And I don’t (just) mean that terrifyingly frisky shower scene with Sid and Jolene. In recent years all manner of social issues and up-to-the-minute controversies have been covered by plotlines that sometimes made for uncomfortable listening. Mostly they played it in the background, but I hope they realised there’s a good reason why The Archers remains so popular. Despite this, its unwavering five million-strong audience was boosted by millennials and Generation Zers who tuned in because it was the soundtrack to growing up and reminded them of home. In the first lockdown, producers were forced to bin 12 weeks of scripts and resort to months of monologues before returning to the studio in August last year. It was the personal stories, the vicissitudes of village life that kept us coming back for more – and still does. I know, right?Įven in the 1970s there was more to the programme than showcasing the latest agricultural developments. And now she’s training to be a vicar, aged 63.
Hell, I’m old enough to remember Shula hitching round Europe in an act of teenage rebellion then losing her virginity in a cornfield. Much is made of appointment television but since the Radio 4 radio soap first aired nationally on January 1 1951,the comings and goings, floods, pestilence, barn fires, gas explosions and toxic waste leaks of Ambridge have made for appointment radio.Īnd frankly that’s not the half of it. Other high profile Archers aficionados include Prince Charles, Stephen Fry, Fiona Bruce and even Hollywood A-lister Ewan McGregor. We might not start that way – sure we dip in occasionally, but we tell ourselves we can stop any time we want – then eventually we find this everyday tale of farming folk has entered our souls.Īnd so we can get a little (ahem) competitive in a bid to emphasise our superfan credentials.
Such tautology! All Archers listeners are addicted it comes with the territory. This week, Camilla hosted a celebration of the long running soap’s 70th anniversary – which coincided with the 102nd birthday of June Spencer who plays the irrepressible Peggy Woolley – in the course of which she proudly outed herself as an “Archers addict”.
It’s the sort of fact any true Archers fanatic ought to know, and one The Duchess of Cornwall surely does. Oh and did you know this gloriously familiar piece is called Barwick Green and was originally a maypole dance written in 1924 by Yorkshire composer Arthur Wood? Just saying, Your Royal Highness. Incidentally I would like to remind my husband (an Archers agnostic) that I want the aforementioned tune played at my funeral the rustic Sunday omnibus version with the accordions mind, not the souped-up weekday muzak. Or you are a self-styled Archers fanatic who wouldn’t dream of messing with Lynda Snell’s pets and is already humming along to the irrepressibly bucolic theme tune, your head filled with pastoral visions of grazing Montbéliarde cows and the breathtaking view from Lakey Hill. Tum-ti tum-ti tum-ti tum/ Tum-ti tum-ti tum tum.īy now you are either entirely bewildered, in which case I suggest you quietly slip out the side gate of Ambridge Hall and mind you don’t get waylaid by Constanze and Salieri (they’re llamas, do keep up).
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