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.

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.)

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!

Have fun! I’d love to be there. I liked yesterday’s episode, especially the conversation between Dross. A lovely gentle eavesdrop that felt quite real to me. Similarly,I BOOPED the conversation between Ruairi and Alice. It had some depth and honesty to it.
I can see why Lily wouldn’t have mentioned Oz. Azra wouldn’t have known about it and it may have simply been a passing notion for Lily, just another idea from someone who feels a bit lost in life.

Home. It was really lovely to meet @Agapornis! Sorry not to meet @TheCrasher - did you make it?

Highlight for me was Libby Purves, especially the bit where she was summing up the innumerable sexual shenanigans Peggy had had to come to terms with from her vast extended family, including her grandson Adam buying a baby from a Bulgarian fruit picker.

Lots and lots of cast members and others that I think I recognised were there, including at least three Editors (Jeremy Howe, Sean O'Connor and Vanessa Whitburn), Keri Davies, Tamsin Greig (!), Lilian, Adam, David, Ruth, Josh, Oliver, Leonard, Lawrence, Jolene, George, Brad, Mia, Alan, Usha, Kathy Perks, Mike Tucker, Will Grundy (these last two are father and son in real life, and Terry Molloy looked a lot older and less robust than I'd realised). Richard Curtis was there, which surprised me until I remembered that he's Emma Freud's husband. Some very senior BBC people in attendance, and a recorded message from the DG was played. Some taped contributions from people who mostly couldn't/didn't attend, including Charles Collingwood (Brian) who brought the house down by mentioning as one of her many positive qualities that she was always on time, never drunk ...

The ones I didn't spot include:
Jill (who may well not be able to travel now)
Christine (ditto)
Tony
Pat
Helen
Tom
Natasha
Brian
Kate
Alice
Ruairi
Phoebe
Jennifer (given that Angela Piper is actually alive)
Elizabeth
Freddie
Lily
Kenton
Pip
Ben
Justin
Jim
Alistair
Lynda
Robert (although the current Robert probably didn't overlap with June Spencer)
Kirsty
Only members of the Grundy/Horrobin clan I saw were Will and Mia.

Oh wow! Ms Greig alone would have made the journey worthwhile. Impressive list of cast in attendance - but then so many who weren’t.

I guess it wasn’t the occasion for close questioning of Editors …

D’you think the appearance of senior BBC bods suggests they’re not actively winding TA down to nothing?

I did wonder about that. Maybe they were just there for a free lunch (I think there were refreshments provided afterwards for the great and the good, while the listeners were shuffling out the back way to avoid the police and protestors). However, the Head of Content (W1A irresistibly coming to mind for me) had come back from the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge specifically to attend and said she was a huge lifelong fan, so there is hope.

Bolder spirits than me did speak to the talent, but I was just goggling from afar while waiting.

I don't think I can add much to @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g's excellent debrief. But I did just spot this sign on the BBC News page!

Brilliant!

GO JIM! The bit with people suddenly approaching Alan with questions about theodicy just because they chatted to Jim in the newly installed shop was totally ridiculous, but also delightful. I <3 Jim.

Agreed! Bit concerned at how frail Jim sounded, though.

He did, didn’t he? I assumed the actor was recovering from an illness or health condition.

How old is Jim supposed to be, now? (Thinking of what potential changes in his life might be coming up in the foreseeable future.)

To be honest I did not think it was possible for the plots to get sillier. I was wrong, absolutely and totally wrong.

Alistair must be early sixties so I assume Jim is at least late 80s/early 90s.

i half suspect that the writers read the online comments about silly plots and see it as a challenge.

If you are reading - i am especially looking at you Warburton - STOP IT.

Clearly no one has been raising these theological questions with Alan over the years. I loved it, but agree that Jim was sounding frail.

With the Dross dregs going on about life and death….. is one of them going to get it? 😬

I enjoy Jim as a character and hope that when we lose him the SWs will give us another person to fill the 'educated' slot.

I'm glad none of the sponsored swimmers died of it, but baffled by all this 'oh swimming in a lake is so hard' nonsense. Lake water is at its warmest right about now, too. The wetsuit really wasn't necessary. But I am glad Fallon declined to pee in hers. Yech.

TottersBlandly
How old is Jim supposed to be, now?

He had a Significant Birthday (and a disastrous party thrown at him) in June 2019, and I'm fairly sure that must I think have been either his 75th or his 80th, with him having been born in either 1939 or 1944, because he had retired when he moved to Ambridge in 2009, and was presumably at least sixty-five then. My money would be on his having been born in 1944, and now a mere stripling by Ambridge standards of 81, but he might be 86.

Also - wasn’t his abuser a couple of decades older and he came to the party? So more likely 75? Or am I misremembering and his abuser was a peer

By Jim's account his abuser was in his early twenties when Jim was eight, so call it twelve or thirteen years older at least. And someone for some reason thought it good to bring Jim's 87-or-more-year-old (or 90+ year old if Jim was 80 that birthday) wheel-chair-using abuser by car to a party for someone none of them had seen for decades, after which party the abuser would presumably have needed somewhere disabled-friendly to sleep for the night.

The abuser had lived nearby when Jim was a child, and Jim's then-neighbour was the twerp who brought him uninvited. His funeral a couple of years later seems to have been in the town where Jim grew up, somewhere a long drive north of Ambridge and near a Roman fort.

Thanks!!

so would the neighbour have been even older?

I feel like it was his 80th but with those facts his 75th seems more likely

thoroughly bizarre

The neighbour who did the ridiculous ferrying might have been the child of whoever was living next door when Jim were a lad, I suppose.

I too thought at the time it was to be Jim's eightieth, but that would make Harold Royston at least 93 when he was dashing about the country to upset the victim of his abuse seventy-two years earlier.

I seem to remember at the time there was some discussion over it not making sense?

According to the BBC info Alistair is 63. So I'd say it's almost impossible for Jim to be 81 now as he would have been 18 when Alistair was born, never a mention of him being a teen father.

We know he went to university and had a wife so I'd say he would have been at least 21 when he married and 22 when Alistair was born so would be at least 85 now. So I assume the 2019 party must have been his 80th and he's now 86.

Makes sense

(am I the only one finding the MN colours have gone weird)

You can change them in settings, but only to other mimsy pastels instead of the rather more pleasant and more saturated colours we were allowed before. No more purple or easily-visible green permitted, and the available blue is the colour of infant child woollies.

The blue is way too vibrant and I hate the pink

maybe dark mode would suit me better anyway

They need to speak to an optician about optimal eye health because my eyes are already aching!!