OK, Archers fans out there. All five million of you. Ask yourselves a straightforward question. Why on earth do you — do we — listen to this show full of completely awful people? Why do we subject ourselves to this 13 minutes of daily torment, not to mention the Sunday omnibus, wallowing in the lives of fictitious characters who, let’s be ruthlessly honest, are almost universally loathsome?
Don’t get me wrong. I love The Archers. I have lain in bed sweating with a fever in Mogadishu, glued to the comings and goings in Ambridge. In 2005, as al Qaeda’s bearded bombers did their worst in Baghdad, I hunkered down in my trailer hooked on Ed and Will’s fight over Emma. Working in Tripoli and Tunis the past few months, I’ve tuned in every evening to hear how sappy Helen is getting on with oh-so-nice martial arts man Lee.
The other day, I asked my wife why we listened to this rubbish so assiduously. Did we actually like a single character in the show?
Where to begin? We could do worse than the oldies. (In fact, we will.) Let’s start with the matriarchs. Take your pick from Peggy and Jill. Which is which? ‘You can’t say anything nasty about Peggy,’ says my wife. ‘She’s the moral compass of the programme.’ Then she adds, in what I instantly recognise as classic Archers oneupmanship, ‘But then you don’t remember Jack.’ And Jill, Brookfield’s moralising mother hen? The endless clucking drives me potty.
What about Will and Ed? As with Peggy and Jill, which is which, and do we care? Who in their right mind would come to blows over a woman as charmless as Emma Grundy?
Don’t get me started on the Grundys. I just can’t buy into the father-and-son, Joe-and-Eddie shtick.
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