Archers thread #198: Josh sent to Patagonia, Pip stays put. Wrong way round! Discuss The Archers here.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

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 also confide only in your budgie, 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/5457344-the-archers-spoilers-thread-11-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.)

Not feeling greatly enthused about what's going on in Ambridge at the moment, tbh. I'm annoyed at Brian's hypocrisy about Ruairi given the furore over George's attempt to frame Alice as the cause of the accident. I do hope we don't have a slow drip drip drip now as one after another the members of the Aldridge/Archer clan find out what really happened and endlessly agonise over what to do. Frankly I don't care. There! I've said it.

Pip's OK. Well, good, but what was the point of that story, I wonder?

I suspect I'm in a minority of one in rather enjoying hearing (a) from Bert Horobin and (b) about Fletcher. I surmise Bert is here to stay for a while because the BBC has (amazingly) updated his character page: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/1wQP3mKR6yr9LVs05jddxcY/bert-horrobin (prominent actor photo warning). Given how out of date a lot of the other character pages are, this seems odd, but there we are.

That's all I can be bothered to say! Over to you.

Anyone else worried that Ruth’s pain when moving her shoulder might mean that she’s got something nasty in the lymph nodes? I do fear we might be in for another cancer storyline for Ruth. She’s working so hard on the farm and events barn while David is wandering around inventing the Borchester/Borsetshire Show (I can’t remember) and Pip is full time fretting.

I would completely understand if the actress had decided Ruth’s role is now just frankly embarrassing …

Did Pip (as opposed to Ruth) have BRCA1 testing at the same time as she had her lump investigated? I can't remember.

Eleanor Bron played the part of Carol Treggoran between July 2014 and September 2018, the character having been re-introduced after a twenty-four year absence in order to be support for a Sean O'Connor vanity project, and voiced by a feather in his cap – he did try terribly terribly hard to lend himself credence by employing Known Actors. (This used to be called Tiger-Hunting.)

Throughout her previous time with the programme, between 1954 and 1990, Carol was voiced by Anne Cullen. In that incarnation, supposing Anne Cullen were still alive (she died in 2015), I think she probably would have talked to people as the current actress does: she wasn't a particularly pleasant individual really, as far as I remember, and certainly talked down to her employees. Nastily quite often, especially to her maid. It seemed to me that Eleanor Bron was a mis-casting for what we had known of Carol, and I was unimpressed by O'Connor's Look At Me I Know Actors You Will Have Heard Of showing off.

As for the nonsense about spirits and haunting: obviously (in the mind of the script-writer/editorial team) anyone who is a herbalist must be a new age woo merchant. They will probably have her talking about everyone's auras next, just as Kate did when she first set up Spiritual Home. Also chakras and feng shui.

Maybe the person to put into contact with Carol might be Kate, since there is clearly no difference between herbal teas and goat-yoga.

I don’t understand why Ruth was offered the test when Pip was the patient. I can see the logic of it (Ruth could have it, Pip might not) but that’s not my experience of the way the NHS works.

I am not worried about Ruth having pain in a shoulder which was kicked by a cow, because it seems likely to be nothing to do with her lymph nodes.

The whole "getting tested for a gene-mutation" story is a Public Health Announcement, I think; we were told right at the start (and Heather was rung up to confirm it) that there was no history of breast cancer in Ruth's family. In fact the then-doctor, Tim Hathaway, assured her at her first appointment with him about it that with her having no cancer in the family the lump she had found was very unlikely to be cancerous, and almost certainly just a cyst.

The only Carol Tregorran I remember is the Eleanor Bron one (though I've been a listener since the 80s, I can’t recall the previous actress) so that’s the only one I have to compare her to. I suspect quite a few current listeners won’t remember hearing her at all.

Because she was there. How the NHS operates in Borsetshire is determined by the SW.

KatKabs should be a thing.

No I don’t think she was offered it for some reason.

Totally missed Ruth getting kicked in the shoulder, probably because I couldn’t care less.

Not really surprising. I'm sorry, I was misleading: "she was in the programme from 1954 to 1990 (but latterly only by being mentioned occasionally)" is what I should have said. My fault.

The Tregorrans were written out as moving to Bristol in 1990, but in fact had been pretty conspicuous by their absence for a while by that time. I've checked the BBC Genome cast-lists and found that in fact Anne Cullen appeared in the cast for 12 weeks in 1980, 6 in 1981, 1 in 1982, 2 in 1983 and 2 in 1984, and none thereafter. Meanwhile John Tregorran, who was on his sixth actor by 1980, appeared in the cast-lists once that year and not again at all, and in 1984 Roger Hume, who had been voicing him, became the voice of Bert Fry.

The cow kicking Ruth was as part of the "Ben-the-medic knows all about anything to do with health" storyline in which he advised her first about the shoulder and then about getting the scan, having for some reason had so much free time he was able to wander into the milking parlour during a working day for a chat with his Mum.

I had a bat in my living room once in January a few years ago. My cat stared at it from the sofa with great interest while it flapped around the ceiling. I turned the light off, for some reason thinking this might cause it to sit somewhere (possibly confusing it with moths). It obligingly did sit on the ceiling, and I trapped it in a carboard box and took the box outside and placed it on the ground. Then, I looked up what one is supposed to do with bats: NOT take it outside in January, and NOT put the box on the ground. (Apparently, the bat protection people want one to keep it inside and feed it until they can come around, which, since it was a weekend, would not have been for several days...) So I hastened outside, and thankfully, the bat had flown away. Phew.

Natasha did mention summer orchard in the last couple of episodes (busy with a new line @…. Or something) I noted it as also thought summer orchard had been forgotten.

And it is all run out of one unit with five fridges, at Sawyers' Farm!

adam & george to bid for the borchester board contract?

Bat protection people are usually volunteers, and often do it on top of a full-time job, so a weekend might be the only time they can come. (Some work for local wildlife organisations and can fit it in as part of their job.)

@EBearhug Bat protection people are usually volunteers ...

Like Batman!

Completely agree. I am getting thoroughly fed up listening to Carol's contrary reaction to just about everything. Hope I never get like that!

Love this cat in a taxi thing 😀

I find Leonard irritating with his 'calm, wise words to emotional women'

Don't be such a spoilsport! Surely that is one of the few amusements left to people when they get seriously old?

This being Mumsnet, I wouldn’t be surprised were this to be deleted, but I have always heard Leonard as a retired paedophile. (I know, they don’t retire and there isn’t a pension scheme.)
But he’s so ..infiltrating. And he definitely has Werther’s Originals in his pocket at all times.

Ooh genetic counselling klaxon in tonight’s episode. Such a relief to know TASW know there are medical professionals outside of Azra and Ben.

Infiltrating is the perfect word for him.