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 Given how out of date a lot of the other character pages are, this seems odd, but there we are.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.

Apart from the twins, Keira, Khalil and Zainab are there any <25’s in Ambridge who live with both their biological parents?

Ben, until very recently.

Not Rosie, Martha, Xander, Chelsea, Brad or George. Poppy can't because her mother is dead. Ruairi ditto, but Siobhan wasn't living with Brian anyway.

The Button sisters and their brother probably do, but we know very little about them. (Am I hallucinating or is there a brother? Molly, Tilly and Billy?)

I haven't listened for that long so don't have the history with Adam that some do.

Based on my listening, apart from his awful droning voice, I find it hard not to be sympathetic to Adam. He rushed back to help out Brian when Stella left, seems to have a real concern for the future in a changing world and was heard, on air, being promised the farm when Brian eventually pops his clogs. As far as I can tell he works hard and Brian messing him about like this is surely good reason for him to feel hard done by.

It's obvious reading comments by long term listeners that there is a fair amount of affection for Brian but this, newish listener, finds him pretty intolerable.

This, newish listener, finds him pretty intolerable. He is intolerable @CarlaH, but he masks this with a considerable amount of charm - hence his success with the ladies. He is a superb character and brilliantly acted, but not a nice person. Self-centred, high handed, treated Jenny abominably, he's someone who is used to getting is own way - you can hear that now in his dealings with George. There are flashes of kindness when it suits him, his kids love it when he shines his light of approval on them, but they are all dependent on him to a greater or lesser degree and so he always has the last word. Debbie is the only one who has got away, but even she left to work for a consortium which Brian had a share in (and let's be honest she only did that because the actress who plays her was too be busy to be in Ambridge on a regular basis). He's an interesting character because he's and in-comer, yet appears to have no other relatives or friends from outside the force field. He has been entirely absorbed by the Archer clan, but essentially he is a disruptor because his loyalty is really only to himself.

Brian’s good points:

Bestowing upon Jenny exactly the domestic and social frame in which she could absolutely thrive.

Being occasionally droll, wry, witty. ‘Starter marriage’ is up there at the top of the list.

Sometimes being a good employer and showing respect for Will when he was gamekeeper. (And getting him away from Ambridge when Will was in despair.)

Persuading Lilian to return to England when she had run away with Matt, who was running away from criminal charges.

Other than that, he’s mostly an utter shit. Faithless, cunning, disloyal …

He’s ‘liked’ by listeners because he’s been so incredibly well acted for so many decades.

Or what @LillianGish said! 😂

I’ve yet to listen to “Sunday”, but Adam must be exhausted after venturing beyond the bypass! I am surprised he had an up to date passport.

I don’t have much time for Adam (probably because I don’t approve of surrogacy and think it is the height of narcissism to become a father at 50). He flounced off after Brian caught him with his hand in the proverbial till and then failed to get on with another landowner when he tried to run that farm.

At least Brian hasn’t tried to have a fling with “staff” (though I could easily have missed that).

Betty?

What @TottersBlankly said!

Oddly enough I do believe in TomTash. Even though I cannot see what Natasha sees in him.
As to the prospect of Kirsty solo parenting - I guess that’s inevitable as neither of them would want to leave their own lives.

She won't. Erik will not be present but Rex will be.

I think that Tom'n'Tash are quite a good match.

@muddyford , Natasha knows about Wren.
I don't think she was vile either. It's just the sort of thing mothers of young children say to women who don't have children.

Keira lives with her happily married parents.

Wren was the result of a ONS between Kirsty and the then single Tom when Helen got acquitted. Tom jilted Kirsty at the altar years before he married Natasha.

Brian married the two-children-by-two-men divorcee Jennifer providing her with a place in society.
He's brilliantly acted and gets the good lines.

I think Adam is well-acted too. I don't think his character is to blame for the surrogacy - it was to add a complication of the Aldridge inheritance. Blame the scripties.
Plenty of men become fathers at 50+. Both my grandfathers did. I wouldn't be here if they hadn't.

Natasha only got to know Tom after Kirsty's stillbirth, but she knew all about it, and after her marriage to him encouraged Tom to go and "visit" Wren in his newly-invented resting place in some green burial ground. It's not the one in Ambridge, I don't think, since it was a car-drive away. Or maybe it is, since Kirsty said she spent a lot of time there. To be honest, I don't care all that much: I found Tom's very belated excess of grief for a child he hadn't intended to engender, didn't know, and wasn't going to have had all that much to do with mawkish in the extreme.

I thought Kirsty disappointment at Eric’s ( Erik?)reaction quite naive . It was huge news to give over the phone when he was on his way to somewhere. I didn't get the impression that they are deeply in love, and the long distance element doesn't help when picturing raising a child together.

Kristy has had so many disappointments in pregnancy and motherhood that I think her attention on Eric is strange. Surely she would be careful to fully embrace it at the moment - she is only a month or so in? Eric's feelings / participation would surely be for later?

I am glad the Natascha spending story line is back. it all seemed very tidy. And also, they never seem to struggle with the twins.

Is there any change that Debbie may decide to come back to her roots?

How long more do we give Rex and Alice?

@MarmaladeorJam Yes, I’m glad the spending storyline is back. I think it could provide a rich seam of issues for the family and the business . I never thought it concluded satisfactorily

I remember Tom jilting Kirsty at the altar. Wasn't it a different actor then? Bogged off Abroad and came back after a voice transplant?

TomTash were always emerging battered from twin-grappling until they started living with Helen …

It was. And a friend of Tom Graham's (Tom's original actor) rang him and told him they'd just heard Tom Archer on the radio and it wasn't him, that being the first he heard about his part having been given to William Troughton, who entirely by coincidence (hem hem) happens to be the son of David Troughton, to whom Sean O'Connor had recently given the part of Tony Archer, Tom Archer's father.

Heavens! Why is Adam in the papers? (Nothing exciting in the article, but still …)

Andrew Wincott: ‘I went on an Archers cruise with a shipload of fans’

https://www.thetimes.com/article/d5d7fbd6-7035-40f0-8d56-e8a53b90402a?shareToken=73504d73f81ef32402b89f48ef49e5e6

@Sidebeforeself, It wasn't concluded and was always meant to be a slow burner.
@muddyford , the Tom transplant happened around the same time as the Tony transplant.
@TottersBlankly , thanks for the link.

I'm glad Erik is on board.

I'm not sure Erik will be totally on board if it means giving up his lifestyle- he'll intend to be, but he really won't be able to miss that conference in Helsinki, nor the one in Milan...

I think Kirsty has factored that in. She was prepared to go it alone.

I am glad she factored that in
are we absolutely sure he's not married/in a ltr?

Pretty sure Jakob would know.

And he would certainly have let Kirsty know.

Truly, I think she has suffered enough.