Archers thread #170: The scriptwriters have cast a Paul on proceedings! 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'd like to hear more of Drunk Alistair, 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 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radioaddicts/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/radioaddicts/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 @OverArmour for the title. I was tempted to try some sort of complex riff on chocolate names, given @PedantScorner's lightbulb moment - Paul's sister is Cara Mack! - and all the nonsense in last night's episode about coffee creams, but I couldn't be bothered, beyond thinking we must all be Cadbury's Fruit and Nutcases for listening at the moment. Let's hope the SWs take a walk along Quality Street or we'll have to put a Bounty on their heads!

And over to you ...

But why would the phone companies keep those records for so long?

agree that Alice seems to lack curiosity about what actually happened and seems very passive about the whole thing. Seems to think just saying she didn’t do it will be enough for people - she’s rather childish I suppose

Yes - every call/message is recorded once sent, whether or not it connects, then it goes through a load of processing to see if it should be billed or not, and if so, at what tariff. But that isn't the case if it was a WhatsApp message. I think it was a voicemail he left, though?

They don't have to keep call records forever, though. And it wouldn't include the message content.

Alice’s stupid little woe is me sackcloth and ashes long-suffering martyr voice is GRINDING MY GEARS.

Childish doesn't come close to describing last night's pity party at The Stables.

I think that for pinging the phone to be useful The Bridge of Terror would have to be a significant distance from anywhere else George could reasonably have been - Grange Farm, the party, the village green. It would be recovering the message to Neil that would be important, but I think that's gone forever.

It would only show the phone mast anyway wouldn’t it? I can’t imagine there are very many so accuracy wouldn’t be great

agree that Justin is right and Alice is going to be unbearable once it’s confirmed she wasn’t driving.

Yyes, he would have had to move out of the range of the mast that serves Ambridge into another one. Which seems unlikely.

They triangulate between masts, using signal strength to get an idea of distance. Not imperfect, but better than inevitable. Also, he might have had GPS or find my phone on or similar.

My rudimentary research suggests triangulation in rural areas accuracy can go from a quarter of a mile to several miles so I really don’t think this is the silver bullet

his parents knowing is what will force his hand

Whatever the phone data might show (including record that he called Will), what evidence could the police find to show that George was driving not Alice? If Alice remembers it all and testifies that this was case, but George denies it, is that enough for a jury to have reasonable doubt? Is the clincher the content of the voicemail that George left Will? Can that be retrieved?

I don't think it matters where his phone was. Every knows where George was - he was at the Bridge of Doom. He was previously at Ethan's party, which was presumably witnessed and at a known location. Between those two places, was it reasonable for the Bridge of Doom to be somewhere George would be walking home near, or to have been dropped off near, if he had a lift? No one seems to have questioned this yet, which implies it is a reasonable route (or just plot device.)

The only people who really know are the scriptwriters, because the geography (and physical configuration of some buildings) around Ambridge can be flexible and not all the maps agree.

Given it was so (seemingly) obvious what happened, I don’t think anyone would necessarily question to any degree what George was doing at the bridge. His journey and timings being one of the obvious areas for investigation once suspicion falls on him.

As I recall they only drove from woods to bridge in about 40 seconds, so if we were with them for the whole journey (as it seemed) then mast pinging unlikely to help, and if he had not stopped at the woods, he could have walked in a similar time. Although he was already chatting on the phone when he found her in the woods and of course made the emergency call almost straight away at the bridge, so given Ambridge’s alternative time / geographic continuum there may be some mileage in mast pinging or GIS tracking.

There is still the empty cider bottle, who would dive in the river, then pick up an empty cider bottle (they presumably had previously thrown down who knows where in panic) before they run over to Alice’s car carrying it, then stash it who knows where in the car.

Then also any cameras. Evidence of Alice throwing up on the passenger side. George’s fingerprints on the seatbelts when he fastened her in both sides, on the steering wheel / transmission, in a driver position etc, as suggested by various posters. But we do not know where the car is, or if it has been touched, it just seems Alice has not been driving it.

Of course his recent report to the police of spotting supposedly Harry near the scene probably raised alarm bells, not least the ill prepared way he may have delivered it.

But most likely he or Emma will confess under the pressure, would also seem less contrived.

It doesn't seem to have crossed Alice's mind to wonder who was driving because there is no logic at all to her conviction that she wouldn't have driven drunk. She simply believes, without any foundation as far as I can see, that she wouldn't have driven because she is a nice, decent person.

