https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/uk.media.radio.archers/r7fMu6by_jk
Some long memories!
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John Tregorran had a Romany 'van in 1954; I didnāt think he let it to Hugo in 1968. Youāre right about Hugo; I write Hugh on autopilot.
Ah ! Silly me.
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[quote=āGus, post:17, topic:134ā]
Dreadful, laboured and deeply unfunny episode tonight. Even Brian and Matt couldnāt quite redeem it.
[/quote]I do enjoy Brian. Well acted, as ever. It shows that there are no small parts, just small actors. He could amuse & entertain reading an instruction pamphlet for Preparation H.
Iāll be honest ā¦ I see Matt as an awful caricature. Dick Dastardly meets Terry Thomas. The sooner he does the deed heās been brought in to do, rob Lillian again after breaking up her and Justin, and then buggers off the better for me.
The inability to get a bunch of people to focus & concentrate, especially outside a confined office, was well enough done ā¦ āherding catsā is the term.
But, overall a preparatory episode, for the big speedster crash. On recent form that will be no more than Lilly hitting a car going too fast whilst on her test as she gabbles ten to the dozen. All hopes that Peep is involved and suffers life changing injuries to her personality ā¦ and voice ā¦ are mere wishful thinking I fear.
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Matt has not (yet) directly ordered anybodyās death, but his actions have been a possible factor in two - Paulās after he had him beaten up, and the old man in the rented accommodation after he had an accident with the rotten floor that Matt insisted Darrell not repair as part of Mattās campaign of making the place too dangerous for them to stay.
I donāt say he would order someone killed, but I do say he wouldnāt care if they were as a consequence of his actions. So I definitely do not share some listenersā apparent affection for him - he has one of those dysfunctional personalities where a good understanding of how other people function is married to a huge empathy deficit. This makes him a ruthless manipulator, and Iād stay well away.
That said, Kim Durham is very good and, to me, Matt performs a valuable function in the drama when he isnāt overdrawn.
I quite enjoyed the episode. I was tired, it didnāt demand too much from me, and Iāve been to plenty of meetings like that. Like Armitage I took it as the wind dropping before the storm hits, which I donāt at all mind as part of a longer story arc. Very likely though, it will be a storm in a teacup (with lemon drizzle) when it does hit.
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And was either of them any great loss? The Rosycheeks were irritating and Paul a colossal bore as well as unpleasant. Had Matt been instrumental in either demise, it would just have been pest control. imo.
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Possible but very improbable, or extremely minor, factor.
Matt had been annoyed with two people who subsequently died. Most of the people I get annoyed with have died later, but that doesnāt make their deaths something in which I am a factor.
A man who was going to have a heart attack because of his lifestyle, and risks about which he had been repeatedly warned by his doctor according to his daughter, had a heart attack twenty-four hours after having been hit not very hard and told to stop tupping someone elseās partner, instead of while he was losing his temper about something with (probably) his ex-wife. Culpability of anyone else: nil.
Joyce fell in her home, not because of a floor being up but in the bedroom which had not had its floor up. She broke her hip. A month after the flat had been restored and there was no work of any kind either needed or going on there, Arthur died: looking after his wife when she came out of hospital was too much for him. But since her fall was completely unconnected with anything Matt had ordered done, I really donāt see that he is implicated in that either.
And actually Matt did care, quite a lot, that Paulās death had not been caused be him: we heard the phone call.
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Hugo certainly had a caravan. It was one of those genuine Romany type, horse-drawn etc.
When he finally left, the caravan was ISTR occupied 4-5 years later by Ben Warner (played by the late Don Henderson - TVs Bullman). I have a vague memory of him and Shula being rather close and spending time getting quite ājiggyā in that caravan on summer evenings - about 1982-83 ish. Including once being interrupted by Tom Forrest. 
Shock! Horror!
Tom Forrest didnāt mention it to anybody AIR. He always had a soft spot for Shula - as indeed have I, but mineās on Dartmoor.
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Grins
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John Tregorran arrived in a Romany caravan and lived in it on Heydon Barrow. I donāt remember what he did about a horse.
I have no memory at all of Hugo having a caravan, and I know that he rented Glebe Cottage from Doris in 1968 and wrote a book and a play there. Maybe when he was staying with his cousin John on his first arrival he was put up in the caravan?
Ben Warner definitely had a cottage when he arrived in 1982; it was in Penny Hassett and backed onto Mark Hebdenās garden. He left again in 1983. I canāt really think what he would have been doing with John Tregorranās caravan, given that fact.
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I think Ben Warner had the Caravan by the river, near Aunt Laura when she was at Ambridge Hall. I vaguely remember she spotted somebody was living there and told Jack Woolley, who might have been the one to send Tom Forrest to investigate. Canāt be sure. Itās a long time ago.
I vaguely recall that Elizabeth and Shula caught Ben Warner breaking into Brookfield.farm-house
Elizabeth called the cops, but Shula was going to let him go. He was convicted and sent to prison for a string of house-breakings.
Iāll have to dig through the books.
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Blossom Hill Cottage, not Brookfield!
If Ben Warner had a caravan in Ambridge, it was as well as the cottage he had in Penny Hassett.
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BHC thenā¦ I know they caught him breaking into somewhere. As I said itās a long time ago. Memory is not as good as it used to be. 
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Clunkity clunkity yawn. Bloody awful writing.
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