Archers thread #195: Run, Amber, run! 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 think 19 is an ideal age to have a baby with a convict, 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.)

Emma spoke sense to George and Amber tonight. Goodness only knows where this storyline is going. I can't see George being Father of the Year. Oh dear.

Over to you!

You may be right, but there is an Irish red heads convention which suggests that they are not all mousy (also see Irish black hair/blue eyes combo)

At least one of the Irish people I know is a redhead. Most are fair (aka. mousy or highlighted).
Some are dark, but they're mainly from one family.

The majority are from RoI.

JudyCoolibar
I do have vague memories of him [Ruairi] having an Irish accent when he was very young, however.

When he was introduced into Ambridge at the age of four he did indeed have an Irish accent, one usually found in a part of Ireland in which the character had never set foot and which was not the Dublin accent of his mother and grandmother. It was remarkable. Many listeners remarked it....

It might have been to do with the place of origin of the actor who played him at that time. I forget where he came from, possibly Donegal.

Obviously if you collect redheads together at a convention the people there are likely to be redheaded!

As a proportion of the population there are more redheaded Scots than redheaded Irish people, apparently. 10% in Ireland and 14% in Scotland. But the Scots don't seem to have "redhead" as part of their cultural identity to quite the same extent, and their mythical/fictional heroes aren't so likely to have "flame-coloured" hair.

(I never saw red hair that was the colour of flames, but maybe I've just been unlucky.)

Obviously if you collect redheads together at a convention the people there are likely to be redheaded! Glad you pointed that out. I'd have never guessed.

It did seem a bit obvious to me, but it seemed a reasonable reaction to the post I was replying to.

(I was thinking about a Sherlock Holmes story at the time. Someone advertised for red-heads. He got them. Surprise!)

I think it’s people outside Ireland who see red hair as part of Irish cultural identity more so than Irish people.

Which mythological heroes are red headed?
I can think only of Cú Chulainn, whose hair was a bit of a mix apparently.

Well on the podcast they're always banging on about how it's the longevity and real life pace that makes TA so special. Just a shame they don't seem to be honouring that accolade very much lately. New characters added too frequently, main characters barely heard from for months and silly, one week stories that end up being completely pointless.

PS, I thought Brad was with Amber that night so I don't think she could have thought it was him.

Ériu, Brigid, The Morrigan all often portrayed as redheads (I always thought the Morrigan was black-haired what with being a crow and all, but it seems I was not necessarily right), Medb of Connaught, Áine because she is a sun-goddess.

Mind you, there seem to be Scots and Norse important redheads by the galore as well; maybe it's not because they were common in real life but because they were comparatively rare that the colour gets chosen to make a Hero stand out from the crowd.

Áine has golden hair in the tradition, though was sometimes depicted as a red mare.

I don’t know of any description of Brigid’s hair colouring, or Éiru’s. They may have been depicted as red heads by some artists, but fair or golden are the terms more often used for goddesses, heroes in Irish myths.
Queen Maeve was golden haired too.

The Morrigan was red haired, though apparently had many other guises and often appeared as a black bird/crow as you say.

All I can say re Amber and her reactions is, I think we have many more dimensions of Amber to be discovered yet.

Agreed. I wonder if we'll ever find out what Jazzer's behaviour was so peculiar when he and Neil found George?

Oh yes, a boy who had spent his childhood with his south Dublin mother, his extended Irish family, and his mother's German partner (Deiter?) suddenly started speaking with a Traveller accent.

That was as cringe as keeping the poor woman above ground for more than a week after she'd died.

😅I suppose we should have been grateful that they didn't make him speak "Ullans", as I understand they now call it.

BBC have put the Archers podcast on after the omnibus (with the writer, Hannah and Ruari).

I am Irish and I have dark brown hair and blue eyes. The red is a Celtic colour.

Does anyone remember the scene in Airplane where the passengers line up to slap the hysterical woman? It feels rather like there’s a queue of similar minded people with wine bottles hiding behind George.

I think he was Dieter.

I think that by the time he was starting to speak, Ruairi was in Germany, so the Dublin influence would have been fairly well diluted; and, after a flying visit a couple of years later, Brian reported him as having a German accent (which Brian didn't like) and speaking German.

Then he suddenly became very Irish as soon as he reached Ambridge; it was the Irish accent of a child-actor who lived locally to the studio where TA was recorded. This boy did not come from Dublin....

Only heard bits of tonights episode but has Ruairi suddenly got himself a job at Berrow Farm?

Sort of. He's been foisted on them to do some training.

As importantly, why isn't it raining in Borsetshire?

All that tripe about a missing Rolex. Surely the passenger would have gone straight to the police. And Alice was sooo boring to Rex I almost turned off. They deserve each other.

I hope Ruairi does something dumb and the pigs eat him, and Brian goes to check how his son is getting on and the pigs eat him as well, and that when George, who has followed Brian in the hope of an opportunity to put the squeeze on, turns up, the pigs eat him too.

And that neither the pigs nor the farm suffer any negative consequences.

Soon please.

I'll save Auntie Lillian for beavers, this has reminded me of the time one of her fancy man battered another one to death. I'm fed up the the Archers-adjacent getting away with everything.

Another reminder of how unpleasant Hannah can be.

I do feel for her with her Mum and George was awful to her but she is so desperate for everyone who comes through the doors at Berrow to fail. I work with some people like that… convinced that what we do is alchemy and no one else can possibly learn. She is a well drawn character.

Since we learnt about Hannah’s backstory and her mum’s dementia I am very forgiving of tendency to be misanthropic. She also has to deal with the lesbian lovebirds every day so life is not easy for her…

Alice and Rex are well-suited. Both quite boring in their own ways. It didn’t feel as if he fancied her yesterday though - just bemused by her telling such a dull story. Why on earth did she think gossiping about Ruth and David could even vaguely help make her seem interesting and attractive? She would have been better off asking about his pigs. Or indeed anything that would have allowed him to talk about himself uninterrupted for 10 mins.

I wondered if the passenger with the Rolex could be anyone we know but no one would fit the demographic except possibly Harry (Alice’s brief fling) who was fairly affluent (though not flashy). Not sure if it’s a good idea to have a rehabilitated alcoholic traipsing round the pubs and clubs of Felpersham but anyway…