Archers thread #190: Carry on, Cleo! Best new character for ages. 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 be delighted to have your wedding reception across the lawn from the local Flower & Produce Show, or other unusual views.

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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.)

Charlotte Smith must have been delighted to get back to Countryfile and Farming Today. What a pile of piffle tonight. Ah well.

When is George expected back? It can't be long now, surely. It occurs to me that I can't recall whether he's ever spoken on air to Ruairi. As their actors are currently the best (IMO) amongst the younger members of the cast, I hope they will cross swords in some way.

And finally, I can't mention Carry on Cleo without squeezing in one of the best lines ever written (Denis Norden and Frank Muir have the credit): Infamy, infamy! They've all got it in for me! Currently, Lily probably feels this way.

https://youtube.com/shorts/eRnd48yTC5A?si=N05njp3uLfpSjAmI

Over to you!

Justin might buy the farm…

I guess they need a farm for Stella long term

or someone will marry the daughter

How likely is it that David would not know the name of a neighboring dairy farmer he knows well enough to drop a valve (or whatever) round to, and that said farmer would never before have warranted so much as a passing reference - especially with a lovely herd of Guernseys? It’s not the fact he was silent so much as non-existent.

yeah I came juts to complain that there was no way on earth that David wouldn’t know the man and his daughter’s name - ffs. Everyone knows all the neighbouring farmers - just ridiculous bollocks. I mean all of it but especially bits like this.

opportunity for ed/george to set up a farm? assuming it's a tennant farm and they can get the tennancy?

or more grundy: ed/george take it up until inheritance etc is sorted and thdn get booted out.

Cross about how David doesn’t know Mulligan. Absolutely no way. He’d know farmers from miles away from young farmer days.

Also cross about a teeny weeny turkey poult is able to fly onto a house/barn, and/or need wrestling to the ground. Do the scriptwriters not understand they are bought in now to GROW for Christmas! We haven’t had them for years but I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t have flight feathers yet (not that they could fly onto a house anyway) and would be smaller than a chicken. And they are pretty docile, especially when roosting.

Not just YFC days - wasn't he chair or secretary of the NFU at one point?

It’s all so bizarre - surely these things should be the basics? Do they not use an agricultural editor anymore?

it's a eay to shoe horn inheritance tax without affecting the royal family archers

compare - contrast
good succession planning - no succession planning

I think they now have something called an Agricultural Adviser, to tell them the important stuff like "sheep eat grass" and "cows need milking".

I say "something" rather than "someone" because it may be AI. 🙄

Well if the agricultural adviser is a human it must be pretty embarrassing when they meet up with their farmer mates

I watched clarksen's farm and know everything

I agree, Mulligan does not ring true at all. If he was real old guard David might be calling him “Mr Mulligan”, but if he was he’d have to be in his 90s I’d have thought so surely, despite the wonderful, life extending Ambridge air, wouldn’t have been able to milk 80 cows and cope with all the associated jobs. The only time the surname alone would be used would be if the cows escaped in a “Mulligan’s bloody cows are on Lakey Hill again”.

I expect they asked the 12th Earl of Portland, Count Bentinck of Waldeck Limpurg, what he would call Mulligan.

Reminds me that Kenton is played by the grandson of Clement Attlee. We are listening to class conflict in its most sedate form

Or he is just like Morse, doesn't like his first name much, so just says to everyone 'Call me Mulligan'.

We called local farmers by their surname if the surname was unusual. Most farmers were related in some way so not many different surnames, and first names were quite common.
Somebody with a name like Bill or John Mulligan would have been Mulligan not Bill.

They have a Farming & Countryside Advisor now - currently Sybil Ruscoe, who presented Top of the Pops a few decades ago, and then became a journalist.

Sybil Ruscoe was a journalist before she was a radio/TV presenter.

I remember her on the Simon Mayo breakfast show

Oh, I do hope so! In the American military sense, obviously....

I wonder what her credentials are to get this post. Maybe she's happy to get up early and listen to Farming Today and they think that means she knows everything about farming.

She used to be a presenter on Farming Today.

Does that give you enough to be a farming adviser for a programme where the details of farming should be just right? It would seem not given various inaccuracies that occur.
You would imagine the advisor should have some actual farm experience, come from farming family etc.

She might be from a farming family, but I don't think she is. She grew up somewhere fairly rural.
I didn't rate the agricultural advisor we had for years, but he was better. I think he has a degree in Agriculture from Reading.