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!

Yes. He will turn up unannounced to visit Akram and discover he has a whole other family. Or maybe he will find Akram dead. He will then rush home to be man of the house at Azras.

their whole conversation about it only having been the two of them blah blah seemed to be highlighting that.

I had really thought that this was Adil's first project manager job, and that he had got it by virtue of family money being behind the purchase of GG. Given my assumption, I thought he made a good fist of it, despite having a wobble mid-project. But it seems he has an established career in it, after all.

I therefore take back most of my analysis of him upthread

Your analysis made perfect sense, @SequentialAnalyst! A lot more than the official version.

I wasn’t regularly listening when the singing stuff was going on but he just seems like a totally different character now. I just cant reconcile him with that character at all

was it Lily he was singing with? They don’t seem like a natural match - he sounds like a 12 year old Paddington tribute act and she’s bossy and domineering

Ed is such a drama queen. He only had thirty-odd ewes, I think. Certainly no more than fifty. So why is he cracking on to be sooooo exhausted? That’s not serious lambing.

Yup, I thought this too. It's not like he's dealing with several hundred sheep, and probably not every birth is difficult (unless the size of Texels make it so, in which case not sure it's fair on the ewes.) Unless I missed the storyline where 40-50 acres is supporting 500 000 head of sheep...

I don't think Adil and Lily are a natural match either.

Lily seems to be a special variety of obnoxious at the moment. I found myself cringing during her conversation with Brad "your sweet smile"... I think the scriptwriters went too far!

Hello new thread,

I love the idea of Kate's stuff reappearing at the fashion show.

That would really strain credulity though. When I lost my keys at the dump, it was 24 hours before the guys could confirm they weren’t in the textiles bin. Unless Tony just left them lying around, they would be inaccessible to a moucher.

I wonder whether the Grey Gables storyline has seemed so disjointed and Adil’s character a little erratic because perhaps they had to rejig story lines based on what happened with Roy’s actor? a possible explanation. I think for now (based on Robert taking the luggage to the Royal Garden Suite) Roy could continue to exist at work pretty much indefinitely - in much the same way Kathy did until she finally got her big send off. More problematic is that he is living with Kirsty, but I suppose they could work opposite shifts so he could always be out or asleep whenever she is in the house. It is a bit problematic though when so many previously key characters are similarly out of circulation (Jill, Peggy, Pat to name but three) and those waiting to step up a generation feel so flimsy. Helen, for all her faults, is a least consistent and well defined. Pip, Ben and Josh still feel very insubstantial and under-developed by comparison. Adam seems to have been sidelined, Kate is a comedy turn and Alice feels slightly peripheral. The Grundys and by extension the Horrobins are holding up better.

Running the risk of sounding like Melania…I really don’t care about Ardil or his sister.

I was a bit taken aback at Oliver saying Ardil was going off for a "well-deserved" break. Surely if anyone desperately needs a break it's poor Oliver after having to sort out the mess made by Ardil?

I'm on holiday now and missing the archers but I'm checking in now for my big catch up!

Why did Robert take the bags? It’s a very strange operation

Checking in to the new thread even though I’ve not really been listening.

I’ve been listening but it’s just out of habit at this point. None of the storylines at the moment really have me particularly interested.

Thank you for the new thread.

Why did Robert take the bags? It’s a very strange operation

I think a reference to a concierge was also made so presumably R went up to the suite with him and the bags. I mistakenly thought Lynda’s b&b had a new member of staff initially.

Oh that makes sense I suppose. These days the concierge seems to fulfil a slightly different role but I guess bellboy doesn’t work as a job descriptor very well anymore

To be fair, it generally does take a while for new characters to settle into one’s imagination and become part of the story.

If Adil’s sister becomes the permanent resident in the area then that could be interesting. They’ve lacked a doctor, and a surgery as a community hub, for some time. (Not much community entertainment in phone appointments with a GP, though.) I trust Adil won’t discover anything amiss with her husband, so he also may arrive at some point.

In his diatribe at Oliver about how dare he sell ED'S LAND, on 6th November last year, Ed said that he had thirty ewes and fifty-two lambs; I noticed this in particular because I wondered why the hell he still had all last year's lambs eating up his pasture in November when a new lot would be arriving in the new year. So we do have the exact number.

Ed was unlucky indeed to lose (and not bother at all to try to save) two ram-lambs: Texel lambs are famously vigorous at birth with a great will to survive. Maybe he ought to have massaged them a bit, and swung them, rather than just thrown up his hands and moaned about it.

Adil's sister got a job near Ambridge (at the Darrington surgery which was invented for her to join: it has never been there before this year, Ambridge people were moved from Tim Hathaway's defunct practice to one in Hollerton and one in Borchester) in order to be near Adil.

Adil is not planning to stay in Ambridge.

What was the point of her moving with her two adolescent children to be near a brother whose job was going to cease to exist a couple of months later, meaning that he was going to move away because there was no other suitable work for him in that place?

Well, I guess we have to wait and see!

I wonder what invented project Adil will be called in to do in Ambridge in spite of poor references from his last one for basically costing the people he worked for an extra £750,000...

Perhaps Miles has big plans…

Pilgrimage centre to the shrine of born-again Rob. Adil can mastermind the conversion of the barn. I'm not sure whether Rob's ashes should be in an urn in the middle of it, or mixed into the cement that forms the perimeter foundation.

Speaking of £750k, which was I figure I posted yesterday so I include myself in this ... we all (on these threads) have the idea that Oliver owns 1/3 of GG and the other owners 2/3. Do we know if that was actually stated on air? I ask because I heard the beginnings of an interview with the Adil actor yesterday, and both the interviewer and the actor agreed that it was a 40% - 60% stake (which would put the total bail out at £625k). I was taken aback because I was so convinced it was one-third two-thirds, but now I don't know why I think that, I can't remember what's actually been said on the show.