Archers thread #160: Ram a lamb a ding dong! To rate the mass wisteria in Ambridge, tap the feedback tablet 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'd have given a home to Hilda the Hellcat, 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 @MerryChristmasToYou, @OverArmour and @LillianGish for the thread title ideas.

This week is a bit better than last week, but the Brad/Adil/Lily stuff is very odd. Coming up to the anniversary of Jennifer's death (22nd January last year). We need a new matriarch - could that be Natasha? I find her quite an interesting character. Sometimes she's awful and then she has moments as last night where she utterly redeems herself.

Over to you!

He was very clear that it was not a chest pain, though.

Unless he had dialled 999 and lyingly said that his chest hurt, in which case he'd get sent an ambulance fairly fast, waiting about in A&E for several hours would be more likely to cause him to catch some foul lurgy than get him seen promptly by a doctor. And even turning up in an ambulance with chest pain, if your condition is not ajudged to be imminently life-threatening, won't get you out of the several hours' waiting around.

Tightening in the chest is still a pain and in a man of his age and condition is to be taken seriously.

Waitrose Wensleydale with ginger and mango is lush.

That is all.

If it's got ginger and mango in it, can you actually taste what cheese it is?

Yes

Just to join in, my friend makes cheese and has a deli a short walk from my house...and I get a discount. Yes I do. Supermarket cheese is never as good.

That was the most boring episode ever. Sound effects of a blood pressure monitor? Give me strength.

I only tuned in to find out what was wrong with Harry.

Sounds delicious.

I thought Chelsea was comparing Brad's Grundy connections to her own, not to Mia's. So they both have the same family ties, but Brad is closer to the Grundys than Chlesea is through him dating Mia. Becuase she asked Brad to get Eddie to be a model and Brad's response was that he thought Chelsea was getting her friends to do it, i.e. it was Chelsea's responsibilty to sort out models, not Mia's.

I am firmly in the camp of not adding any fruit or flavourings to cheese. We got a Too Good To Go box from Aldi last week and it has 6 different flavoured cheeses in it. What a waste! Luckily I have family members who aren't such hardline cheesy purists.

... and now we have two mystery illnesses unresolved.

And tomorrow they will meet at the surgery, which, since it isn't in Ambridge, has to have either at least two or no Ambridge residents in it at any time. The same used to be true of Jaxx, and of Underwoods, and in the distant past of Nelson's Wine Bar.

I miss the good times there used to be in Nelson's Wine Bar.

Yes, a bit of zest!

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime yes, I remember Nelson and his Dad - good times in the Archers. Lots of really good characters and I really wanted to know what happened to them.

On the cheese front, my husband loved visiting Hawes and the Cheese Factory there, when we lived in England - his favourite was Wensleydale with Cranberries!

It sounds revolting.

I believed my interest in cheese to be inexhaustible. It isn’t.

Neither is mine.
Could we discuss the cheesy SLs not cheese with bits in?

The Harry and Alice in the mud was a bit cheesy.

Going back quite a bit to the subject of failure to support and protect the cheesemakers - first of all, blessed be they! Secondly those of us who are older probably remember the doomed 1980s innovation meant to launch a whole new era in cheesemaking: Lymeswold. I don't think I ever tried it. Was it as awful as I assumed?

Seconded @RegimentalSturgeon 🙄🙈

Unfortunate cross post! Well, moving on ...

Nelson was my favourite Archers character ever. I loved Jack May's voice.

Was it Nelson who was a bit like Donald Sinden in how he talked? and maybe a bit camp?
Those were the days

I still want to find out about Jim's skin condition.

Possibly also Fat Rosie's current weight. Although I appreciate that other listeners don't want to hear from Pip.

Helen's ED, Ben's mental health (which did, I admit, get a brief mention from David recently), Elizabeth's heart, Sykesy's hip/leg ... so many unresolved health issues!

And that's not even getting into various elderly people whose health hasn't been spoken of at all recently. Are we to imagine that Christine, Jill, and Peggy, all well into their 90s, have perfect health?

You can hear him here, from 1983, 14 minutes in and at least two scenes later on. What a treat, an omnibus! I was just starting listen regularly then, although I'd always been aware of it as my Mum often had it on in the kitchen when she was working in there.

Also featuring Sid Perks (landlord of The Bull, Jolene's deceased husband - she was his third wife), his daughter Lucy Perks (very wooden), a very young Susan, Neil (not yet married to Susan or even going out with her - he has a crush on Shula), Clarrie (several actresses ago, or is the same one come back? - anyway, far less annoying than now), Peggy, William as a mostly silent baby, Eddie (unchanged), Jethro Larkin (Clarrie's dad), Martha Woodford, Tom Forrest, Dorothy Adamson (vicar's wife), Jill, Phil, Shula, Mark Hebden (who later married Shula, fathered Daniel, then died in a car accident), Walter Gabriel (Nelson's father), Jackie Woodstock, who I don't recall at all, but who seems to work for Nelson and to have been dallying with Mark Hebden.

Fascinating storyline where Clarrie accuses Eddie of making eyes at Susan and talks about Susan's short stubby legs. This would not happen now!

ClickyHeels
The Harry and Alice in the mud was a bit cheesy.

What did they do with the horses? One minute they were hacking down a tarmacadam (is it still tarmacadam? I know it's more likely to be called tarmac, but is it the same stuff?) road surface, the next Harry was walloping about in some mud and then Alice joined him. We had nothing telling us he had got off his horse (why did he get off his horse?) until he said the mud was slippery and then slipped, and we had nothing about Alice getting off her horse until she said she'd give him a hand to get up and he pulled her down into the mud.

It was a bit disjointed I agree- I assumed his horse had slipped and he had taken a flyer - but could just as easily be the scriptwriters forgetting held way through a scene that they were supposed to be riding 🥴

As an equestrian, allow me to grumble briefly about him over training/exercising his young horse. Alice tried to tell him, but he knew best, then extended the young horse's workload with extea hacking with Alice. Dear listener: he did not know best.