Archers thread #180: Burgeoning backstories! Continuity, what’s that? 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 it's a great idea for Helen and the boys to lodge with Tom, Natasha, Seren and Dippity*, 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/5244480-the-archers-spoilers-thread-10-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.)

*Can't remember who coined this, but it's genius.

I was strongly tempted to use one or both of the posts suggested for the title of this thread on the last thread, but went for something a bit briefer. However, they're brilliant and will kickstart this thread very nicely, so here they are:

@Sidebeforeself: Beavers, bridge, bunny boilers and busybodies - it's all a load of bollocks!

(I couldn't agree more!)

@DeanElderberry: I don't usually speculate much on the appearance of characters, but do wonder what it is about Miranda that is bringing out the chest-thumping silverback in Brian and Justin? One little bridge game and the course of Ambridge rewilding is set. The face that launched a thousand beavers.

Over to you!

It's the decade in which I left school.

Re the Neil foundling issue - which I totally agree has come out of nowhere despite years of opportunities to even hint at it - the important thing he said was that what he was most afraid of finding out was 'not who was my Mum, but... who was my Dad?'

There's no way the SWs could have predicted the news item, but it seems horribly pertinent in the week that a £20,000 reward has been offered in the search for the parents of three babies, siblings according to their DNA. abandoned over the years in the same part of east London.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg00m1mv3eo

I was watching it, and thinking he looks familiar - but I couldn't work out what I'd seen him in. And then I realised it must have been some article about TA...

A Very Peculiar Practice? Loved that, 30 or 40 years ago.

The rewriting of Neil’s backstory is really a step too far. Likewise the idea that everyone was in on it - Emma’s conversation with him last night did not ring true at all. There was never so much as a hint of this at the time of the drama over George’s paternity.. I am furious at the SW for doing this to such a previously well-drawn character. Not only are we being subjected to hours of film-flam between Rochelle, Joy and Mick, characters I couldn’t give two hoots about, but the real scaffolding of the programme - characters we have spent years getting to know - is being dismantled before our eyes. What next? Are we going to find out Ruth had a baby as a teenager - never before mentioned even when her own daughter got pregnant unexpectedly (or perhaps mentioned to everyone, just never in front of us the audience) - who will shortly turn up having traced her through a DNA website?

I haven’t heard tonight’s but perhaps Neil’s mum/dad/uncle Bob made a mint and suddenly want to leave it all to Neil

And he buys the house at Home Farm and we have a guest appearance from Laurence Llewelyn Bowen who Susan has commissioned to do a Changing Rooms style makeover.

Stranger things could happen on TA.

I'm about to have a shower. Really hope when I get out I will find the last few months of TA have been a bad dream.

What I'd like is for a 'long lost sister' to turn up and tell Neil that his parent is dead, or even that his parents are dead, and to show him pictures of the happy family he never knew, but for Adam to wander by and realise it's the same woman who claimed to be his sister and she's just a scam artist who gets a kick out of befuddling people.

That would be a scam story worth running.

And so say all of us! Bracing myself to listen to last night's later this morning. Thoughts and prayers, please.

I fear the 🔮 may be trolling us, but it says that it will be revealed that Neil's father was Jack Archer, who had a fling with a barmaid at The Bull way back when Jack and Peggy were running it. Peggy has always known who he is (she kept a close eye on the fate of the hapless barmaid and her infant son after HB was "encouraged" to leave Ambridge).

I would love Neil to be a secret Archer, not just because Archer land and wealth etc etc, but because at last there would be a slightly respectable reason for the family discouraging his nascent romance with Shula all those years ago.

My comment was a reflection on the way Joy is effortlessly back to “everything in my life is normal and happy” after all the upset of the night before.

Tony was also in the Battersea poltergeist series on BBC sounds. It’s really weird to hear his voice but it not be them.

Kirsty does the voice in a video game my son was playing over Christmas.

And is mick really away or is he locked in one of the outhouses

That's certainly what she wants the rest of the world to believe. Now we know everything in the garden is far from rosy, I am hearing her in a different way. (Although of course the eagle ears here have always thought there was something going on.)

