Archers thread #185: Some farming would be nice. 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, 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.)

Over to you!

The editor at the time of Peggy's complete change of character about this was Jeremy Howe, who claims to know and love the programme. I take leave to doubt these assertions because he so often seems prepared to drive a coach and four through existing facts of the programme; almost as bad in that respect as Sean O'Connor.

If Peggy spoke to Crispin at the Laurels could he be a retired vicar? That would explain nobody else knowing him.

Wow Helen is bitter. At least they are keeping her character consistent

completely crazy how entitled they all are. I hope there isn’t a surprise top up for them all. It would be better if she left it to her kids so jennys kids get a good chunk but Lillian and Tony’s don’t!

they seem to have forgotten she’s no longer paying Christine’s care?

how old is mungo?

shame we had to have Rochelle/rex/Joy back. Suppose it was good while it lasted. Rex is such an idiot. I can’t believe we’re going to be stuck with Rochelle. If Rex wants kids he’s making a mistake. They’re like bloody teenagers. Wish I’d listened on catch up so I could fast forward.

Oooooh - Lilian ill?

A prize for the swiftest diagnosis …

(Not really!)

Re yesterday's episode (haven't listened to tonight's yet!):

Those who were asking whether Tom had really had a lot of money from Peggy in the past - presumably you're relatively new to listening? Er yes he has.

Also a random vicar can't just decide to take a funeral (or any other service in fact) in a church which is not his! He would have to ask permission from the incumbent ie Alan. The family might broach this in the first instance. I have had to do this in the past. Alan reacted like he had no choice whatsoever in the matter, it was weird. There are quite strict rules on this in the C of E.

Yes of course any incumbent might decide it was fair to accede to the deceased's and the family's wishes in that matter, but it would be by no means a done deal. Crispin would have advised Mrs Woolley of this fact too.

And yes to whoever said earlier that Alan would surely know this Crispin. If he is a retired vicar then he must have PTO - Permission To Officiate - if he plans to take the funeral. Many retireds do have this however.

I’ve been listening since babyhood but there were occasional blips! Living abroad for example in the days before catch-up. Being a teenager. Preferring the pub 😁

Since you’ve been listening throughout could you tell me and anyone else who missed it - how much money did he have, when, and what for?

I went to a wedding with three vicars once, surely they could share

Isn’t the point that Peggy doesn’t want Alan?

Just popping in as im an avid Archers listener.. i'm probably really wrong, but my theory is Kates been left a bigger chunk of Peggys money!
Mainly because she seems to be lying a bit low..

Oh you may be right, he didn’t suck up enough I guess. Trying to think who her most obsequious descendant is. Maybe they scooped the cash.

They could indeed "share" although the key part would be who actually does the Committal.

Er no I can't remember the detail but I certainly know a poster who can....
I think there may have been money for the early Sausage (King's) business, in the 90s, maybe also money for another one of his ventures or maybe for his studies? Sorry about casting aspersions on the longevity of your listening, but it was quite a / they were quite big plot point(s) at the time. I wasn't sure I remembered ever hearing Helen complain about it, I cheered her on last night! (OK she probably did complain about it at the time!)

Isn't it all very unseemly and grasping to be dealing with the estate and talking about the money when Peggy isn't even in the ground. No one I know would dream of being so crass.

I have a dreadful feeling that Rex and Rochelle are going to be the thwarted ( middle aged) lovers who find each other in the end, then they'll stay in Ambridge and along with Joy will become one of the main families, absolutely vomit-inducing.
Fortunately if that happens Rochelle is too old to reproduce( or will she mistake signs of an ancient last ditch pregnancy as being the menopause?). But didn't they already do that with Bethany so hopefully not. Although they could bring the other Rochelle spawn into the programme too, making her fight with their father through the family courts. But in that case the offspring are old enough to say no and the court will listen to them.

Parkinsons was my immediate thought with dropping things and being clumsy. I am not a doctor.

Tom's first "loan" from the Bank of Gran was to buy a boar for his nascent sausage empire. Then he borrowed to set up on his own, then borrowed again to get disentangled from Brian, to whom he flounced when Tony was not sympathetic enough about providing money for Tom's sausage empire, then I think again when the sausage empire went belly-up because Underwoods was no longer prepared to buy from Tom and he owed Neil money. Then there was the deposit for a new-build house for him and Kirsty to live in – rather than paying for that after he jilted Kirsty at the altar, he ran away to Canada and it was never mentioned again, and nor was the loan for the wedding reception in a fancy country-house hotel....

