I’m thinking I’d like to start listening to The Archers. Could someone brief me, in what’s happened in the last few months. And maybe a rundown of some of the characters. Many thanks 
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Welcome!
I think it would be fair to say it’s probably not at its best at the moment, but several of us here are still carrying on with it anyway… I’ll leave it to an actual listener, rather than merely the spouse of a listener, to give more details.
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Welcome Bannon to our wee corner of the interwebby thang
TA as we call it is not at its best with the elfin safety rules meaning we had monologues
The big story at the minute is that philip who is a dodgy builder was re flooring the kitchen in Grey Gables (the local poshish hotel) when one of his slave workers managed to cause an explosion which left another slave with a broken back and one of the receptionists (Lynda) with horrific burns that have left her marriage in difficulties as she thinks her husband (Robert) is repulsed by her
On Home farm One of the owners adult children had caused an expensive mistake by loading wheat in the malted barley bin thus losing both crops
This girl (Alice) is having a few drinks at work and hiding them so could be seen to have a drink problem
The village pub (The Bull) is not getting much business due to Corvid
Others here will tell you more including family trees
Do introduce yourself in the cellar on the not the archers board here
A crowd of daft full of fun folk will welcome you
Well they welcomed me!
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Any sane man would be. Because she is a pretentious and overbearing harpy, not because of the Hideous Scars. But her husband, Robert, is not a sane man so much as a hen-pecked and babbling lackwit. V popular with the Archers audience in general, though, oddly enough.
Bannon, perhaps you should be advised that there are v few, if any, denizens of Ambridge whom I do not loathe.
ETA: wotcher and welcome, Bannon.
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I like Lynda and Robert
I also like Ruth and David Archer who farm at Brookefield
Not all of us are as twisted as Gus!
Blows raspberry at said Gus
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Hello, Bannon, and welcome to the board.
One place to find out a bit about The Archers, or at least about the characters, is the BBC’s website: the pictures it paints of them are inaccurately approving and its little pieces are not always accurate (Shula and Alistair are divorced rather than separated, for instance; Will does not live at Greenwood Cottage any more, Alf is not “back”, and so on with examples too numerous to mention) but it does tell you who is whom, with whom they live, and to whom they are related. It also unfortunately gives you a picture of an actor, which as we know may not be anything like the character. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/3VLG6MxxfQpKXF2Chky4Fmh/characters
This bit of their site used to be more complete but for some reason the BBC has cut back on it and removed many minor characters.
Unfortunately it seems to have been decided that the listeners do not need to be able to read the BBC synopses for each day, which used to be on the same website going back to 2010 under “Catch Up”, but has been reduced to only nineteen days of them. Still, it’s a start!
Twellies too is not absolutely accurate: where she writes “The big story at the minute is that philip who is a dodgy builder was re flooring the kitchen in Grey Gables (the local poshish hotel) when one of his slave workers managed to cause an explosion which left another slave with a broken back and one of the receptionists (Lynda) with horrific burns that have left her marriage in difficulties as she thinks her husband (Robert) is repulsed by her”
she means “one of the slave workers, Blake, was left on his own to do the job and used petrol as a solvent whilst making himself toast on the kitchen grill. As a result there was an explosion which broke his back and left Lynda with severe facial burns and a broken pelvis.” This happened on 8th March this year; Lynda was discharged from hospital on 13th April, and has been out and about, doing the gardening for instance, since 10th August. Blake meanwhile was discharged from hospital with his broken back on 18th April, and is back at work on building-sites. Yes, people in Ambridge have remarkably short recovery times from injury which would leave most of us laid up for rather longer than six weeks…
Alice didn’t load the wrong crop into the wrong bin herself: she told the temporary Home Farm tractor driver Ed Grundy to do it.
The village pub is always either packed with customers even on Tuesday lunchtimes or else doing so badly Jolene-the-landlady has to invent some daft publicity stunt to “pull in the punters” or they will go bust.
There is information about some historical events at this site’s webpages, at https://ambridgereporter.org.uk/
only I don’t think they are all that relevant to current Ambridge events, apart from the Residences and Occupiers. Which are slightly out of date. (memo to self: update web pages…)
Honestly, I think the only way for you to do this is to start listening, and then ask actual questions here about the whys and wherefores, which we can then explain. Trying to tell you everything from a cold start is not going to happen, really.