You won't believe this ... Absolutely right, Susan, we won't. Having said that, I'm not on Ancestry or any similar sites, so don't know how they work. Can you set things up there so that if anyone posts a message about particular places or names you get an alert?

Maybe Rochelle's dad is actually under the patio of their former home and that's why Joy moved. Not wise to cross Joy! Tom saw the steel under the fluffy mask the other day. Perhaps it has a sharp point.

I do have a bitter sweet story of a good friend who traced her birth family. This happened in a very coincidental way involving a guest talking about their upbringing on the radio and looking them up the physical similarity was striking. So my friend got in touch and voila the whole family was opened up to her. I don't want to go into more detail than that as it's not my story. It was quick though. Almost immediately the family called my friend. Bitter sweet because she was too late for her birth parents.

Similarly the foundling I knew found his sister via a newspaper report about a local fire I think it was. So these things happen and can be quick. I mean if you're wondering about long lost family, they may be wondering about you. I wouldn't have believed either story though if I hadn't known them.

Can you set things up there so that if anyone posts a message about particular places or names you get an alert? It's common sense for a site owner to set up an automatic email alert to anyone who's questioned a particular name (or other easily defined attribute) in order to increase site traffic. But I would have thought Neil's query was too non-specific to trigger anything.

That's certainly what she wants the rest of the world to believe I was impressed by how quickly she'd got the mask back on.

@MereDintofPandiculation it would be good to have a realistic portrayal of someone living a lie. We all know somebody like that.

You won't believe this ... Absolutely right, Susan, we won't. Having said that, I'm not on Ancestry or any similar sites, so don't know how they work. Can you set things up there so that if anyone posts a message about particular places or names you get an alert?

I was probably too enraged to take in the finer details but did they just post a message or have they done a DNA sample? If just a message, yes, technically they could get an alert to a reply from someone - but I'm not sure where/how they’d post the question, as you’d usually link it to a person in your tree and ask for more info from anyone else who knows anything. I’ll go back and listen again (if I can bear it).

I did mean to say that I’d missed the exchange between Tom, Helen and a very unhappy Henry - where Helen smugly managed to make it all Tom's fault that HE was buying THEIR home and thus causing Henry's angst, so HE was the one who had to grovel to Henry. Not her, for having been a complete manipulative PITA and refusing to buy the house her children want to live in!

AAARGH! I just cannot bear the way she talks to everyone like they’re 5 years old ('did you thank Tom for helping with your homework?') and she’s the reasonable one 🤯

Sorry I've been left way behind on the last thread.

One thought that has crossed my mind re the whole Joy and Rochelle backstory (or lack of) is that does Rochelle have a different lived experience to that of Joy? Is Rochelle finding it impossible to forgive Joy for something that was maybe not actually her fault? Was her Dad abusive? Does she feel that Joy didn't protect her? Rochelle is clearly troubled and disfunctional. Often childhood abuse leads to unhealthy relationships hence Joys worry over the thought of her diving in with the first bloke she meets. Although surely she would be delighted that she liked someone kind and trustworthy like Rex 🤷‍♀️ it doesn't make sense!

There have certainly been hints at a harder side to Joy, more obviously recently. But if it turns out that it's Joy who has a dark past then why is Rochelle seemingly jobless and separated from her own children? A "drifter". None of it makes sense and I just hope they hurry up and explain as quite frankly it's starting to feel pretty ridiculous and tedious.

Oh I'm convinced Neil will turn out to be an Archer. I hope the SW are ready for the backlash!🤣

Or Susan turns out to be his sister. Then all they need to do is change the closing music to the Eastenders theme and we can all call it a day.

Although surely she would be delighted that she liked someone kind and trustworthy like Rex

But Rex lives on a rusting narrowboat and works at a rewilding enterprise that seems dependent on the whims of Justin, with taxi-driving on the side to bring in some actual cash. Not really the greatest bet for a 'free spirit' not in contact with her 'bairns' for some inexplicable but darkly-hinted-at reason. I can’t imagine why on earth a Rochelle-Rex (Rox?) pairing would make any sense at all - especially since he was devastated when that vet he was in a relationship with upped sticks and left, as Rochelle's also highly likely to do, by all accounts (well, she already has, so it’s pretty academic now anyway!).