The Archers: Why are we meant to care where Pip lives?

Gah, script-writers! What is going on?? I know it’s not the first time I’ve said that to you, and doubtless won’t be the last. But look here, Pip has had three addresses in as many weeks, and I just know that there won’t be a decent pay-off. If the only reason you’ve dragged us through her boring house moves is so that the following scene will play out in an episode several years in the future, I will be quite aggrieved.

Pip: Oh no, this official form will to take ages to fill in [sound-effect of pen being hurled onto the desk].
Toby/Rex/Tom [it’ll be one of these three who wins the dubious Pip prize in the end, mark my words]: Why’s that, Pip?
Pip: It asks for all my addresses in the last five years! Do you remember that time after we/me and Toby split [delete as applicable] and I left Rickyard and went back home, then ended up slumming it at Lower Loxley?
T/R/T: Oh yes, that’s right. Fancy a coffee?
Pip: Go on then. [Sighs, sound-effect of pen being picked up.] I’d better get on with this.
Brian [entering randomly]: I say Pip, you look awfully glamorous considering you’re just filling in a form.*

The Archers: Scones Out For the Lads

I’m calling it: Calendar Girls is the weirdest play Lynda has ever tried to put on. Yes, I do remember the one when she wasn’t sure, right up until opening night, whether Jim would read in English or Latin (you’d think that as the director she’d have needed to know that). And I also recall 2008’s effort, Jack and the Beanstalk, in which Lynda played the rear-end of a cow. I’m sure you’ll have your own examples of the craziest village plays. But there are three key reasons why Calendar Girls is even more bizarre than its predecessors.

1. Everyone in Ambridge knows the film inside out.

Whenever Lynda approaches someone for a part, the person knows who she is talking about. Even young’uns such as Emma, who are unlikely to have even seen the film on the grounds of implausible demographics, know all the characters’ names. It is JUST NOT POSSIBLE. For one thing, CG has not entered the public consciousness in this way. And secondly, even if it had, the names are not memorable. They are all names like Chris, Annie and Ruth. Names like characters on The Archers, really, and look how long it took us to remember them. I still call Jenny, Chris and David ‘Thingy.’ Calendar Girls is not the Rocky Horror Show. There are no Riff Raffs and Frank N Furters in CG, more’s the pity. (Imagines exciting new mash-up, rings agent, explains idea, agents pretends to lose signal and puts phone down.)

The Archers: Don’t marry her, have me

So the gloomy day inches ever closer. The day that Helen wilfully hitches her wagon to Psycho Rob till death do them part, or until the Borsetshire Women’s Refuge helps her escape – whichever is sooner. In light of Jess finally getting round to organising the decree absolute, I am minded to reflect on Ambridge marriages. And long-term partnerships too, of course: I am a modern blogger, even if I still think that ‘living in sin’ sounds wildly exciting.

Are there any decent marriages at all in this benighted village? My decency test is very simple and goes like this: would I like to be one of the parties in this marriage? Overwhelmingly, the answer is no. For instance, the script-writers clearly believe that David and Ruth have a good and strong marriage. That may be true, on paper. (Yes, I do realise that everything in The Archers is technically ‘on paper,’ at least to start with.) But my test asks whether I would like to be in that marriage. Actually be one of the two partners, I mean, not like Camilla was ‘in the marriage’ of Charles and Di. UGH, a horrible vision of being David and Ruth’s sexual plaything has entered my mind and won’t leave. Nurse! Brain bleach, stat. So anyway, no I damn well wouldn’t like to be married to David, thanks all the same. Would I like to be married to Ruth? Are you effing kidding me?! It’s nice they have each other, though. Saves two other people.

I’m going to run the test on some more couples.

The Archers: Oh dear. They’ve all fallen down that disused mineshaft

When listening to the Archers, the spirit of Tony Hancock’s masterful parody, The Bowmans, is never far away. In the famous final scene, Old Ben Merriweather (Hancock), sees ‘half the village’ coming across the fields.

