Archers thread #167: Welcome to Ambridge, the world capital of loose ends! Discuss The Archers here.

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Over to you!

Yeah mick is awful. Planning to keep the camper van there when he’s expressly been told not to.

Though I suspect he's being paid peanuts and will struggle to afford rent. Though God knows how much he paid for the camper van.

The Joy of sex. Not.

Oliver works very long hours.

Agreed about Joy and Mick but I think the Strangles outbreak is relevant to the viability of the Stables and thereby the Archers and Alice.

They are really expensive but he could have got it on finance.

I assume it's second-hand (or more likely fourteenth-hand) and has done in excess of 150,000 miles.

I must be nieve but I didnt think Joy was that into Mick, and the SW are turning him into a bit of a hobo. I'm sure he'd have more self respect.

I was assuming second hand but still on finance.

Ours is a Camper van (ie converted from a long wheel base van rather than a purpose built Motor Home). It has a small bathroom but wouldn't be suitable for living long term although it is perfectly possible to keep it tidy and organised unlike Mick. I think his is a Motor Home which is probably bigger although you can get tiny ones. We bought it in March 2021 just before the massive boom in camper van/motor home ownership due to lockdowns. It's a 13 plate and cost £38k then and would sell for quite a bit more than that now. The prices went crazy.

But he must have lived somewhere else before this. So presumably switched his living costs to this instead.

Oliver blatantly knows as he would have checked the cctv in reception and the health centre so mick should have taken that as a warning

We are back to Carry On Ambridge - oh dear I've lost my trousers and Oliver's at the door, quick hide under the duvet. Ooh err Mrs - you can dust my upstairs anytime etc etc Laugh? I thought I'd never start. Apart from anything else Joy and Mick's shenanigans in the health club was too reminiscent of Jazzer and Tracy's liaison in a hotel room or Ed and Emmur getting caught on CCTV in the woods. And it's not even as if they don't have anywhere else to go - Joy has a house with its own hot tub just down the road.

The script writers just love shoving a bit of irrelevant bonking in. As well as the above, we’ve had random references to Brad and Mia’s sex life. It’s quite prurient actually. And as for Paul’s crabs/scrot rot… WHY?

The SWs certainly struggle to write anything to do with sex when it isn’t intended as part of a pregnancy storyline. (And the best of those recently was entirely off screen.)

I get that they feel it’s important to mark stages in evolving relationships - so I don’t object to Brad and Mia, or Paul and Etienne.

God knows why they think Archers listeners would find ‘caught outside the bedroom’ farce in any way amusing.

On the other hand they wrote the issue between Lynda and Robert when she was recovering from the GG explosion beautifully.

And as for Paul’s crabs/scrot rot… WHY?

But he didn’t have any of those things. The fact that he was afraid he might was just reflective of his emotional concerns about his relationship. Maybe it was clunky - but they were at least trying to portray his thought process.

What is it exactly about unpresentable Mick, with his hopelessly creased suit and general scruffiness, that ever attracted Joy in the first place? Every time I hear Oliver giving him yet another dressing-down I get this mental image:

But @TottersDeterminedlyTowardsThePollingStation, Paul's fears were perfectly logical, as the dr confirmed implicitly.

IHaveNeverLivedintheCastle
it's being used to give Mick a ticking off for faults which presumably bleedin' obvious before he hired him.

Point of order... It wasn't Oliver who hired Mick; it was Roy. Which if possible makes the whole nonsense even less plausible.

Him meeting Justin was painfully done as well

did mick get any training? At a hotel like that discretion is key!

can’t see Roy hiring a scruff bag

can you imagine being a guest and being woken in the night by a scruffy camper van rocking🙄

It doesn’t seem quite like Joy, this business.

Another one agreeing that last night was dire.

MAKE THE BONKING STOP.

In Real Life I don't spend my time loitering at the ends of people's beds while they have sex, and I rather resent being dragged along to do so in fiction.

This goes double, or even triple, if it's a pair of characters I really don't give a tuppenny fuck about...

Tbf wasn’t she being rather raucous with mick in her hot tub

Why do the SW keep using GG as the setting for these dire supposedly comic SL: the Grundy's lost ferrets, Tracy and Jazzer's sex romp, Brad's Manuel farce, the hideous Maid Marion suitcase mix up, and now Joy hiding under the blankets like a "No Sex Please, We're British" style comedy? Do the SW imagine we are all rolling around our kitchens, slapping our thighs and helpless with laughter? And why do these supposedly hilarious SL never involve the middle class characters?
I was briefly excited by the whole Chappaquiddick- on-the-Am SL but now I am back to wondering whether it is time to break the habit of a lifetime, rediscover my self respect and JUST STOP LISTENING!

I suppose there was always lots of hotel farce and drama in those dim and distant days of Jean-Paul the temperamental Head Chef!

Hearing a lot of mick. Does he drive around in the camper van? Alastair giving him a bottle of whiskey🙄

Harrison is such a doughnut.

and azra actress - getting their moneys worth

Adam's being a nice brother. It’s very hard as a family member when you can see someone self destructing and you can’t do anything.

can you get addicted to diazepam?

Bless Mick - I'm here Joy re Rochelle if you want to talk - I'm wanting to know NOW ! I feel like they are toying with us ... please let it not be TA equivalent of Gabon& Stacey "fishing trip"