Archers thread #186: Eavesdropping on a home for the terminally confused. 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 swipe right on Dane, the new Grey Gables manager, 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 @WitcheryDivine for the title inspiration. Over to you!

I'm glad Peggy didn't leave much to her family. That's all she was to them, an inheritance and she must have known that. They are all moaning because she didn't leave enough for Kate to jazz up her yurts or Adam to buy a small holding. How much did they all think they were entitled to. Money grabbing selfish lot.
I've known people who were too frighten to breath incase they didn't get their inheritance. It's tantamount to grave robbing. You make your own way in life and shouldn't expect anything, then you won't be disappointed.

Discussion about the history of TA on Today happening now.

Discussing on R4 now. Yup an archers podcast plug. And it's the 75th anniversary of the pilot or one of them going out.

Reithian values wanted it to be 10% education, 30% info about the countryside and 60% entertainment

Exactly how I imagine it - or possibly Daniels in Windsor, neither of which have food halls. But I agree with @TottersBlithely that the food hall nods to Fortnums or Selfridges so very upmarket (I'm thinking of the mini Fortnums at St Pancras) - in a different league to the village shop.

@Lalgarh - do you have a mole at the BBC?! (I mean, you were right before it came on.)

E. Freud giving The Origin Story …

Presenter and super fan desperately trying to argue It’s still the same.

Looks like they’re also sending out a begging bowl for long lost episodes. Presumably for all the everything next year.

Asking about the demographic of current listeners …

Hmmph!

What a weird plug on R4 Today. It makes a change from pleading with us to switch over to R3 Classic Unwind, I suppose.

God, I’ve had to stop listening to R3 altogether. Which is mighty inconvenient. But the whole thing is being promoted as a 24 hour therapy session, and that’s the opposite of what I want from them. It’s a crying shame.

If anyone want to listen back, it's at 8:53/2:53 in the Today programme.
Really hope all the regulars aren't again going to be absent for months to re-record old scripts.

You know there seem to be two channels now, ordinary R3 and R3 Unwind which I can only assume is for if you run a spa and can’t be arsed to pay for Spotify.

Can the Radio 3 refugees access RTÉ Lyric FM? Not quite the same, but might help ease the pain.

www.liveradio.ie/stations/rte-lyric-fm

yet again the Archers being super weird about dating. It is not normal (was it ever?!) to go on an online date and invite someone to a friend’s birthday party for the second date!! Imagine the complete awkwardness all round.

My big hope is that Harrison will be a knobhead at the party/ say he wants to split or has cheated and Fallon will swoop in and shag Dane.

Ideally he’d then sack Iain and appoint Fallon head of food. 😁

Ha! I just clicked on that and they were playing Morecambe & Wise singing Bring Me Sunshine. Never again!

A while back, somebody on this bit of Mumsnet recommended Radio Swiss Classic. It's worth a look if you are that way inclined (I have it on the Radio Net app) www.radioswissclassic.ch/en/music-programme
My teenager and her musical mates all seem to have Classic Unwind on as background noise for their A level revision: Catch them young!

Well aware, @WitcheryDivine,thanks! But normal R3 just doesn’t seem to offer much these days. Maybe I’m just jaded …

I’ll give that a try, @DeanElderberry…

Ha!

That is not typical in my experience. It's possibly linked to the fact that the garden festival they're associated with (effectively Ireland's Chelsea Flower Show) has just started and it is disappointingly rainy.

Quite good that Helen and Dane got on so well, and brilliant that Ian is being obsessive and jealous and pissing Adam off.

I find regular Radio 3, as opposed to the one labelled Unwind, is still very good, although I miss Petroc Trelawney in the mornings.

Today was marking the 75th anniversary of the broadcast of the pilot episode on the Midlands Home Service. The pilots ran for a week and got a good enough response to justify developing TA for national broadcast. 75th anniversary of that coming up on 1st January 2026, and as we've mentioned many times recently that will probably get a lot of attention.

I'm sure you all know that The Archers is the longest running soap opera in any format anywhere in the world. Beats Coronation Street by nine years. None of the very few US soap operas still running come close. However, there are such big changes happening in how people consume all sorts of media that I do fear for the future of the BBC itself, never mind The Archers. Fewer and fewer people paying the licence fee while paying out quite a bit more for streaming services, Spotify and so on.

I would actually be delighted if the anniversary was marked by new versions of the lost original episodes. The recent prequel for VE Day was absolute tosh but that was because of the plot and the scripts, not the acting.

If we've ever commented before on the James Bellamy coincidence, I've forgotten it. How odd. I picture Justin as the Upstairs Downstairs James Bellamy but older, not as lean and more grizzled.

And finally, Martha. People love saying how bright and happy children are. It doesn't mean a child is going to thrive at school. The nursery staff may have noticed that Martha is struggling with concentration or short-term memory or recognising letters. If so, best for it to be identified as early as possible so that appropriate support can be put in at school, if the resources and expertise are there (a whole other story, of course).

The Little Underwoods immediately made me think of Booths (upmarket Northern store, like Waitrose but better).

It’s possible I’ve stepped inside one before without realising the significance, but consciously visiting a Booths store is on my bucket list of things to do before I’m 65. (Well, it would be if I had one.)

@AmbridgeBooths was my thought too.

@TottersBlithelyits a worthy ambition. They are lovely shops.

BeaLola
has she been left with not much after funding her and Christine at The Laurels?

Listeners know that Peggy has not been funding Christine, because we heard the episode of 11th December, 2018, in which Christine made it clear to Peggy that she was never going to return to The Lodge and that she was able to fund herself in a service flat with a bit of help from Peter (her son) so Peggy need not go on paying for her. (Subtext: couldn't use her as an unpaid companion/carer any more.)

I can't remember who among the rubbish said that Peggy had left a lot of money to keep paying for Christine to be at The Laurels, which Christine isn't and Peggy hasn't for several years, but would they actually have known?

Had they seen the will, as mostly people seem not to have done so that the "suspense" can continue? The family did not know anything about Christine's actual finances, but they did not think Peggy was paying for Christine to be at the services flat, because they thought that Christine was using the money from selling her house.

It's yet another bunch of hokum dreamed up by someone who apparently doesn't know the programme.

The nearest Booth's to me is over 200 miles away so I'm going to have to stick with the mental image of the St Pancras F&M when I try to imagine Little Underwoods.

Voice shifting Dane is odd. You'd think that they'd have worked on the accent before introducing us to the character.

Finally, I had a dream that Harrison turned up at my house wanting to use it as a surveillance point. Only it wasn't him as he had a new voice. Do we know if the actor is being replaced?

I always thought of Underwood's as being like Jolly's in Bath in its heyday. Its heyday was quite a long while ago though - it was in very obvious decline for many years and was finally put out of its misery when it closed recently.

The item about TA on the Today programme was absolutely infuriating. They would like us all to believe that TA still imparts valuable farming Information, that it still features the same familiar set of characters and that one of its pleasures is the continuity of SLs.

Of course anyone who actually listens to TA knows that none of this is true any more. (The absolute low point for me was the Neil the Foundling story.)

Jollys is having a multi-million pound refurb at the local taxpayers' expense, after the Sports Direct Group appear to have ignored the "tenants' repair" clause of the lease and let it rot. It is going to become a "Morleys" store (who I've never heard of, but are apparently somewhere in London).

Jollys of the '90's would have been a pretty good candidate for "Underwoods". Even better would have been "Dingles" in Bristol when it used to have a food hall (sadly closed shortly after I left Uni).