Archers thread #191: Mulligan: stew made from odds and ends; second chance after poor shot. Both fit the bill. 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 like George you like your steak very well done, 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.)

Mulligan mostly makes me think of John Finnemore's Souvenir Show. This is good, and tenuously connected to a recent TA storyline

Over to you!

Ambridge meets Peckham.

Poor poor Georgie.

Is this sarcasm or sympathy with the character?

I like it when things go wrong for George, he deserves it. He's a horrible manipulative little shit and he deserves a hard time.

I'm rather worried, after the dad's change of tone tonight, that he will visit and amber will be welcomed back into the family with George, dad will buy them a house and car and gruesome George will be set up for life lording it over everyone.

I'm also curious how amber has become quite well-spoken. Her dad's obviously supposed to be a bit of a rough EastEnders type who's made a shed load of money, and she went to the local comp. Unless her mum is very well-spoken or she had elocution lessons where did her accent come from?

Maybe a bit of both. I'd have got the impression that my daughter's fiance was a sad loser, and I've also got the impression that Amber will ditch George for Brad.

Mr Gordon will be around quite a bit though.

Daddy's little princess will have had elocution lessons.

😂 they didn’t add much nuance to the ‘used car salesman’ stereotype. I thought he was going to roughhouse George out but actually sounds like George’s efforts may have earned him a smidge of respect.

I would have thought more self taught than elocution…. Probably from YouTube or other influencers? Would be good to hear it slip occasionally but does explain the annoyingness of her voice.

I miss Squealing Amber.

Never thought I’d say it, but me too.

Both Amber and George's voices seem to have changed. Both better spoken.

I'm another who thinks George is a dishonest, manipulative little scrote, but I felt sorry for him when his proposal fell flat. And I admired his going to see Mr Gordon, though goodness knows what Amber will think. I suspect her lies are coming home to roost too.

Didn't she also grab the steering wheel whilst George was driving this causing the car to swerve off the road, or am I completely imagining that bit?

I think she tried to open the door rather than grabbing the wheel.

I like Alice even less than I like George but his crime was lying afterwards and being prepared for her to go to prison.

That was a ludicrous stereotype of a car dealership owner in somewhere like Worcestershire. I don’t understand why the BBC do this.

Goodness, the SL when Kate was trying to take Phoebe abroad was what sucked me into TA. Before that I only listened sporadically, but Kate's behaviour was so outrageous I was tuning in every day because I had to find out what happened next. So that means I've been listening for over 25 years. I feel old.

If you could be drunk in charge merely by sleeping off drink whilst being in a vehicle, people taking holidays in a motorhome would be in big trouble.

It's utterly irrelevant to the accident in any event. There was absolutely nothing about finding Alice in the car that compelled George to take a car without the owner's consent, kidnap her, and drive without insurance.

If you could be drunk in charge merely by sleeping off drink whilst being in a vehicle, people taking holidays in a motorhome would be in big trouble

Dunno what the carve-out is for motorhomes, but the fact remains that sleeping it off in the car DOES constitute ‘drunk in charge’. Why Alice wasn’t done for that on the strength of her initial statement is a mystery. I suppose Plod / CPS were confident of the juicier charges sticking. Mind you, if that moron Burns were any use at all, she’d have been done for that a long time before the George fiasco.

I regularly do a really long drive from where i live to where my mum lives. The entire journey takes about 12 hours. And often on the return i am knackered, so i pull over to a parking spot (i pick a well-lit service station) and have a half-hour snooze. That is in Belgium, and no issues. In fact, one time, a police officer said, we've been here the whole time, and just wanted to check you are ok?

I did it once somewhere off the M1 and the police told me it wasn't allowed (it is allowed) and i pointed out i have foreign plates, am driving on the wrong side of the road and do they really think moving me on in my knackered state was a good idea. Harumph. They agreed in the end but boy it was like talking to a very short plank.

ETA. My point was: probably the motorhome carve out is that you would be expected to sleep in one of them but not a car? but that the Police would be bloody stupid to charge someone who was clearly avoiding driving while under the influence.

I think the issue with sleeping off drink in your car is that

1. drunks aren’t notorious for their common sense so if they were woken by a noise etc they may decide to drive home drunk thinking they’ve slept it off
2. it’s unlikely Alice would have been below the limit even if she had waited until she woke the next morning
3. drink driving is serious enough that being in the car should be enough to punish the person and hopefully deter drinkers from thinking even getting in the car is ok

i also never understood Alice’s argument that because the keys were in the glove compartment it meant she had no intention of driving. I mean I put my chocolate on a high shelf but it doesn’t stop me eating it

Motorhomes have beds specifically for that purpose. In the unlikely event that a police officer knocked on the motorhome door (most likely on a campsite any way) and you opened it wearing your pyjamas I think they'd know you weren't about to drive off in it.

If you were parked in a lay-by or car park over night, unless it was Scotland, that would probably be illegal anyway.

I've slept in a motorway services carpark in my car before. I paid attention to the tiredness kills signs.

Sleeping in your car is only a problem if you’re over the limit? And parked legally I guess

So have I on several occasions. I did it only the other day on a long rainy motorway drive after a bad night's sleep and a funeral. Pulled in to a quieter area of the carpark, tipped seat back and slept for 45 minutes. That was enough to refresh me and enable me to carry on driving.

A relative once fell asleep momentarily on the motorway and veered off into the crash barrier. The car was a write off and luckily they were fine, but it could have been so different. After that if I feel the slightest bit tired I come off and have a brief sleep.

yeah, i remember that ad about "Mr X who died peacefully in his sleep surrounded by his family" and the camera pulls out and he's nodded asleep and crashed his car.

Forgot to say, was quite impressed that George went to meat the dragon in his den. I think the dad was slightly impressed by that too.

I think the point about the keys was that Alice knew she did this as part of her drinking in the car ritual and having no memory of driving, found it hard to believe that she’d have got them out of the glove compartment again and driven while blackout drunk. It was quite a neat piece of scriptwriting because it showed the internal logic that made sense to her, the alcoholic, but of course was completely unreliable as she could have retrieved the keys any time, and driven, without remembering. She was confused because she thought she’d remember having broken her usual ‘fail safe’ (lol) against drink driving.

Yes - I was a bit surprised by people thinking it was a good failsafe tbh!!

I mean I put my chocolate on a high shelf but it doesn’t stop me eating it
I forget about it and it stays there until I clean the cupboard.
I recently threw out some Creme Eggs from about 2001.
I've got some mince pies from last Christmas. Reckon they'd be edible?