That Archers Who's Who idea

I thought I would start a thread, because I am being pleased with myself about this. It is something I have been contemplating for a long time because the BBC one is so poor; there seemed to be a use for a place where one could simply go and look up a person, and be able to sort it in any desired order and click from family member to family member by entry and so on, which the internet is ideal for. And I have this techie who can make it all work! Yay!

My method is that I have scrobbled the BBC descriptions from the net, because they have a few useful things in them, and then gone through The Book of The Archers making one blank entry for every person mentioned in it no matter how unimportant. It is divided into people beginning with every letter of the alphabet except Q and X because there are none of those – by first name, or surname if it is (eg) “Mr Adams”.

I am doing it that way because otherwise I would stick forever in Archer, there are so many of them. This way I proceed from Mr Adams (short) to Alice Carter (long) to Alex (short) to Andrene (short) and don’t get bored with any one person – although Anthony William Daniel Archer took a long time to do, Asty was a doddle. At the moment I have done twenty pages of Archers beginning with A and have eight to go. That’s 2% or less of the whole thing, but a definite start.

Every entry is written from scratch rather than copied verbatim, because I’m scrounging information from all the sources I can find; for instance Squire Lawson-Hope is always so named in The Book of The Archers, but is named as “Clive” in The Archers Encyclopaedia, and as “George” in To the Victor the Spoils by Jock Gallagher: which do I take as accurate? My every instinct says the latter because JG was writing closer to the time at which The Squire was on air, but it is a bit of a puzzle since he definitely wanted his nephew Clive to take over from him because Clive was his namesake as well as his only male heir… Should I give both names, and say why? and when did he die? TBoTA says 1954 but also has Admiral Bellamy selling his house to him in 1955.

When I have finished the BBC site people and the Book of The Archers ones, I will then add in any new ones in The Archers Encyclopaedia and finally go through Lowfield from 2000 onwards looking for people who were named and possibly had an actor too, though that isn’t essential: silents like Molly Button definitely have a place in this!

I’m trying to note them as they occur: “Sarah ?check it stud farm in Brampton ? is that Brampton Green?”, “Mr and Mrs De Freitas, B&B guests from hell” and so on.

This is why I should never be banned from Peet’s. It leads to unfeasibly large projects.

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Crikey, crikey Moses.

That Fish will need regular refreshment.

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I lower a little Trouser Stiffener into the Fishly Pond every now and then.

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You’re not wrong. It grows, all the time: doing Arnold Lucas I have another entry, Geoffrey Taylor the mobility officer, who is in neither of the main source-books.

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And diminishes Peet’s.

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Oh, I’ll give Peet’s the URL when it’s done. I’m not a piker.

I meant your absence diminishes Peet’s.

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Why, thank you! It seems to get along without me okay, though, so I shan’t worry too much.

Stunning Fanta. Best of luck on what will be a brilliant & very useful exercise.

I can just imagine HenWee’s will be a treat to read.

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I am trying hard to be objective. Mostly.

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Mind you, I am allowing myself occasional indulgent miaows, for instance about Alice:

“Before she left for university she had disappointed her mother’s ambitions for her by deciding that the man for her was the farrier-in-training Christopher Carter, and in August 2010 while she was on holiday with him in America the pair got married in Las Vegas, apparently on impulse to avoid having a big fuss and party thrown for them by Jennifer. When they got home Alice was then thrown a large party by Jennifer, which makes one wonder why she bothered. She tormented Jennifer on that occasion by pretending as a joke that she had invited Chris’ criminal uncle Clive Horrobin to be present, so that Jennifer would worry and hide the silver.”