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I stand corrected and am happy to be corrected
It’s as our Fish says Tune in and ask questions that will be answered to the best of our abilities
It’s the custom for newbies to be bought a huge drink in the Bull so my card is behind the bar for your welcoming drink
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Welcome Bannon! There will be many open questions no matter where you start, and I still consider myself a newbie compared to other listeners on the site. You will undoubtedly develop a dislike to some of the characters, although maybe not quite as many as Gus!
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Give it time.
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Thank you everyone. I’m feeling the love of the Archers family 
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Of or for? 
Belated welcome, by the way! (My card’s behind the bar)
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Hello again – nice to see you back.
How have you got on with the listening? Any the wiser about what might be going on?
Characters in the week 7-10th September were
Jolene Archer: owns something a bit under 49% of The Bull, the local pub, which she inherited from her third husband Sid Perks. The “few shares” he left to his son Jamie Perks (non-speaking at present) were taken out of her share; Sid died in June 2010, and a couple opf years later Jolene married
Kenton Archer: eldest son of The Archers of Brookfield, who ran away to sea at sixteen and has since spent his patrimony more than once, which is why he isn’t farming Brookfield. He resents this. (The farm, not the pub.)
Lilian Bellamy: older relative of The Archers; she married money and used to own most of the village, but sold it. She now lives in the village with her lover. Noted for being a bit obsessive about sex, her own and everyone else’s. A bit of a lush. Oh, and she owns 51% of The Bull.
Susan Carter: the village gossip and Postmistress. Mother of
Emma Grundy: who has been married in turn to William and to Ed Grundy. Perennially discontented, peevish and prone to being unpleasant to and about practically everyone in the village including her present husband Ed. She has disliked her brother Chris since forever, and his wife for almost as long, but what’s new? She dislikes anyone who is better off than she is, and she dropped out with poor GCSEs and almost at once got pregnant and married, then divorced in favour of a different Grundy. Hasn’t really had a job worth having since then.
Tracy Horrobin: Susan Carter’s sister, seen by some as a live wire and by me as a dead loss. Don’t be deceived by her behaving like a seventeen year old: she was born in 1975.
Lynda Snell: an incomer because she has only lived in the village since 1986. She is a great organiser of village events, though at present not organising anything because of her injuries in March.
Robert Snell: her husband. Somewhat of a non-entity.
In the week 14th-18th September
Alice Carter: third daughter of Jennifer Aldridge, Lilian’s sister. Alice has two degrees in engineering which she has not made any particular use of during the past decade, and has recently chucked in her job because the boss dared to criticise her for being bad at it. She married “beneath her” to the local farrier
Chris Carter: brother of Emma, son of Susan and Neil Carter, he is nice enough, but not terribly bright and believes whatever his wife tells him, even when she says she hasn’t been drinking and reeks of drink.
Susan Carter: qv
Emma Grundy: qv
Jazzer McCreary: the obligatory comedic Scot. Has a reputation with the ladies.
Gavin Moss: unpleasant son of
Philip Moss: slave-owning builder who for some reason has chosen to move to Ambridge where everyone gossips.
Fallon Rogers: daughter of Jolene and Jolene’s first husband Wayne Tucson (who now works at the pub), Fallon used to be a Good Thing but has gone down the drain since marrying the policeman who stalked her a few years back.
Somebody remind me: why do I listen to this tosh?
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…unless PLOT decrees otherwise, when a character can wander round the village being obnoxious to all and sundry - often before witnesses - and no one sees fit to mention it to anyone else, even when living in the same house.
I refer interested parties to That Fish’s list at People who had cause before the stabbing to dislike/mistrust Rob Titchener
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After hearing tonight’s Snellfest, I’m asking myself the same question. Not least because simply reading out lists of plant names is extremely lazy writing (and I mean literally lazy, in the “can’t be arsed to come up with dialogue, so will just copy and paste from a seed catalogue” sense.)
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Liz John or Nick Warburton, this week. They are sensibly not telling us which of them was responsible for which days.
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Is there any particular reason that they’re still splitting the week between SWs? I can understand that there might have been episodes “left over” when they changed from six to five then four per week, but surely that could have been evened out by now?
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Oh, but writing more than two episodes a week is so hard…
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Listening to them is no bed of roses (geraniums / begonias / fuchsias / nasturtiums /acers / fecking trellis) either.
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Isn’t the Snell’s garden supposed to be low-pollen, allergy-friendly, not only for Lynda’s sake, but as one of the selling-points for the B&B? Can anyone more au fait with matters hortological than me (i.e. at all) tell whether the plants mentioned would be suitable?
Merely curious. It’s not as if I don’t trust certain SWs with such details…
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I haven’t listened yet so I can’t really help you…
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