“Oh!” the BBC said to me. “We thought you had stopped writing about The Archers.” No, I just hoped that if I sat with my head in my hands long enough, the nasty man would go away.
It didn’t work. When I opened my eyes, it was Matt, Ambridge’s resident rogue, who had gone. Lilian, his devoted if dissipated partner, returned to find both the wine cellar and the bank account empty, and a consolatory note: “Sorry, Pusscat.” Financially, Lilian is now down to her last pub.
Unlike Nigel Pargetter, whose dying scream was timed by a concerned bystander at 3.5 seconds, Matt was pretty British about getting the push. With all the interesting changes taking place in The Archers, he said drily, it seemed a good time to go. These interesting changes involve acquaintances vanishing, old friends suffering a complete character change, and an invasion of faceless aliens like the village of the damned.
The way things are in Ambridge, who would blame Matt, a jumped-up barrow boy from London, for grabbing the cash and skedaddling. At least he said: “Sorry.” Everyone else in Ambridge has their snout in the trough. David Archer has sold the family farm for fairy gold, and all his siblings are snuffling round for the small change. The old cow has been milked furiously for exciting new storylines. Even ladylike Helen, locked in the toils of some labyrinthine plot, cried: “What the hell’s going on?”
Writing about The Archers is an interesting, if challenging, exercise when nothing happens at all (sometimes all you hear is the sound of grass growing and the Grundy boys beating each other up again in the background), but it is just impossible when everything happens at once and nothing makes any sense. It feels as though Ambridge has taken ecstasy, mistaking it for aspirin.
No wonder, what with the worry of it and having no lines at all, Freda Fry has worked her way through a whole packet of pontefract cakes. For the sake of Freda’s teeth, something had to happen. This week in Radio Times Tony Hall – the director general of the BBC, who has apparently been getting gbh of the ear’ole from ’er indoors (presumably, if surprisingly, Lady Cynthia) – told his over-excited team to take better care of The Archers. Would they do that for him, hmm? It would take a heart of stone not to snigger.
• A Month in Ambridge returns on 25 February.