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I am not going to leave this as it is, but I had fun writing a blurb for Anna Tregorran:
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Jill is fond of her goddaughter, whom she used to babysit, but had never mentioned her or her career since the Tregorrans left Ambridge in 1990, until a barrister was wanted for a storyline.
In 2014, her father’s funeral called Anna back to Ambridge and as well as having Helen for a client for most of 2016 she has visited to see her mother Carol in the village.
Anna is allegedly a well-respected barrister who specialises in women’s issues and domestic abuse. Her chambers are in Birmingham. In 2015, Anna lost a case against a man who was accused of domestic violence. The man returned to the family home and the abuse resumed and resulted in the death of his victim. Anna was so consumed by this case and its outcome it led to the end of her relationship with her female partner Max and left her unsure about her ability as a barrister. She represented Helen after her godmother, Jill Archer, recommended her on the basis of knowing nothing whatever about her, and in the event she was a poor advocate and made a lot of very obvious mistakes. Since she seemed able to visit Helen on a weekly basis and never to be doing any other work to speak of, and was able to take a fortnight’s holiday at no notice, one has to wonder just how busy her practice actually is.
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

I have an alternative which is not so weighted, but that was fun to write…

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The only thing I’d change might be to mention her ignorance of the respective roles of a barrister and their instructing solicitor.

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Noted!

Do you (does anyone) happen to have a source of cast-lists for the period between The Archers Encyclopaedia in 2001 and the BBC starting to publish the cast-lists on the internet in March 2010? I am trying to remember who played minor characters during that hiatus, such as Bruno Foster in 2005, and not being able to find out easily is frustrating.

Yes, that I want to know about Bruno means that I have finished twenty-eight pages of A and am onto B among the forenames, at least for The Book of The Archers; The Archers Encyclopaedia characters come next after that, and then I’ll start to go through Lowfield from 1996 onwards. And after that there are several reference books which give titbits of information from the Archives: why Steve Oakley left Ambridge, which is not in the AE, or that Derek Fletcher has a goldfish pond which was sold to him by Nigel and is guarded on all sides by gnomes…

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Googling “BBC archers character_name” often works. F’rinstance:

The new edition of The Archers Ambridge Voice, the quarterly magazine published by Archers Addicts official fan club, features new cast member Ed Browning, who plays Bruno Foster.

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Then there’s this, which looks promising:

https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk

Just ran a quick test: 11/1/2002

19.00: The Archers

Tempers are frayed at Bridge Farm.
Written by Simon Frith. Director Julie Beckett.
Editor Vanessa Whitburn. ARCHERS ADDICTS FAN CLUB: send an sae to [address removed]
Contributors
Written By: Simon Frith.
Director: Julie Beckett.
Editor: Vanessa Whitburn.
David: Timothy Bentinck
Ruth: Felicity Finch
Nigel: Graham Seed
Tony: Colin Skipp
Pat: Patricia Gallimore
Helen: Louiza Patlkas
Tom: Tom Graham
Brian: Charles Collingwood
Jennifer: Angela Piper
Debbie: Tamsin Greig
Christine: Lesley Saweard
Jack: Arnold Peters
Kathy: Hedli Niklaus
Clarrie: Rosalind Adams
Ed: Barry Farrimond
Emma: Felicity Jones
Betty: Pamela Craig
Jean-Paul: Yves Aubert
Greg: Marc Rnn
Siobhan: Caroline Lennon
Fallon: Joanna van Kampen
Jazzer: Ryan Kelly

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Joe, you’re a star! Thank you very much indeed.

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Oh dear, BBC.

“This server could not prove that it is genome.ch.bbc.co.uk; its security certificate is from *.cloudfront.net.”

It’s not so terribly hard. Serving bad SSL certificates, and encouraging people to learn how to bypass certificate verification, is worse than not having SSL at all.

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Couldn’t resist a peek at this:

1 January, 1951

11.45 The Archers

The daily events in the lives of country folk
Contributors
Written By: Geoffrey Webb
Written By: Edward J. Mason
Edited By: Godfrey Baseley
Produced By: Tony Shryane
Daniel Archer, the farmer: Harry Oakes
Doris Archer, his wife: Gwen Berryman
Philip Archer, their younger son: Norman Painting
Christine Archer, their daughter: Pamela Mant
Jack Archer, their elder son: Denis Folwell
Peggy Archer, his wife: June Spencer
Grace Fairbrother: Monica Grey
Walter Gabriel, Dan’s neighbour: Robert Mawdesley
Simon, the farm hand: Eddie Robinson

Drat. The machinery here won’t allow me to look at that link, Joe: it says it is not secure. I assume that is what Hedgers was talking about…

If I run up against such things again, may I ask you? I’ll collect them into a block and send it as a single thing. Either that or find some way round the refusal to let me look for myself, but I am unsure how much of a mess that might make of relations in the home.