Archers thread #176: In which Ian puts the I in PTA. 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 from Wesley the ashtray collector, 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/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 @DeanElderberry for the pithy phrase in the thread title and @CaptainMyCaptain for suggesting it should go in there. At least we've got the spooky disco out of the way for now. Plenty of wooden dialogue in the last few episodes that could go on the village bonfire next week. It's all been too dispiriting to discuss in greater depth. I'll just say that I don't hold out any great hopes that the production team will make a good job of reflecting concern in the farming community about the changes announced in the Budget to inheritance tax for farms. So often they get an expert to talk them through stuff like this but instead of ending up with a realistic storyline they pick out the bits they like the sound of and cobble them together in a totally unrealistic way. Maybe I'll be proved wrong this time. I hope so.

Over to you!

Yeah you’re right actually! And I think Alice in her next marriage.

Yes! She needs to marry money and have more children.

I'm casting Hugh Grant as her husband.

I think Hugh Grant is a bit old for Alice. I was never a fan of his when he was younger but he seems to have grown into hisself as thay say and is a better actor for it.

She can’t reliably parent the one she has, so no more sprogs for Alice. I doubt she’d want any.

He always seemed to play the same person when he was younger. And had the added disadvantage of having the same facial features as my hated maths teacher (and as a mathematician, it took a lot for me to hate a maths teacher). Poor man didn't have a chance!

I think Hugh Grant is a bit old for Alice.

Not on the wireless. Remember the Neil actor is 85 (or something).

God the whole rex/justin/kirsty scene was cringe af. It’s such utter BS the whole way they’ve written Justin the businessman. And the convo with Lillian thinking he’s wonderful 🙄. I hope this is an end to it and I can just pretend it never happened.

and The Fallon leaving terum thing is still bizarre - why on earth would anyone outside of terum care.

and I doubt very much a customer would have given them a bonsai tree.

the whole Fallon sl is daft - assume this is to precipitate Harrison’s downfall

Something just occurred to me - back last week when Justin and Martin were in the twilight zone in the broken down car. Martin suggests playing eye spy (?!) and offers up "something beginning with E".

Ebenezer?

Justin's going to say to the charging station people: 'Nobody puts baby in the corner' and it will all be ok for Fallon.

He gave the answer as “empty packet of humbugs” didn’t he?

The conversation between Fallon and Emma was very strange- it was as if Fallon has never been her own boss yet it can’t be much more than a year ago that Natasha and Tom took over the business. Which means she would probably still have a self-assessment form to do this January. Which means she knows exactly how to be self-employed. I know no one pays tax in Ambridge but I don’t understand why the SWs are rewriting history in this way. Surely whoever plays Fallon must have flagged the inconsistencies in her character’s development.

Yes that's right. At the time I thought that was a really strange choice for eye spy, even for a guy who was half cut. So just wondered that perhaps there was more behind it!

The added disadvantage is that if you're old enough to have seen his earlier films, you're old enough to remember his fall from grace paying for oral sex from a prostitute in public. That's the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of him, anyway. It's how I knew he'd be a bad'un in Paddington and that new Mormon one

By all accounts he isn’t the nicest of chaps on set either

Sad news:

www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/nov/08/june-spencer-long-running-star-of-the-archers-dies-aged-105

I just assumed that it was the only thing that came into his head because it was what they'd just been talking about.

I was deliberately not drawing attention to that ...

yes, sad indeed. If you check back a page or two, there's several posts, and, I think, a link to an article.

Oops. Sorry for lowering the tone.

I don't even know why I remember it. I'm so out of the loop on celeb gossip in general that I can barely identify most A Listers, let alone know what shenanigans they've been up to. For some reason, the Hugh Grant incident really sticks in my mind. I must have been an impressionable age.

Ah, It's only just made it to the first page of the Guardian online and I don't read every page of this thread.

I'm arranging a 65th anniversary card for my parents. They had one from the late Queen five years ago, now Mum wants one from the King!

I was going to say it was good to know about the letters from the King/Queen as I would have had no idea that the birthdays were automatic and hadn't even heard of getting one for a wedding anniversary ...

But then I remembered that my family are all either foreign or ardent anti-monarchists, often both. And that none of them have yet lived to 100. So possibly not information I'll ever need, in practice. 😅

I fell off the treadmill of keeping up with TA because I was away then had a bug. I was getting frustrated - fast-forwarding through anything to do with Ian, although liking the Brad - George relationship.

I caught up in the best way possible, i.e. reading this thread. I'm appalled that the wildly inconsistent Justin is still a character (despite having all the time in the world for Simon Williams' portrayal of Prince James, the Duke of Danby in dinnerladies), especially in a storyline involving The Rewilding. But it seems I've missed some kind of hallucinatory, postmodern, metatextual mash-up scripted by Alan Moore (they wish), with Justin at its centre. I am bewildered.

RIP June Spencer, another sunset over Lakey Hill.

I’m ashamed to say I shed a tiny tear over the Justin/Rex/Kirsty contract scene.

I must get out more.

They had a little piece about June Spencer on The World Tonight on R4 last night and played a very, very touching interview of her talking about her late husband (who, like Jack, had Alzheimer’s). I could have sworn Shaun Ley, the presenter, was quite choked up at the end of it.

Emma Freud mentioned it at the beginging of the podcast, but has its pre-recorded they are saying more about June Spencer next week.
They had the guy who plays Harrison on this week ( yes I listern to it so you dont have to🤣), and his voice is actually the same as his character. He was so excitable and over the top he sounded like a right twit and I kept remembering he was done for beating someone up I think or did I dream that.🤷‍♀️