Archers thread #194: Bottled on the Bridle Path! Discuss 75 years of 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 wishthat we'd heard the Reverend Shula preach over the festive period, 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.)

I am all Archered out after the excitement of the 75th anniversary yesterday, the special drama (Truth and Lies), the podcast, you name it. Now it looks as if George is going to pull through, the hype seems a bit overdone. So it's over to you!

Feel free to share it over on the Spoilers thread, @Sidebeforeself!

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/radio_addicts/5457344-the-archers-spoilers-thread-11-cant-wait-for-702pm-join-us-here?reply=149896781

Thanks @TottersBlankly I know about that thread. I didnt want to discuss it , I was just making the point that I fear the SWs haven’t learnt their lesson!

Like Brian, I ordered whisky on Wednesday night, at my local sports club bar. Tamnavulin, oddly it has mostly cheap booze except for 5 bottles of single malt. The young person behind the bar wasn't too sure so asked his equally young colleague for help. They watched a YouTube video, started pouring, and served me half a glass full

I listened to TA on the way home, but can't say I paid much attention after about 4-5 measures.

Why does no one live in their own house?!

There’s no need for Chris and Martha to be junketing around the village with a rucksack full of toys and laundry - he owns a house on Home Farm. Surely it would be sensible now to give Jakob notice and at least have that to move into in a few months?* All this constant disruption is entirely ridiculous.

*I know in soaps an eviction notice sees the tenant packing up and thrown out within hours - even though it should generally take months.

@Agapornis, that was a bit of luck!

IIRC, Clive threatened to harm Emma and Chris and that was why Susan felt compelled to hide him. She was sent to prison for six months (I think) and questions were asked in Parliament about her plight (really!). Free the Ambridge One stickers/badges were available, I believe.

@TottersBlankly There’s no need for Chris and Martha to be junketing around the village with a rucksack full of toys and laundry - he owns a house on Home Farm. Surely it would be sensible now to give Jakob notice and at least have that to move into in a few months?* All this constant disruption is entirely ridiculous.

Would you want to live next door to Alice, though?

You missed out slashing horses. One broke its leg trying to get away from him and had to be killed. (I think it was Caroline's, at livery with The Stables). That was particularly vile because it was done by mistake: he thought Christine and George Barford still lived at the Stables and wanted to damage their business, but they'd sold that business to Shula a few years earlier.

Ed was blamed for the slashing, at first, so I can't see him being any keener on Clive than Emma is.

On a previous visit to the village Clive had beaten George Barford up and left him for dead, so the horse-slashing was in keeping with his "revenge" for an imagined wrong. He got five years for GBH that time, and it always seems to get left out of the list of his criminal behaviour.

Armed robbery as well. He held the Village Post Office up back in the days when Betty Tucker was Postmistress (mother to Roy and Brenda). Jack Woolley, Peggy's second husband, was in there and had a heart attack brought on by the shock. Debbie and Kate were also there. Kate was in her teens, IIRC. I don't think that was the only armed robbery he was responsible for either.

Kate was fifteen, and as she said last time the scum surfaced again, he held a gun to her head and called her a bitch.

It was truly an example of shitting on your own doorstep: how he and his chum thought they would not be recognised when they held up the post office in the village where they lived, the dear only knows.

Alice? Who the fuck is Alice? (sorry, couldn't resist)

Frankly I’ve lost track of who lives where:
Jakob - Chris’s divorce settlement house?
Kate: Bloody hill cottage?
Brian and spare room Ruari(?) Nextdoor to Kirsty and Stella? Why does he not shack up with Miranda?
Alice?

Madcats
Frankly I’ve lost track of who lives where:

Jakob - Chris’s divorce settlement house?
Yes
Kate: Bloody hill cottage?
Renting a room in Willow Farmhouse. (This is the first time she's ever paid rent, that we have heard on air.)
Brian and spare room Ruari(?)
Blossom Hill Cottage, and a spare room for Ruairi.
Nextdoor to Kirsty and Stella?
Kate is renting from Kirsty, and Stella is living with Hannah in The Brookfield Bungalow. Brian is not particularly near either of them.
Why does he not shack up with Miranda?
Because he has his own gaff.
Alice?
The cottage she used to own (but which now belongs to the Home Farm partnership) next door to the cottage rented from Chris by Jakob.

I think Brian is planning to shack up with Miranda if she actually buys Home Farm.

Meanwhile, do we think Clive was aware that George's probation officer was listening to his poisonous spewk?

I only really knew about Clive and the attempted armed robbery. I didn't there was such a catalogue, especially the horses, that's so horrible!!

I always feel I need a shower after Clive has been on.

as for who lives where, as I've said before it's like Mapp and Lucia where everyone swaps houses for the summer. I've given up trying to keep track.

Oh, and he abandoned a woman who was expecting his child, and left the village suddenly. The child was Kylie, who was born in October 1989, so it was the first sign on air of his nasty behaviour. In April 1993 he and Bruno Wills held up the post office with a gun, and having been copped for that he ran away from remand and threatened Susan's children to coerce her into sheltering him, with the result that she went to prison for six months. When he got out again in 1997 he managed to stay in Ambridge, and spent much of his time casing the houses there while collecting props for a Lynda Snell Production; there was a subsequent spate of burglaries, and Clive blamed George for telling the police it might be his doing. So he beat George up and left him for dead; Clive got five years for GBH. And when he got out from that he slashed the horses under the impression they were something to do with George's wife, and then held George and Christine up at gunpoint in their own house (this was interrupted by Phil, and Clive ran away), and finally set fire to the house with Christine and Jill in it – but not George, just to underline what a useless villain Clive is.

Apart from that he's led a blameless life full of mindfulness and reiki, apart of course from stealing his mother's jewellery when he was in Ambridge for her funeral....

Just to avoid confusion for newer listeners that was George Barford not George Grundy.

Oops! Sorry.

After whom the Grundy child was named, though Joe was pacified by being told it was after Joe's father.

I have concluded, from Kenton's conversation with Reg-the-probation-officer, that either it was Kenton what done it, or that he thinks he knows that Fallon or Harrison done it. I'm hoping for the former, because (a) Kenton's an idiot and (b) it's about time someone born an Archer and retaining the surname was banged up.

Helen was kinda banged up. She couldn't leave.

Ooh, I'd forgotten Helen! She basically got away with it in the end though, didn't she?

<on edit> Also, wasn't she a Tichener at the time? I don't remember, but I can't believe that the lovely Rob didn't insist that she take his surname!

Thank you @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime for the Clive summary! I had no idea he used to be such a major character, although sounds like he's had several long absences!

he probably did, and her reverting to Archer probably coincided with her getting away with it, so your point holds up quite magnificently.

Gonners
either it was Kenton what done it, or that he thinks he knows that Fallon or Harrison done it. I'm hoping for the former, because (a) Kenton's an idiot and (b) it's about time someone born an Archer and retaining the surname was banged up.

And it would be so like Kenton to mess it up and fail to do a proper job of killing George, wouldn't it.