Tony: ‘Dang me, they shouldn’t be walking across that field.’
Actor: ‘Why not?’
The rest of the cast cry out in unison. This is followed by silence.
Tony [flat]: ‘Oh dear, what a shame. They’ve all fallen down that disused mineshaft.’

Naturally my first thought, on listening to the Great Flood sweep across Ambridge, was that at long last, our Old Ben Merriweather moment had come! This was a marvellous once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get rid of all the dead wood, in one fell swoop. I felt sure that the scriptwriters had finally seen sense, goaded by a million whinging listeners (including me), and that the following tragic scenarios would now play out:

The Archers: Whither Kathy?

Ooh I’m prettier than I imagined

There’s so much I could say about what on earth is going on down Ambridge way. But why bother, when everyone else is already saying it, repeatedly, heatedly, and occasionally, defeatedly? Ablaze, we listeners are, ablaze, to be sure. So before I get onto the issue that’s really worrying me, I’ll quickly get some of the baggage we’re all carrying out of the way. Baggage is how my Archers therapist describes this stuff, by the way. She says I’m doing pretty well, all things considered. Though we need to up the sessions to three times a week.

Baggage:

The Apprentice (Series 10): Who’s gonna lose? (Apart from all of them, us, and humankind, obviously)

I fink I’ll choose that tall skinny one at the back. Wassat you say? That’s the Shard?

I’ve picked up a few things over the many hours I have spent watching these ten – TEN, god help us – series of The Apprentice. To disclose fully, I’ve actually only seen nine. I missed the first series on the grounds of being a reality TV snob, but I soon got over myself. Anyway, I believe that nine is enough to have developed a certain instinct. Not for who the final winner will be as I never get that right, but for the likely losers. I think I can tell, with a fair degree of accuracy, who isn’t going to make it to the final two, even this early in the process. I know, I know. It’s great to think I haven’t completely wasted my time watching this bilge.

I will share my insights with you here, though I am having to look up their names as it’s too early for me to have learned them. As an aside, another thing I’ve learned is that remembering the apprentices’ names is a three-stage process:

Stage 1 (Episodes 1-4) No idea who any of them are apart from the two most twattish.
Stage 2: (Episodes 5-14) Know their names as well as, if not better than, members of my family.
Stage 3: (A week after the final) Can’t remember any of their names for the life of me.

So – fanfare – here are the people who aren’t going to win this year’s Apprentice.

The Archers: Dust down the agricultural story-editor

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m hankering for more input from the agricultural story editor. I know he was taken out of mothballs the other day for a bit of ‘Oo-ar the Am’s gone brown, that’ll be the silt that will, oo-ar, I knew no good would come of that Justin Elliott and his city ways.’ But even that storyline eschewed pastoral calm in order to bring us yet another high-tension crisis – in this case the Am pouring into Linda’s marquee (Linda’s marquee is not a euphemism). Also – sidebar – how come they’ve got biblical rain showers in Borcestshire while the rest of this happily-united Kingdom is basking in the sort of sunshine that causes hardened hacks to type ‘Phew wot a scorcher’?

Anyway, I’m so over the high-tension crises. Back in the day (a few months ago), there would be four tomato blight-type plots for every Dan wanting to join the army story. I’m not saying that was quite the right balance. But lately we seem to be lurching from one damn thing to another. Roy and Lizzie have shagged! He wants to leave Hayley! Hayley’s found out! She’s being oddly good about it! Rob and Jess have shagged! Despite what he says! Jess has got a bun in the oven! Helen’s being oddly good about it! On the grounds that she has lost the little that remains of her tenuous grip on reality! The writers refuse to decide whether Rob is a sociopathic domestic abuser or just a decent misunderstood guy, so the ambiguity seems to be produced by whoever’s writing the script that week rather than any kind of actual plan! The stress is doing my nut in! As if that wasn’t enough, Mike and Vicki are abruptly upping sticks! I don’t want them to! I love Moike! Will there be an eleventh-hour reprieve? (Sidebar: There will, of course, because Bethany is the only child with a disability on the show and to get rid of her would smack of something most unpleasant.)