I expect in the past she would also have thought she was not the sort of person who would have thrown bricks through windows, nearly dropped her baby, tried to kiss her best friend's husband or said terrible things to her half-brother. I simply don't believe that she has some mysterious decency boundary that would stop her driving but not stop her doing other awful things when she is drunk.

Although I am enjoying the crash SL on the whole, I find Alice's belief that she is too nice to have been responsible extremely irritating and the least believable thing about it (even more unbelievable than George manhandling her from seat to seat with so much ease). Alice is an alcoholic and in real life alcoholics drive drunk all the time.

I am also not looking forward to extreme smugness Alice and some of her family will display when she is vindicated. I have not seen much evidence over the years that Alice is a particularly nice person even when she isn't drinking. Spoilt, whiny and entitled - yes. Verging on sainthood - no.

If anyone could be bothered to look for it, or had any reason to expect to find it. At present they don't.

His phone was said to have been destroyed by the submersion it suffered.

Thinking about Alice has got me wondering whether I would want to spend time in real life with any of the younger female characters.

Helen, Pip, Lily and Kirsty would be as intensely irritating to know as they are to listen to. I used to like Fallon but I have lost patience with her and her inability stand up for herself over the last few months. Emma's self-pity and spiteful nature would be difficult to stomach. Stella and Hannah might be ok but it is difficult to know as their characters have never really been developed. I do quite admire Natasha for her positive attitude (which must be difficult to maintain given who she is married to) but I'd have to say something if she tried to ride roughshod over me as she does over Fallon.

So I can't think of anyone. Perhaps Rochelle will turn out to be a real bundle of laughs.

Godesstobe
I expect in the past she would also have thought she was not the sort of person who would have thrown bricks through windows, nearly dropped her baby, tried to kiss her best friend's husband or said terrible things to her half-brother. I simply don't believe that she has some mysterious decency boundary that would stop her driving but not stop her doing other awful things when she is drunk.

Oh, you missed out another thing she would be sure she wouldn't do: ring up her sister-in-law and leave an absolutely vile message on her phone telling lies about her brother-in-law Ed having made a sexual pass at her, and suggesting that he fantasised about Alice while in bed with Emma.

Did she do that 😮

yeah I think the consequence of her being adamant she wouldn’t drive drunk and then finding that she didn’t is going to be bad

She absolutely did. Somewhere I have a transcript of exactly what she said in that message,because I found it so unbelievably awful (she also talked about Emma's criminal family) and I was sure that people would forget just how bad it was, but I have lost it because I can't remember what I called the file!

Emma read some of it out to Susan, pretending the battery had run out before the nasty stuff about the jailbird family so it wouldn't hurt Susan too much, and Susan just didn't believe it in spite of hearing it.

I’m kind of glad I missed the drunk bits now!!

I think alive is doomed to relapse because I don’t think she genuinely regrets her actions. I know you have to move on in life but she projects ‘poor little me’ so much I don’t think she truly gets it

After her first brush with sobriety she went round overtly "apologising" and grovelling at everyone she'd been vile to, and then expecting that they would "forgive" her, and was very upset indeed when she told Ruairi how glad she was he had forgiven her (because he didn't make a row about it over Christmas at home, and upset Jennifer) and he told her that he hadn't, and didn't plan to, he was there only for the sake of his parents, and he'd be obliged if she didn't come near him or try to talk to him. Gave her the shock of her life when saying "sorreeeee" hadn't been a magic charm to absolve her of all fault, and she instantly defaulted to threatening to tell Jennifer he was a liar and thus doing exactly what he had not wanted to do, making Jennifer very unhappy.

She is a piece of work!

To be fair (and I don’t have any actual experience of this) it’s always been my understanding that as part of the AA twelve-step programme you have to apologise to those you’ve hurt by your actions.

So I think Alice was just fulfilling that part of her rehab commitments.

I wonder what, if anything, the twelve-step programme has to say about dealing with people who don't even pretend to "forgive" you. I very much doubt that "threaten them until they do" is the recommendation.

I’m not buying Alice’s assumption that she’d be the face of the event at the stables, she’s not stupid. It’s just there to ramp up tension and increase the fallout when the truth gets out. Annoying.

I want to know if Alice’s car has been driven since The Incident, because unless he also thought to wipe down every surface, George's fresh(ish) fingerprints would be everywhere if it’s just been sat parked up. We know Alice hasn’t been driving.

Oh Alice is that stupid. She takes after her aunt.

Surely she was sick in the car so it should have been cleaned