I hate to sympathise with Helen, but that's rather different from Peggy having given Helen and Rob a wedding present.

I don't think Helen did complain about Tom leeching off Peggy all the time. She was probably just glad that as a result of it, he didn't talk Pat and Tony into bankrolling him so often.

Mine too @CaptainMyCaptain. I hope we're both wrong, some things aren't entertainment - Jack's dementia was bad enough.

The sausage empire era was when I stopped listening for a few years, it was so boring. Then I chanced to hear an episode with Helen and Rob and spotted the odd dynamic and I came back to the fold.

Tom really is odious but as I remember it, Peggy offered him the money so I’m not sure he went cap in hand as Helen claims.

I am finding the Rex/Rochelle relationship completely unrealistic. I can just about understand what she might see in him - nice, albeit dull, man apparently offering stability, safety and normality in Rochelle's turbulent life. But I am at a loss to understand what he sees in her with her whiny voice and teenage behaviour. And then, as we keep saying, there is just the minor matter of him being a pig farmer and her being a militant vegan. I simply can't believe that would work in real life. Do they actually have a single thing in common? (Oh alright, there is the cricket, but apart from that do they actually have a single thing in common?)

Rex's obsession with her also seems rushed, OTT and, frankly, rather creepy. I can only assume the poor man is so sex starved that he is ready to believe himself in love with the first woman who shows the slightest interest in him even if she is dishonest, whiny and childish and knows the sort of people who will threaten him with a broken bottle.

Like @Horticula I fear Rochelle - and her bairns - are going to become permanent and significant characters. A vomit-inducing thought indeed! Before we know it Noah is going to be in some hideous love triangle with Jack and Poppy. We are never going to be free of Joy and her ghastly spawn.

I am less charitable, so mine was that she'd already had more than a few drinks! As would I have done, in her shoes.

Eastie77Returns
Tom really is odious but as I remember it, Peggy offered him the money so I’m not sure he went cap in hand as Helen claims.

Oh, Peggy offered it all right. Shortly after he'd gone and had tea with her, each time, and told her all about how difficult everything was being because he couldn't afford this, that or the other.

And then there was the time he badly needed someone to buy out Brian's (I think it was 60%) share of Tom's sausage empire, at that time existing at Home Farm; Brian wanted to produce non-organic sausages using the Tom Archer brand, Tom didn't and scrabbled around to find someone, anyone, to buy Brian out. In the end Peggy did buy Brian out on condition that it was strictly a business arrangement and she expected Tom to pay her a dividend and eventually pay back her investment. Tom never did that we heard. Oh, and Brian hung onto the "Tom Archer Sausages" brand name as part of that deal, and we never heard that Tom had got it back, about which Tom would have crowed intolerably; he just started using it again when he decided that the Bridge Farm name was toxic, which at the time it literally was.

I have high hopes for a rather splendid Sunday Omnibus! Do you others curse the storylines they are given to flesh out or do you think that they are past caring.

Peggy (and Shula) both flounced from St Stephens (Peggy for the lady vicar, Janet?) and Shula was just objecting to Alan being married to a Hindu (I might have mis-remembered that). I expect Peggy flounced again over the mad window for the twins idea (is that window still boarded up)?

Have they really dragged the blooming Horvilles back into this week?!!

Shula stopped going to worship at St Stephen's in part because she disliked Usha lying about her and going to Shula's place of work and loudly accusing her of racism (as opposed to her actual position, which was religious worries about a vicar having a wife who practised a different religion). And even then she stayed as a parishioner at St Stephen's until she was asked to take services at Christmas for Alan at one of his other churches (she was a lay reader and could do that) and was faced with a statue of one of the Hindu gods on the mantelpiece when she went to the vicarage to talk with Alan about what was needed.

The racist position reported in the Borchester Echo came from an interview with SUSAN, who did express racist views about Alan intending to marry Usha.

Thanks Asking. I had little idea it was that many times, wow!

There is not a chance that in real life Rex would have had the slightest bit of interest in Rochelle. She’d have been a waitress at a rugby dinner - he might have shagged her, but by the morning he’d have forgotten her name. It’s utterly, utterly ridiculous for the SWs to try to make us believe Rex and Rochelle could ever be a thing. Toby will be gobsmacked; and it’s no way to get on the right side of the Fairfather. I highly doubt that Rex and Toby’s mother (somewhere on a Côte de Conspicuously Comfortable in France IIRC?) would welcome her either. Bonkers.