is a graceless, ungracious old scrote. When you consider the number of favours David has done him and Eddie over the years, and the way that Alistair reduced his bill so often, badmouthing them in the pub is vile behaviour.
I hope nobody does another Grundy a favour, ever, without mentioning Mad Cow Disease and scabies and theft.
I know Joe has form for taking liberties but even for Joe this sounded over the top. Itâs a new writer this week. At least I think so. Liz John. I donât think she got the tone right.
Eddie was the one who bad-mouthed Caroline and Grey Gables in the press. Joe strikes me as someone who scrounges and responds to a favour given by asking another, but has he ever gone round trashing the Archersâ farming methods before? Heâs on rather shaky ground there as it was his incompetent farming that got him evicted. All of his grumbling about Archers has seemed before to be more along the lines of they get all the luck, not that they are rubbish farmers.
Didnât ring true to me.
It did and it didnât. Ring true, that is. I think because I loathe Joe so much, my critical faculties were suspended somewhat. Youâre right - he normally whines about crool fate (and if itâs the F&P, probably crool Fete) rather than hurling nasturtiums in quite that manner.
Heâs a narsty ole scrote, though.
Joe has never forgiven the Archer family for not being wiped out in WWI so that his father George Grundy could take over Brookfield when he got back from the trenches.
Why George would have wanted to, when quite a lot of Brookfieldâs hundred acres at that time was Lakey Hill, with a north-facing slope on which nothing but sheep thrived and which was not possible to cultivate, who knows. Grange Farm at that time was a hundred acres of more-or-less flat land, well drained and altogether better than Brookfield, as well as having a larger farmhouse, and I very much doubt that a lousy farmer like George would have gone for the more difficult land to deal with.
The reason the Grundys lost Grange Farm was that they were poor farmers, were therefore unable to raise money with the bank to buy their farm in 1954 when the Estate would have sold it to them. Joe did not help matters by more-or-less giving up on farming in 1969 after his wife died and gradually letting the place go downhill, permitting Hollerton Plant Hire to use some of it as a depot in the late seventies and allowing the outbuildings to start to fall down, and never mending any of the fences. Why the Estate had not thrown him off the land well before Eddie condescended to come back and farm with him even though Eddie despised farming and never wanted to do it I donât know: I assume âthe comedic possibilities were irresistibleâ or something.
Subsidies from the Min. of Ag. to the BBCâŚ
Tagging on here:
I think that there are cruel overtones in the whole of the programme, where there didnât used to be, & I find it unnecessary. I donât want a âSoft Soapâ (Hollow Laugh) but it really is stretching the bounds of credibility when everyone - ok most people are at it
Carinthia.xx
The Grundies used to be lovable rogues, but He Who Canât Be Named transformed the whole family into nasty scam mongers who never let a kind act go unpunished. Joe needs to go very soon, and perhaps in their period of grieving the family will return to a previously known state of equilibrium.
You reckon?
Fair point. Relatively speaking, as I didnât dislike them as vigorously as I did Hellen, Rooof, Dopey, Peggoi, Pat, Moany Tony and Kathy when she was in her whining years.
I agree about the cruel overtones. Quite a few people are depicted as vindictive now in a way which they used not to be: Joe is one example, and Josh is another, and Pip a third.
Mind you, Ed has always been vindictive about Will, so there is little change there.
There was a difference in tone, I do agree, frperson. The Grundy World of Chrismerze or selling gnomes or running a dodgy camp site were not in quite the same league as suing Grey Gables while trashing the Sterlings in the news or making life hell for Grey Gables guests while exploiting Carolineâs hospitality or making Grange Farm into a midden while living there rent-free. There is a nasty edge to it all now, just as thereâs something nasty about Eddie creating all this work for (stupid) Clarrie and not-so-stupid Emma, so obviously reneging on his smarmy promise that everyone would âpitch inâ. It turns out that âeveryoneâ very definitely did not include Eddie.
Eddie skiving isnât all that new, JJ: I am writing up Eddie at the moment, for the Whoâs Who which has more in it than the BBC gives any more, and I keep coming up against cases in Lowfield of Eddie in the early years of this century involving other people in doing extra work and then mysteriously having to be somewhere else when the work actually needs to be done. (I have just finished 2003.)
Fanta, Iâd prefer to read your post out loud in an Irish accent. That way lies the most accurate description of Pip.
Skiving is one thing but the level of nastiness we have heard recently, thatâs something new isnât it? Rubbishing Grey Gables in the press, (almost certainly) lying to Clarrie about Oliver saying the B&B was fine, trashing Grange Farm while they were living rent free, then this latest: Joe turning on David in The Bull. Why would he do that? Brookfield has always been good for a few favours, why would he want to wreck that relationship? A bit of grumbling behind their backs, sure, heâs always had a chip on his should about the Archers, but a public denunciation?
The Grundys have always been a skiving lot of petty criminals (apart from Clarrie and Will, who seem to have escaped the taint) and inclined to bite the hand that feeds them, and Eddie has always either concealed or varnished the truth about things to Clarrie so that she wonât make him stop doing them, but I agree that the whole business of actively turning on Caroline and Oliver before using their hotel unpleasantly for the best part of nine months, and more recently abusing their kindness so utterly, is a new degree of nastiness. I donât see much change in Joe, who has always been vile about Archers when he saw an opportunity, no matter how much he may actually owe them in the way of a bit of bluddy gratitude.
On top of all that I canât figure why they seem to struggle with the (fair / favourable) rent when Emma works, Clarrie works, Ed seems to have work cutting hedges even Eddie has some work at the market and frequently helps out at Brokefield and now thereâs cash coming in from the B&B so why is the rent such a problem ?
Am I missing something ?
Itâs The Rent Fairy, LadySusan
There are a lot of very useful Fairies in Ambridge
Oh, & no-one struggles on Benefits, either
Carinthia.xx
Ahhhh that must be it 
I know they wonât be on big money but youâd think that between them theyâd manage but of course I didnât allow for Eddie and Joe spending it in the pub !!
You know about fairies that turn up at christenings in,er, fairytales, right? A good one and a bad one. Well, there is the Ambridge Money Fairy, and then there is her eternal foe, the Ambridge Lack-of-Money Fairy, who singles out the Grundys for special attention. She must be working quite hard to keep them this potless at the moment in view of the various income streams at Grange Farm.
Struggling to pay the rent is what Grundys do. Even when they would be fully entitled to Housing Benefit, they never think to apply for it, just carry on with less and less fruitful scams desperately trying to pay the rent and have enough left over to buy a present for a childâs birthday.
Eddie has always been one who, if there were three honest ways in which he could earn five bob, would instead of doing any of them think of a fourth, slightly dishonest thing, taking twice as long, to do instead, and earn 5/2d of which he then had to pay 2/- to someone who caught him out about it.