Archers thread #200: Trouble in Ambridge! (All 200 threads could have had this title.) 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'd love to be Brian's child or stepchild, 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.)

Over to you!

Fallon born June 1985, Freddie born December 1999, to be precise.

Glad it wasn't just me who thought Jolene and kenton were way out of line in their questions; they don't have a right to know the ins and outs of Fallon & Harrison's marriage or its breakup.
The only appropriate response would have been, "I'm sorry to hear that, are you OK?"

Just to add another ick factor, as I believe it is termed, Freddie and Fallon are very nearly cousins. Kenton is Fallon's stepfather and Freddie's uncle. OK, there's no genetic link, and Fallon was not in that relationship to Freddie until he was in his teens, but ...

Freddie and Fallon working together in an amiable manner and chatting about the need to move away from well-intentioned but unhelpful parents in a way that moves his thinking towards his own interests would be a very good thing. Having (step) parents who are siblings might help with that.

Then get Chelsea to move onto LL grounds

Oh the idea grosses me out too, I don’t think it’ll happen!

Fallon’s lack of achievement frustrates me just as much as Chelsea’s btw. She’s extremely capable and has no real fatal flaws to hold her back - maybe now she’s ditching Mr Plod she can rediscover her ambition. I hope she makes a huge success of whatever the heck it is she’s supposed to be doing with the barn.

Not Freddie and Chelsea, too awful.

I think Freddie must be asexual, We've never heard of him expressing even the slightest interest in anyone as far as I recall.

That would be an interesting situation if he didn't produce any offspring. Could go on for decades. Need to get Lily together with someone decent, marry and have children so there are all sorts of inheritance issues.

The SW also need to sort out the trustees so that there's a decision regarding when Freddie can take over LL. Perhaps they'll let him have it at 30 but it can't just take a few days to decide and arrange, although knowing the SW it probably will.

As previously mentioned on here it's quite bizarre that Freddie has no role in LL, even though he will inherit the whole shebang.

Surely his case would be strengthened if he could show the trustees what good things he was doing there. Or is there an issue with Elizabeth not really wanting to relinquish power so delaying the transfer as long as she can.

I think the trustees were upset as his early career choice as a drugs dealer. The work with Vince should be good business experience.

The LL scenario is completely alien to me … what happens after Freddie? Can he sell? When do the trustees cease to exist?

Yes, and quite rightly too. But it's surprising that no plans were made at that time for the future eg them saying he could only have it when he's 35 for example, on the basis that he kept out of trouble, proved himself to be trustworthy, etc, rather than just letting it drift.

What happens if Elizabeth dies before he inherits, have they considered that scenario? It's a much more important inheritance situation than Brookfield or Home Farm but it just hasn't been mentioned for years.

But of course it involves a stately home, land, money and privilege, all of which seem to be distasteful to the SW.

It's all a bit like the now Duke of Marlborough who as Marquess of Blandford was a drug abuser and spent time in jail for various crimes, and there was a court case brought by his father to prevent him from inheriting Blenheim Palace; the estate would be run by trustees.

But by the time his father died something must have been sorted because he inherited the title and estate. Although he does appear to be an unsavoury character as he is currently on bail for allegedly strangling his wife and coercive control of her.

I thought that. I know they treated them to the stay but even so ….

I wondered if Fallon moved out as she had more options where to go - Harrison’s bf is Chris who is currently living with his parents.

Fallon for the boat or the Shepherds Hut

Havent heard from Joy or Vince or Freddie for ages

Fallon and Chris?

Harrison and Hannah?

There must surely come a point when Elizabeth is entitled to retire. The trustees seem to assume she'll carry on indefinitely, but if she said she fancied packing it in presumably they would have to think about letting Freddie have his inheritance?

Have you got a new thread title yet? Ruckus in the Cruck Barn? Alas, Cruel Fete? Fallon on hard times?

Also, what’s happened to @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime? She used to be on all these threads dispensing wisdom.

Excuse my French but I wish Bert would shut the eff up.

Me too and I definitely do not need to know whether or not he has taken his mucus medication.

I don't see what he offers. He never says anything nice to anyone. He is being cared for by his family and he is so ungrateful. He moans at them for working, you'd think with his life experience he would understand how life works. Clive stole from him and didn’t look after him but he is wonderful. Yet his 2 daughters are moaned at and belittled constantly.
I know old people moan but it is too much.

Bert and Carol being the only remaining very old people* is a bit odd as they’re too similar in some very important ways - incessant ingratitude and complaint - although Carol is fiercely independent while Bert’s the opposite. I think Bert taking his daughters for granted while idolising his shit son is horribly realistic based on several families I know though. Why Susan and Tracey don’t tell him to shut up more I don’t know.

*Jill lives on in Ambridge but presumably not for long RIP.

I didn't listen while I was on holiday, and then simply wasn't interested enough to catch up ten days of rubbish in order to start again, so I stopped posting as well. I would have had nothing to say of recent relevance, and since they now change back-stories at a whim, historical knowledge of the programme may well have been made wrong. (hem hem Neil's mother; hem hem Glebe Cottage...)

Susan was a bit more assertive with him than Tracey is.

Chris will be moving out pronto… he won’t put up with Bert sounding off.

But I need to ask you about Kenton - did he run away from his problems? How old is his daughter and what’s happened to her?

