Archers thread #162: ‘This is like talking to Lassie’ – how right you are, Fallon! 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 cowhide-covered walls are a great idea for a cafe with vegan and vegetarian customers, 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.)

Title comes from one of the better scripted conversations of recent weeks, when Fallon said ”Harrison, this is like talking to Lassie! Just TELL ME”. So true of so many conversations on TA where you just want to shake them and yell 'Just TELL US, and quickly, so you don't get interrupted before you can say the important bit', but of course they rarely do and days pass before the conversation resumes. @TheBell suggested putting it in the title, so thanks for that.

@OverArmour had a great if more obscure idea, paying tribute to a Peter Greenaway film: The Policeman, The Drunk, The Vet and his Lover. That will do very well as a starting point for the new thread. Will Alistair leave? Will Denise tell John she's leaving him? Will Paul learn to be less noisy? Do any of us care?

I do care a little about Harrison and Fallon. I want Harrison to get a grip and realise he needs a paying job more than the captaincy of the cricket team. I don't care at all about Harry but I think he's been brought in purely as a plot device so with any luck we can all forget about him very soon.

Over to you!

The Markie SL is for a reason and what the reason is will probably come out in due course. It's a bit of a coincidence that Emmur has resigned, Harrison's being investigated and Fallon is not impressed by how things are going at Te Rum.
NuRobert will probably unearth some doorbell footage that will solve the mystery.

Is Hellin still in Paris?

I’m sure that Tony mentioned she was back from Paris. Possibly when he and Natasha were hanging the skins?

Longtime listener here and relatively recent discoveree of this thread. I enjoy reading all the opinions. Not much new to add but Pip and George have been exquisitely annoying lately.

Pip really does seem to suffer from a plot-device level inability to listen.

”But I really must talk to you right now, Pip. Please, for God’s sake, it’s literally life or death.”

”Oh goodness. Is that the door? Oooh the phone’s just gone. Sorry, were you saying something? It’ll have to wait.”

I don’t know how Stella tolerates her.

And George … I like how Hannah handles him sometimes being frank and direct but at other times is really inconsistent. I wonder why she plays along sometimes and doesn’t just call him out in front of others.

As for Emmur… 😤

Welcome, @UnintentionalArcher! You've got Pip spot on there. She is insufferable.

Ooooh, could we have a really sinister plot where George sneaks into the house to kill Hannah but, by some twist of fate, Hannah is staying elsewhere and pip was staying over, had an argument with Stella about FR and ended up storming off to Hannah’s bed. That would resolve two problems.

re the FASD I think Alice was drinking FAR more than the amount suggested above. And it would be good to have a disability story with a long trajectory in one of the central families (ir not likely to 'move to Birmingham'
And I certainly wouldn't lend money to anyone who would flounce out of a job on a whim

Thanks Gaspode!

So MeAnEd are going to be even more skint for a while then. I'm pissed off with her for that, it's such unreasonable behaviour to blindly support your son to such an extreme that you will walk out of your job instead of listen to your boss telling you that he didn't even apologise properly.

I do think we are being set up for a Big Showdown at the Bull - an explosion, gunfire, who knows. I'm sure Harrison will be Jesus Heroic and save the day and his job in the process.

Oh, meant to add a BOOP for Jacob for having none of it with George's hairbrained exposure tokens idea. Elderly animals need regular medications and other expenses in shocker that nobody apart from the Grundies are shocked by. I'm surprised George hasn't set up a Go Fund Me.

A down vote to George for deleting the video of Chris that was attracting comments. As a Social Media Mogul he should know that it's all about the engagement to grow his channel, and should be seeking out more and more Chris videos.

The "Bartleby is the Oldest Horse in Britain" storyline is emphasising how small George's world is. He doesn't seem to have much of a clue that there are hundreds of thousands of horses / ponies in Britain and the chances that Bartleby is the oldest are slim.

Has George ever ventured much beyond Ambridge? Or beyond Borsetshire? Has he ever been on holiday with either Will or Meaned?

Where's the intern? We need this to happen asap.

Has George ever ventured much beyond Ambridge?

Seems highly unlikely, Westwind. Emmur, Ed’n/or Will can’t have had the spare cash to take him away on holiday very often, and despite his doomed aspirations to be some sort of influencer, he doesn’t seem to have any real intellectual curiosity about the world in the way that you can see Brad, for example, does.

As for Emma - c’mon, woman. You were nearly there. The penny dropped that Geeowrge was a nasty incel-in-the-making and you knew it. You can’t go back to ‘but he’s a good boy really’ now 🤦‍♀️

Easter Greetings to all.

I’m actually struggling to think of a time George has traversed the boundaries of Borsetshire. In my mind I’m certain Will and Nic would have taken all the children on holiday at least once or twice - the shoot calendar permitting. Either in the UK or somewhere. But I don’t concretely remember. And he never seems to have any reason of his own to go anywhere - his head is entirely in the Cloud.

It’s nice that Brad is more travelled. Always popping off for a study course or to meet a girl or visit a university.

What will George do without him come September? (Fingers still crossed that the SWs don’t decide to ruin Brad’s beautiful life.)

Have we heard where Brad has applied and been accepted to?

I think we concluded it’s Durham. We only followed him to one open day so must assume that’s the place the SWs are sending him to.

Cant recall an offer - maybe I missed it?

This. No matter how jealous George is of Chris, it's really fairly insane to do something that will hit him directly in the pocket.

But after he visited didn’t he say he didn’t want to go that far?

A down vote to George for deleting the video of Chris that was attracting comments. As a Social Media Mogul he should know that it's all about the engagement to grow his channel, and should be seeking out more and more Chris videos.

Did he actually delete it, or just talk about deleting it?

I don't think we've been told anything about the success or otherwise of UCAS applications for either Brad or Mia. My fear is they will both end up at the world-beating University of Felpersham and will carry on living at home.

Like a few people on here, I think we are slowly building to a big storyline with George in a few years where he gets into very serious trouble. What kind of trouble, I can’t say but something around the way he relates to women. I would be interested to hear people’s predictions.

While I generally find Emma deeply irritating, she can be reasonable and sensible - e.g. she’s been a relative voice of reason compared with Ed when it came to listening to feedback on the business plan. What I find slightly contradictory and so unbearable about her is the fact that she knows George has history of behaving inappropriately in the face of female authority (Hannah, which I’m not sure she really accepted, and Helen, which she seemed to at least somewhat) but then takes him at face value when he says he has apologised to Jolene. Surely it would be natural to ask him exactly what he said rather than flouncing out of her job?! Is communication in the general population really as poor as it is in Ambridge?!?

Having said that , she does allow George to speak to her appallingly with limited consequences- ‘loser’ being a milder recent example, so she clearly struggles to enforce boundaries with him.

The threat of the mobile phone contract cancellation was so interesting- it was like on some level she might have suspected he was in the wrong (perhaps not a conscious level) but had to sell the apology to him (and arguably herself) as being the bigger person rather than as a necessary consequence of poor behaviour.

Wasn’t it Emma herself who admitted that George had a particular problem with women? I can’t remember when, if indeed I’m recollecting it right, but relatively recently……something she seems to have now conveniently decided to forget saying, anyway.

Yes I think you’re right, she did say that.

Wasn't it soon after he'd called her a slut in that dreadful argument?