Name: Abbie Tucker
Sorted name: Tucker, Abbie
Played by: the BBC effects department, mostly, and later by an anonymous child actor
Born: 7th March 2008
Residence: Birmingham
Immediate family:
Hayley Tucker (Mother)
Roy Tucker (Father)
Mike Tucker (Grandfather)
Vicky Tucker (Step Grandmother)
Phoebe Aldridge (Half-Sister)
Brenda Tucker (Aunt)
Notes: Hayley and Roy Tucker’s child made a dramatic entrance into the world some ten weeks early, or so it was claimed, though people who can count on their fingers reckon she was more-or-less on her due date or even a little late; she overcame her difficulties and was soon home with her parents, after giving her father an excuse to blame her Aunt Brenda for her sudden arrival. She was said to be devoted to her half-sister Phoebe Aldridge (Roy’s child with Kate Aldridge) and missed her when Phoebe went to RSA between 8th September, 2011, and 31st July, 2012; she insisted on making a welcome home banner for her.
Removed to Birmingham with her mother on Friday 10th October, 2014 after Hayley found out about Roy’s affair with Elizabeth Archer.
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Name: Mr Adams
Sorted name: Adams, Mr
Played by:
Occupation: Free-trade manager
Works: Shires Breweries
Notes: Kathy and Sid Perks asked him to help them to get a loan in order to buy The Bull in 1993. He was not helpful, and they looked elsewhere, eventually getting Guy Pemberton as a partner.
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Name: Alan Arthur Jack Oliver (real person)
Sorted name: Oliver, Alan Arthur Jack
Notes: Chris and Paul Johnson bought Red Link from Toby Stobeman in 1957 and realised they had a very good horse worth training properly, so they sent him to Alan Oliver, a champion rider. He rode Red Link in several events, culminating in Badminton Horse of the Year 1957, where he did well. Paul was jealous about the amount of time Christine was spending on the horse, and persuaded her to sell him to Alan Oliver.
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Name: Alan Barton
Sorted name: Barton, Alan
Played by: Richard Statman
Notes: In the late fifties, a lothario who specialised in married women made a particular object of Christine Johnson. Paul objected strongly, and Alan disappeared back under his stone.
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Name: Alan Carey
Sorted name: Carey, Alan
Played by: Dudley Rolph
Born: 1927
Immediate family:
Helen Carey (Mother)
Ann Fraser (Fiancée/Wife)
Notes: Alan Carey came to visit his mother in 1951. He was a sad and brooding man who had seen his twin brother Rex burned to death in Korea, where they were serving. Whilst he was mending Grace Fairbrother’s car for her it slipped off the ramp, and she was terrified that he had been injured or killed; this brought him to the realisation that horrors might be worse for spectators than for the person to whom they were happening, so he promptly fell in love with Grace and proposed to her. She turned him down, but he must have been in a marrying mood, because went away back to Yorkshire and got engaged to Ann, whom he brought south with him to Helen’s wedding at Whitsun the following year. The couple then went back north and were not seen in Ambridge again.
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Thank you, Ditzwell! Welcome to the board, too.
Thanks, Fanta. Keep 'em coming - as many as you like!
Thank you too for a good read.
I guess one difficulty is knowing when to stop!
(I started searching 1957 horse shows…)
As one might very well…
Hello and welcome.
Aha! Alan Oliver’s obituary gave me a clue:
"Oliver became known to a wider radio audience in 1957 after he ‘sold’ a horse called Red Link to The Archers. The producer’s idea was to “buy” a novice horse early in the year and follow its progress through to victory in the Foxhunter Championship at the Horse of the Year Show in October. Oliver did point out that picking just one horse to win at Harringay was about a 10,000-to-one shot, but they still went ahead.
“Having become part of the continuing story of Ambridge, he was rather embarrassed when The Archers visited show after show at which Red Link failed to jump a single clear round. Eventually, however, he did win a Foxhunter class and he was third in a regional final, which qualified him for Harringay. The cliffhanger ended with Red Link finishing second in the final which, considering the odds, was a tremendous achievement.”
Depends whether or not I get interested. I’m hoping to do all the characters in TA eventually. Quite a lot of work!
Brilliant stuff fishy.
Quite an exercise. Though “keep it loose leaf” as they say. Old characters will come out of left field to beggar up the order.
It’s new ones coming up that bugger up the order, Armers. If it weren’t in the computer (and another one not on these premises, and no I don’t mean a cloud somewhere) adding for instance the Horse Bagel or Shy Colin from Penny Hassett and his uncle Hector would be a right pain.
