about leaving him.

The Grey Gables debacle

This storyline is so infuriating. No way would the owners have Adil back to project manage when he effed it up so badly in the first place. It will be a 500k overspend ! He's obviously incompetent.

Oliver doesn't need to sell land. He could do an equity release on the farmhouse.

The Archers gets sillier and sillier. The plots are ludicrous and scriptwriting 2nd rate at best.

Frankly it's just a 2nd rate radio based soap opera .

I can’t bring myself to gather my thoughts on the utter bollocks of the GG storyline enough to comment. I agree with you all, it’s so unrealistic it takes you out of the story completely.

To my mind Denise has always been wonderful, quite the opposite of irritating. I really hope they don’t mess with her character 😠.

I can’t see why Ron wants him as a sponsor. Only as a way of signalling he's back and he hasn't gone away. He knows news will get straight back to Helen - I really don't understand why everyone can't just ignore him. Boycott any service where his baptism might take place - just don't give him an audience. It is of course tediously predictable that Lee has been off the scene a mere five minutes before Knob pops up again. Almost comedic in its speed. Much as I found the original storyline hard to listen to, it did at least have the virtue of subtly creeping up on you - the whole is he or isn't he at the start, then the dramatic irony of being in on the plot while the rest of the village was blissfully ignorant, the shock of the stabbing, the horror of Henry being forced to live with Knob's parents while Helen was in jail, the drama of the trial. Knob 2: The Return - just feels so contrived. He's banned from the village and from seeing his son so engineering an audience by demanding a baptism feels faintly ludicrous. IRL Alan would have washed his hands of it and passed Knob on to another vicar in another parish. Removing Lee to California in the first instance and now banishing him for good feels like the SWs tying themselves in knots to get Helen alone. The stabbing of Knob was shocking in a way that Knob's demise can never be because it is being so clearly signalled and mapped out. I just hope it won't be another whodunnit like the hit and run - one which perhaps Peggy will eventually confess on her deathbed.

Haven't caught up on all episodes but good to hear Denise is back. I'm sure she hinted in the past that her husband's cycling took him out of the house for hours every day and there was speculation on one thread that he was having an affair. I want Alistair to be happy and I think they'd make a nice couple.

On the other hand I have always found Paul annoying. I really disliked the way he bullied Josh into celebrating his birthday. People who are the 'life and soul' and try to cajole everyone around them into going out etc tend to be very irritating.

I think Paul is a bully.

One reason the GG storyline annoys me a lot (apart from it making no sense in so many ways) is that when open and functioning, GG is/was a really good setting for entertaining scenes and relationships, an important employer/client and added dimension to the village. Ian, Lynda, Roy, Tracey, Oliver, Helen plus guests and other villagers all had a realistic relationship to it in various ways. Now it’s now only the source of a whole load of irritation, it’s also lost its usefulness to storylines. Grrr. All so unnecessary.

I thought Nic was responsible for the hit and run? Have I misremembered a deathbed conversation with ?Joe?

Yes, I think that's right. I believe what Lilian is dreading is another similar nonsensical whodunnit storyline if Rob should be gunned down. Surely even the current team would draw the line at that, though? I am steeling myself for some sort of deathbed scene between H and R. The storyline I'm seeing parallels with is Siobhan's return after she was diagnosed with melanoma and told it was terminal. It wasn't done nearly as well as the original SL of Brian's affair with Siobhan, her pregnancy, Debbie's discovery of Ruairi's paternity, the will she won't she tension once Jennifer knew and had to decide whether to chuck Brian out or not, etc.

Thanks Gaspode - that’s exactly what I meant.

Paul comes across as so sanctimonious.

And soooooo hypocritical, telling Denise it’s best to be straight.

I assume Rob wants Brian to be his sponsor as he sees Brian as an important person/alpha male - land owner, respected older man in the village, head of a prominant well off family. The kind of person Rob is, he would see that sort of thing as important.

Yes, sorry about me! Josh and Freddie have always been easily confused / interchangeable in my mind - I should have remembered Freddie is always more whiney, even when he's not actually whining...

Rob doesn't actually want Brian as his sponsor because he would know there's not a chance in Hell of that happening. He just did it to stir. Having given up on causing distress to Helen directly, he's now targeting the most powerful person he knows in her wider family - in the certainty that the news will travel.

If Brian immediately said no I don't see why he needed to tell Tony at all. It was playing into Ron's hands. Nobody else needed to know about it..

Rob would have let it slip and then there would have been questions as to why Brian hadn’t said anything. As with Alan, Rob could imply Brian was friendlier than he was

Oooo I can't believe it has taken me this long to realise there is an Archers thread.

I am a comparatively recent listener because I only started when the DV storyline with Helen and Rob kicked off. However, I have avidly listened since then.

Yes it is the same thing that Siobhan had and that annoys me a bit too. And it's just too convenient. Yes it creates a story, but if he's really going to die that's the perfect solution. It would be more realistic if he cast a shadow over Helen's life until Jack was an adult, even if he didn't appear as a character.

Welcome welcome @FriendofDorothy

Having cancer is pretty common so can’t blame sw for that but agree they have wasted a good future sl with constant attempts to see Jack - Jack turning against his mother in teenager hood and wanting to see him/live with rob. A mine of drama!

I think whoever suggested Henry might become the incel and not George could be right.

It [killing Rob off] does seem somewhat shortsighted of them, but they clearly can’t resist going for something ‘dramatic’ at the expense of realism. See also: stabnight.

Welcome! It’s like Hotel California (Grey Gables version) here. Once you’re here, you can check out but you can never leave 😆

She told the vets on Wednesday 25th May, 2022, that

"Her husband John is not looking after Mousse, but going out on his bicycle instead, and there is no way she will go out biking with him on the lanes in the area."

LillianGish
IRL Alan would have washed his hands of it and passed Knob on to another vicar in another parish.

That was exactly what Alan did in The Archers.

Rob then lyingly put it about that Alan and Usha had supported him, and caused them a lot of trouble. That was on the invitations to his baptism, which cannot possibly have been arranged at the time he sent those out because at the time they were sent out he hadn't even met the vicar who is presumably going to dunk him. She is the vicar of a different parish and with her own church, too, so I can't think why anyone in Ambridge gives a flying, erm, fig about it.