Sometimes wonder if they just like characters having kids internationally in case they ever want to bring them in later.

Oh, Lord. Well, @ me and I'll see the post and try to answer.

Kenton ran away to sea at sixteen (in 1974) because he had not the least desire to have anything to do with farming, and although he was the bright one of the family education was work. (I am unsure why he thought the merchant navy wouldn't be.) He was in the merchant navy until they threw him out for erratic behaviour in 1988. It turned out his thyroid was overactive (though the original storyline, hatched while the then-editor Liz Rigbey was not in the office, was to have been that he'd contracted AIDS, which the BBC head honchos quashed) and he hung about for a while, getting into trouble with the police through a fraudulent company he started with a chum from the navy, and being bailed out to the tune of many thousands by Phil to keep him out of prison. Then he decided to go into the antique business and used money from Phil, Shula, and Mark Hebden to buy Nelson's business in Borchester, and ran that into the ground. Then he went to a family wedding in Australia with Phil and Jill and decided not to come back with them, but instead start a charter yacht company down under.

He came back to Ambridge for Phil and Jill's ruby wedding anniversary in 1997 and turned out to have accrued a wife so he could legally stay in Australia, and a pile of debts which Phil once again helped him with. He left owning a few hundreds to several people for extravagant gestures he made for various other people, debts which Shula quietly paid for him without telling Phil – she was probably just glad it was hundreds rather than the usual thousands. Then he came back again for Jill's seventieth birthday in 2000 in order to quarrel about his right to have a quarter of Brookfield left to him (this row was started by Elizabeth, who also wanted a quarter share she had done absolutely nothing to deserve), and Phil and Jill cut him out altogether on the grounds he'd had his share already, so he went off back to Australia. His wife Mel gave birth to their daughter Meriel on 16th May 2001, or 12th May when it was mentioned on air a year later that today was her first birthday, and then after Kenton used all her money to try to shore up his failing company and Phil somehow missed noticing he was in financial trouble yet again, he ran away from Australia where he was about to be imprisoned and landed on Phil and Jill again in 2002; Mel divorced him and moved from Australia to New Zealand, and yet again Phil and Jill paid his debts to keep him out of prison, and to make sure Mel didn't suffer. He spent the next several years whinging about not seeing the daughter he'd abandoned and paid no maintenance for, though she did visit in 2004 while Mel was in hospital for essential surgery, but he left looking after her to Kathy, with whose house he was living at the time. I mean sorry, with whom he was living at the time, all his family having had enough of his scrounging and thrown him out one after the other.

Eventually Kathy too threw him out of her house for having sex with one of the customers at Jaxx Caff, of which he had contrived to become the manager by blackmailing the owner, Jack Woolley, over a mistake Jack made. So he moved in on widowed Jolene, and married her. Nothing whatever to do with Jolene owning a house – well, pub – he could live in and have a job in, and of which the editorial team seem to have decided he is the landlord in spite of his not having done anything but be a useless cellarman and worked in the bar.

Meriel and her mother came to Ambridge for his wedding with Jolene, in 2013, and then went away again. Kenton does less moaning about how much he misses Meriel these days; perhaps on his and Jolene's trip to New Zealand in 2015, made using money Kenton assumed he'd get when David and Ruth sold Brookfield, she showed little or no interest in her absentee father; that happened in Ambridge Extra and I didn't listen to it.

And she hasn't appeared since as far as I know. She is now 25 so I suppose she may turn up at any moment, if she hasn't done so since I stopped listening.

Blimey @AskingQuestionsAllTheTime thanks for the rundown. I didn’t realise he’d been quite such a bad lot, I don’t remember much before he was living with poor benighted Kathy aka the future Easter bunny. It’s amazing he’s managed to stay with Jolene for such a long time and doesn’t show any signs of bankrupting the Bull or shagging the neighbours.

He did his best to bankrupt the Bull by "maxing out the cards" on the jaunt to New Zealand on the expectation of money from the sale that didn't happen, and it then turned out that because he'd failed to clear the gutters as he promised and flooded the cellar a couple of years before Ye Grate Fludde there was "historic water damage" to the foundations, the insurance refused to pay out and of course the pub had no money at all. That one was solved by Lilian paying her half of the cost of repairs, and Kenton scrabbling round his family getting a thousand here and a thousand there from Jill, Shula, Elizabeth and most importantly Brookfield, which as a company lent him I think it was sixteen thousand pounds. Jolene arranged for Brookfield to be paid back using a monthly bank transfer after the others had been refunded, but once Shula, Jill and Elizabeth had got their money Kenton cancelled the standing order to Brookfield and told David he would be paid back when Kenton happened to feel like it. (I forget why Brookfield badly needed money, but they did.)

So Jill paid Brookfield for Kenton's debt, and swore everyone to secrecy so David would never learn of it. He would quite rightly have gone ballistic about that bit of chicanery.

Oh yes I have a dim memory of Kenton telling Dave to forget it

What beat me was why on earth David, who knows Kenton, allowed himself to be made to feel guilty for not having sold the farm for Kenton's convenience, and lent him as much as a bent tenpence just because Kenton, as usual, had spent money Kenton didn't have.

Ruth was furious with him for it, I seem to recall. He didn't bother to tell her before letting Kenton have the dosh, let alone consult her first. I bet if he had she would have said No!