It’s certainly a labour of love, Fishy
Or madness…
Carinthia.xx
Oh, madness, certainly.
Do you intend to include every name that gets even the most glancing reference, including the silents on Nelson_G’s magnificent list ‘Who Isn’t?’ in Peet’s? I have a spreadsheet (of course!) of a fair few characters, major and minor, which I made mostly to keep track of people’s ages, place of residence and how they are related to each other. But when I looked at Nelson’s thread I gave up in despair any notion of including all of that lot (who don’t tend to have ages anyway).
But I love that he is doing it!
I have his permission to use his list.
Which is huge … you have your work cut out for you. Though I suppose most of them only require a line or two.
Yes, like the ones I have put up here. Don’t expect those too often, but here are some more:
Name: Alan Fraser
Sorted name: Fraser, Alan
Played by: Crawford Logan, Peter Wickham
Notes: A friend of Nelson Gabriel’s from Venezuala, Alan Fraser had joined the Parachute Regiment when he was eighteen, and after leaving the army became a courier and a bodyguard who arrived in Ambridge in 1981 and lived in the Lodge for a while, travelling light with a sleeping bag, a suitcase and a handful of books. He was a fitness fanatic and a hard man who nearly strangled Tom Forrest when he thought him a burglar, but he was also blue-eyed and very handsome, and Caroline Bone was very attracted to him in spite of his frequent mysterious absences. They spent Christmas together, and saw in the New Year at Brookfield together, and Caroline had begun to hope that he would settle down inAmbridge, but at the end of January 1982 he left Ambridge “to fetch a low-loader from the Middle East” but taking all his possessions, and was never seen again. All Caroline had to remember him by was a single red rose which he left for her on the Lodge floor in a vodka bottle.
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Name: Alan Nicholas
Sorted name: Nicholas, Alan
Played by: Raymond Skipp
Notes: In 1972 Jack Woolley and Dan Archer picked up Alan Nicholas hitch-hiking; they were on their way back to Ambridge from Scotland with the railway locomotive Jack had bought for use on his private line in the Country Park. Alan was a long-haired hippy with a guitar, who stayed for a while in Ambridge; he started his time there by cleaning the engine the following day and startling Tom Forrest somewhat by singing him a song he had just made up about railway engines. He moved into Rickyard Cottage with Tony Archer, and played and sang at the Bull for his supper.
Such was his charm that when he said that he would be moving on to London, Sid Perks offered him a job as chef for the new Steak Bar, ignoring the fact that Alan couldn’t cook and said so; it was not a success, because Alan was a hopeless time-keeper and was quite likely not to turn up at all if something more interesting came his way,. He also, while entertaining in the bar, sang an anti-hunting song and annoyed Ralph Bellamy. Meanwhile he was romancing more than one of the young women of the village, as well as giving his heart for a day or two to Frances Graham who ran the mobile library but was already married. It was when Haydn Evans accused him of giving Angela Cooper silly ideas about leaving home when he was himself unable to make his living sensibly that Alan was stricken by guilt, and left for London after all; he seemed to cheer up as soon as he knew that he was going back to being footloose and fancy free, and left Ambridge without apparent regret.
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Name: PC Albert Bates
Sorted name: Bates, PC Albert
Played by: Ralph Lawton
Residence: The Police House
Notes: Bates and his wife arrived in Ambridge in the spring 1964, and she had a child in October of that year. In the summer of 1965 his parents came to spend time with their new grandson and see the village Albert had told them so much about, and stayed at Rickyard Cottage. In 1967 PC Bates was given a well-earned promotion, and the family left the village so he could take up his post in Borchester.
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Name: Alex
Sorted name: Alex
Notes: The Bosun of Kenton Archer’s first ship, Alex was Kenton’s choice as the man to go into business with in 1988, when they formed an organisation called Gardenfun. His laxity about the rules of share dealing (and Kenton’s ignorance of any rules) led to their being investigated by FIMBRA in 1989, and threatened with prosecution for fraud, at which point Alex sacked Kenton.
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Bloody hell and well done! That’s a bit more than the line or two I spoke of!
It puts me in mind of Dr. Johnson’s dictionary in Blackadder.
If only he’d used a PC how much easier it would have been.
Any relation to Colin, I wonder?
Possibly not: his full name is Raymond Comstock-Skipp, I think.