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'll post bail for you, BOOP, and crowdfund your defence.

Anything to wrap this SL up.

Brilliant @echt.

Will yours be a speaking part? While you’re there you couldn’t track down Joy could you?

Sorry @BitOutOfPractice tagged @echo there by mistake

I am willing to bet real money that George will say it was Brad.

Doesn't he have an alibi in Amber though? Maybe she will deny it then get sucked into an abusive marriage with George.

Superficial, but there you go:

The Archers is 75 — but can Ambridge make it to 100?

https://www.thetimes.com/article/8c44697f-b282-4d92-a69b-a951454a73d9?shareToken=1056dd694c14d125ab289a7fed2d9a1d

I’m really hoping it’s Markie or one of his henchmen. George mentioned him several times in the last week to remind us of what seemed to be a dead storyline.

I wish I had henchmen. I’d imagine even a single henchman could be useful to do stuff I don’t want to. He’d certainly be blow drying my hair regularly.

Love that, thanks for sharing.

Surely the 75th anniversary should have warranted a BBC documentary including all this sort of archive footage.

Where was Chris Carter, eh? Mind you, as a farrier, he’d be strong enough to have killed the little scrote outright.
(and could we tolerate the wailing about the impact on bloody Marthurrr of daddy being banged up?)

I can't see how any of the regular characters has sufficient motive to attempt to kill George. We know Marky's gang have previous.

It's possible, I suppose, that one of the characters took out some (drunken) frustration on G, knowing it would hurt him but not intending anything further

I do think the suspicion and speculation should provide great dramatic fodder for individuals and relationships.

If Brad and Amber are each other's alibi that will set tongues wagging.

If Keira has any sense she'll provide Chris with an alibi @RegimentalSturgeon

Suspect she's not been groomed by Eddie to adhere to the Grundy Code.

I’m printing “Free the BOOP one” t shirts as we speak

Oh … They’ve cut Bacongate out of the omnibus! 😡😂 I liked it so much.

Bacongate? I've missed something....

Henchpersons, surely. Chelsea would be a good henchwoman to take on the blow drying role.

(Good to see you here, BOOP!)

Wonderful! I could watch stuff like this all day. Many thanks.

Jazzer ate all the bacon and Brad could only provide toast for Amber's breakfast, which is probably more than she normally eats anyway. I would have thought kale smoothies, Greek yoghourt etc would be more in her line than bacon.

Oh, right. Thanks.

They cut it? Why, I wonder – they don't need to cut anything for the omnibus these days. It is 75 minutes long and they have to fit 6 x 12.5 minutes into that, so the episodes added together are the same length as the omnibus time. Subtract the music at start and finish of each episode, obviously.

Maybe the bacon was a clue to the murderer!

He wasn't hit with a bottle at all, but two kilogrammes of frozen bacon? Edge of the pack to the skull, obviously, or it wouldn't have split it.

If bacon was involved then it must have been Jazzer, perhaps in cahoots with Hannah and/or wossname ... Elizabeth's boyfriend ... Vince, that's the chap!

Isn’t that a Dahl plot line, albeit with a leg of lamb rather than bacon?

Double points to the mat tacked if they make bacon sarnies for the investigation team…

Surely it is not going to turn out to have been a known character, we can’t be doing with any more trials, and their outcomes?

So either it will be

• a Markie associate, but that’s quite boring altho the Grundies will never forgive Kenton and Jolene (altho G did that not for them really but for Fallon whom he still idolised at that point - actually I think his view of her may prove key?)
• someone who dies before trial (??)
• someone who isn’t prosecuted for some other reason???

We mentioned that Dahl story on the spoilers thread a little while ago. We moved on to ice, which I feel has probably not featured in this storyline. Hope not, anyway.

I dragged DH to an NT property this afternoon and, whilst striding back up the hill with our obligatory secondhand books and a jar of honey swinging in my cloth tote bag, it struck me that a single thump on the head with a bottle of Chateau Am Embankment would be a fairly hopeless way of trying to dead somebody. What they needed was a cloth bag with a jar of Jill’s bee juice in it and multiple thwacks!

FWIW emergency pigs in blankets are in play for our Sunday dinner thanks to extra guests. If still frozen, they would also make good projectiles when deployed by catapult.

Anyway, my conclusion now is that George stumbled upon some sort of illicit activity, rather than being an intended victim.