That BLOODY woman again

The character no longer has any function, I think. Unless the SWs can come up with something worthwhile, rather than the annual (at least) Cecil B DeSnell nonsense, there’s no point. Let’s face it, we already know what’s going to kick off in a few weeks’ time:

####Late September / early October:

  • Lynda agonises over whether to produce a show. Declares that she won’t, but is persuaded by Interfering Female Du Jour (a three-way contest at present, between Krusty, Supercilily and Phoeble) that the SWs want a few weeks off while they dust off the scripts they’ve used for the last thirty years she owes it to herself and to Ambridge.

####Late October - November

  • Endless tedious scenes where everyone says they’re too busy to take part. Eventually persuaded / blackmailed into doing it. IFDJ clashes with Lynda over responsibilities.

####December

  • Rehearsals start unfeasibly close to performance date. At least one walk-out / row / romantic entanglement (or any combination thereof). Prop / costume failure With Hilarious Consequences™.

  • Some time around the middle of the month, DeSnell declares it a disaster and threatens to pull the plug. Talked round by IFDJ.

  • Performance to packed houses, then fretting over Tosspot Shitehawk’s review (as if a “review” of such a production was ever any more than a series of photos and a a puff piece).

  • Review declares the production “a triumph”.

Then carefully save the file to do a search and replace on the character names for next year.

And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…
And the next…

Honestly, it’s been through rinse and repeat so often that it must be the bleached white, threadbare* and shrunk to the size of a doll’s frillies.



*OK - even more threadbare than the usual SLs

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You’re quite right - I’d forgotten that.

Another mark against her.

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What Vicky needed was a hearty wallop round the glitterily made-up chops and a swift ToP.

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You’ve forgotten Fal-Loon, the Chinese daughter of the village bar-maid. Who lives with a police impersonator, in the belfry of St. Stephanie’s Hindu Temple.

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I was going to include her, but the SWs having turned her into Plankette have decided that the career she was so set on and did a My Little Diploma in should be forgotten. Mind you, given the sort of course she probably did, she deserves not to have a career…

Ambridge - twinned with Stepford…

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She chucked in the musical career when Sid died and she had to run the pub because Jolene had decided that she was nothing without him and couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed, I thought.

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The village has become overwhelmed by Sunningdale types and the less assertive have left them to boss each other around.

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Yeah, the context in which I thought “no, Lynda” was appropriate was definitely pantomimeical. She’s just the sort of person I’d want to have around when the village was cut off by snow, the power went out, and things needed to be Organised; she’d listen to the people who knew what they were talking about, and then get things sorted.

(Well, pre-SoC Lynda, obviously. And pre-SoC Robert, even more.)

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pantomimetic?

Stop, Sparrer, stop! The stuff of nightmares, that is…

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Absolutely. She’d remind the llamas that they’re pack animals from the snowy Andes and set about keeping the village supplied for months if necessary. It’d be the Berlin Airlift all over again.

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TBF, most of what went wrong in TA, started during VW’s Gauleitership. Lynda used to be quite sane and normal when they arrived in Ambridge. VW turned her into the present incarnation and SoC just continued the job.

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The first things Lynda did on arrival in Ambridge were insult Brian about land-use, and tell Eddie to kill his ferret because she thought it was a rat…

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Ferret? I thought it was Joe.

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No, alas Lynda didn’t kill Joe in mistake for a rat, though it would have been entirely understandable.

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Carole Boyd deliberately made the character “obnoxious”:

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She said much the same thing, though not at such length, at the Radio Times event to which I went to see for myself what O’Connor was like.

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And - now we’re not constrained by others’ rules - what was your impression?

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She avoided admitting it’s a take on Penelope Keith’s Margot Leadbetter from ‘The Good Life’, preferring Malvolio. Bless her.

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I preferred Carole Boyd by streets and streets, Joe. She wasn’t a pseud, she was a working actor explaining her part.

If she said her inspiration was Malvolio, I will believe her. She should know!

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She’s a brilliant actor. I’ve got enormous respect for her, and she’s kept earning for a very long time.

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