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!

I am discouraged from attempting to kill people by being sufficiently self-aware to know that (a) I would almost certainly botch the job and (b) I would very probably be caught.

( previous work place management).
It would be nice not to kill, but to get revenge served cold and all that.

To continue the history lesson.

George Barford was the game keeper, he took William Grundy under his wing and William eventually trained as game keeper himself. A nice steady job instead of Eddie's random schemes. William had to stop being a gatekeeper when he became suicidal after Nic's death as he was unsafe to own a shotgun.

Iirc

I think that was more that he was bullied into giving up his profession "when Emma found him cleaning his gun and decided that meant he was suicidal" and "when Eddie decided to take his (valuable, it was a Purdey) gun away for safe-keeping and not allow him to continue as a gamekeeper".

As Will later pointed out with some irritation, if he'd wanted to kill himself there are plenty of ways he could have done it other than with a gun, and he didn't want to in any case because of his child. Yes, at the time Poppy had been kidnapped by Nic's mother; no, Nic's mother would not have been able to keep her because she had no legal right to, grandparents don't.

I’ve listened twice but can’t make it out. I think Cloive gave Kate a surname when he referenced his post office shenanigans. Anyone pick it up?

Madikane

Well, Kate has only had two surnames that I can recall - Aldridge and Madikane. Lucas Madikane is her South African ex-husband, father of Noluthando and Sipho. Her daughter Phoebe is Roy Tucker's child, but she was always Phoebe Aldridge.

We are talking about Clive here, though. He thought that someone owned a business they had sold some years before, and he attacked the wrong house. He is not reliable even in his nastiness.

He does know who Kate is, though: she saw him off splendidly last time he turned up and started smarming his way round Ambridge. He was trying to charm Joy, in the shop, when Kate came in and told Joy just who he was and what he did to Kate when she was fifteen. And he knows she is Alice's sister; Alice being the one he encouraged George to frame.

Thanks. It was Madikane I realise now but I think he pronounced it Mud….. or might be my ears.

Not that it matters but wasn’t it Susan who deployed the name Kate Madikane as a force Clive might not prefer to encounter?

Probably. My mind is a bit addled. And I listen when I go to bed so I often fall asleep.

Well as half the village calls him Cloyve ...

Nice to see The Full Inglorious History of the Repellent Clive in one place.

I don't understand why nobody has sat George down and recited it to him? I can see how everyone would have basically pretended he didn't exist for most of George's life (especially if Clive was in prison / not in Ambridge / not in the documentary about Ambridge residents). But somehow George knew enough to find Clive when he chickened out of handing himself in, and also to guess that Clive would be on his side... or was this George's confidence in his ability to manipulate someone who didn't have all (or any!) of the facts?

But either way, once it was clear that George had been taken in by Clive's bullshit, why didn't anyone go "listen George, here's the many reasons we don't have contact with Clive. He's a criminal. Not a loveable-rogue, Delboy, borderline-scamming sort like like your grandpa Eddie, but a proper, thieving, gun-to-the-head-post-office- robbing, burgling bastard, and if you think that can somehow be forgiven, he has set fire to a house that had people in it, he once beat someone to within an inch of his life and left him for dead (how's that resonanting with you right now?), and if you still think that all of this can somehow be explained away, he's the kind of cruel bastard who will try and take revenge on someone he thinks wronged by slashing a horse that's minding its own business.
The horse had to be shot, by the way.
And it had nothing to do with the person Clive wanted revenge on.
Who, to be clear, was the person Clive nearly killed.
So, you still want to recover from being bottled and left for dead by going fishing with this man? "

Ok, I get that's a whole episode gone, but still 😄

That's a pretty excellent summary!

Helen didn’t “get away with it”, she was cleared because of the horrific control and abuse she’d suffered.

On a lighter note, I like whisky but Talisker tastes like Dettol to me. On the other hand, I had some Glaenfiddich which was amazing. Why are some lovely and some like swilling disinfectant?

I don't like Glenfiddich. It's great there are so many different malts to suit different plates (or to allow greedy people like me to try!).

I really really hope that the Editors were listening to On Your Farm this morning. It featured a barrister who grew up on a family farm in Northern Ireland, but chose to be a barrister over in London. He is now back on a farm near Belfast, still popping over to London when he needs to be in Court, but is back farming. His wife, originally from Leicester (of Asian via Africa parentage), runs a social enterprise farming initiative for the community.

It would have been a good idea to copy this with Esmee (or maybe they are trying to in a rather clumsy way).

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002q27b

https://www.glensidefarm.com/

PuggyPuggyPuggy
he's the kind of cruel bastard who will try and take revenge on someone he thinks wronged by slashing a horse that's minding its own business.
The horse had to be shot, by the way.

Just one quibble: it was more than one horse that he slashed, and the one who had to be shot had broken its leg trying to get away from him. But apart from that, an absolutely masterly summary, and I do see that "he slashed more than one horse and one of them had to be shot" might be too complicated for George to comprehend readily.

I don't understand why nobody has sat George down and recited it to him?

See this is what I wondered too when George was out fishing with Clive. Has no one ever explained to George just how nasty Clive is? I think George must be so desperate for someone to tell him that he hasn't really done anything wrong that's he prepared to overlook who Clive is.

Helen didn’t “get away with it”, she was cleared because of the horrific control and abuse she’d suffered.

Agreed. Rob was fast heading towards becoming one of those family annihilators. If I can't have you, no one can. If Helen had tried to leave with the boys, they would have all ended up dead and he would have made it look like she did it.

Oooo!
Harrison and Fallon’s conversation opening…

(and then Brad and Amber’s convo as a filler!!)

Harrison is such a div.

Haha love Fallon!

Oh my goodness gracious Amber!!

Amber FFS

Er I think Fallon would have known that…