Archers thread #158: Te Rum? You numpty, numpty, Tom! Empty tearoom follows. Christmas coming, farmers’ stand up, will it make us LOL? No! 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 think Tom Archer is a great businessman, 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 @LillianGish for the title idea, which may plant an earworm if my scansion just about holds up. @BeatriceBatchelor wanted 'plebby coffee' inserted in reference to my Bolivian coffee anecdote on the last thread, so I'll mention it here instead. Here's hoping Fallon and Emma decamp to the charging station or Grey Gables, or both, to run the type of coffee shop/tearoom people actually enjoy spending time in. Tom's cauliflower eclairs and kale criossants approach sounds more likely to drive the casual trade away from the farm shop and cheese window as well as the Google Translate-named Te Rum.

Feeling very uninspired by TA at the moment, so I have nothing more to say for now. Over to you!

oh - could be that I suppose! Quite honestly I sort of tune out a bit when they're discussing the world's least thought out storyline hotel refurbishment...

Yeah me too. I’m just curious if it is femme du monde because it had a well travelled female chef or fin du monde because it serves such a great meal it’s what you should eat at the end of the world

There used to be one called the Mont Blanc that was the go-to posh caff.

Oh really! And I vaguely remember from childhood Jack Woolley opining about the French? chef at GG's latest bout of temper. Was it Jean-Claude? Was he French or just "professionally French" i.e. actually from the Wirral. Did he ever speak?

Ian, Adil, and possibly Oliver (can't remember if he's said it or not) have all pronounced the name of the restaurant very badly, so it's hard to tell what the first word is supposed to be, but IMO it's closer to Fin than Femme(s). OTOH, Femmes du Monde at least has a positive connotation, I don't know why you'd want to call a restaurant The End of the World: the French phrase doesn't mean it in the sense of a far off place (the ends of the Earth), that would be bout, not fin. So it just means a catastrophe/ the Apocalypse. It's about as appealing or sensible a name for an eatery as Terrum, I suppose. Maybe its rubbish name is part of why it went bust so quickly.

I can see a couple of mentions of it back in 2015/16 e.g.

"Pip has her degree result: she has got a 2-1. David is so proud; they will celebrate tomorrow with dinner at La Femme du Monde."

I didn't even remember Pip had been to university. Did she study Infuriation Technology?

That conversation between Alice and her new squeeze was irritating. Sounded like they were both fresh from a course in networking where they’d been told to fix someone’s name in their memory by adding it to every sentence they said.

Hopalong Harry and Arrdil are clearly graduates of the same School of Voice Acting.
Either that or it's the fault of the director.

Either way, it's excruciating: over-precise, mannered and twee.

Jean-Paul Aubert was genuinely French, played by Yves Aubert, and left Grey Gables suddenly at the end of 2003 in order to go home to France and nurse his ailing mother (she'd had a stroke).

Excruciating. Terribly written script for Harry and Alice, read by actors who didn’t seem to have had sight of the words in advance. And even so, I could have done it better. And why make Harrison out to be such a blundering oaf?

What on earth is going on with Archers production at the moment? Were they being bad for a bet?

@WitcheryDivine I assumed it is one and the same and they’ve just misremembered / not bothered to look up the name

I love Harry’s voice - I liked him as the very sweet, somewhat over earnest and totally sexless vicar in Call the Midwife and I’m enjoying his voice now. Problem is, I can’t really get into any character for him - it’s still the very sweet, somewhat over earnest and totally sexless vicar sitting opposite Alice…

Yes Harry over enunciates. That was awful. It almost sounded like they had recorded separately and stitched it together. he says ‘I’m so sorry’ before he launches into the story.

‘I had no idea my life was about to change so drastically. It was during the cross country leg…’ it’s like Enid Blyton wrote his lines.

and Adils little event was baffling. I’the partners’ pitched up. Sounds like a health and safety nightmare. Where are all these pizza restaurant customers going to come from? I think it’s best to stick my fingers in my ears when the gg stuff comes up.

what’s with the Harrison nonsense? Has Harry never been to an Indian restaurant? Who doesn’t know that a biryani is mild? And has Harrison always been Chris’ best friend?

Pip studied agriculture at the finest university in the world, viz, the University of Felpersham. Her parents went to real agricultural colleges a long way from their homes, but Pip lived at home throughout her student years, presumably so that she could annoy the listeners all year round and not just in her vacations. She did so well there that she was offered a job in Brazil when she graduated, but to the fury of virtually every MNer on these threads she decided not to go in the end.

There's nothing I can say about tonight's idiocy that hasn't already been said. Are we living through the equivalent of a transport company deliberately ruining a bus or train route they want to get rid of so that as passenger numbers fall they can say there's no demand for it any more? It's hard to explain the drivel we're being served up any other way.

Who were all the people in the poly tunnel? Who cooked the food? What was it all about?

Staff, the partners, suppliers and Lynda by the sound of it

kitchen staff prepared the food

no idea where the band came from or how it was all set up without Oliver and Ian noticing

as someone said upthread, they have spaces ready (as per Tracey’s hen do) so why did they need the polytunnel?

It's far too cold at the moment in most parts of the UK for an outdoor party, polytunnel or no polytunnel. So that's further idiocy.

When are we going to be told who these partners are? Why haven't we been told already?

They're aliens. Their plan is to lure the entire population of Ambridge into a vast polytunnel and then transport them to another dimension.

Ardil's head unzips down the back, to reveal his true lizardy self.

That would actually explain a lot about his manner, ridiculous back story and shambolic management

Yes Bruiser. It explains it all!

The BBC has been pushing the new series of Doctor Who so hard that perhaps it's taking over all over programmes, including TA.

Well, Hazel IS a Slitheen, remember.

And Mike Tucker was Davros. It's all starting to make sense.

I'd forgotten that Gasp0de!

Their plan is to lure the entire population of Ambridge into a vast polytunnel and then transport them to another dimension.

Oh I say, that would be splendid, @BoreOfWhabylon , but PLEASE can they get a double shuffle on? I don’t think I can stand much more. And wishing Fournier’s gangrene following the enthusiastic insertion of a hot tartlet tin on Tom is almost certainly imperilling my immortal soul.

(The happily uninformed might want not to google that, and certainly not to see any images, btw. NSFW or peace of mind)