He’s gone. Not that anyone apart from Lilian will miss him. But Paul’s been despatched (at long last) to the Land of Discarded Soap Actors, despised, rejected and scorned by most of those who knew him in Borsetshire — and also, I hope, by any self-respecting Archers Addict.
I felt nothing, absolutely nothing, at the news of his heart attack in a hotel room in Cardiff, except perhaps relief that we will never again have to listen to his wheedling, self-satisfied tones. How could smart, zappy Lilian ever have fallen for his oleaginous charms? It was clear from his very first words that he was as badly behaved as his half-brother Matt Crawford, but without Matt’s speck of decency that keeps him true to Lilian. Matt’s a baddie, but at least he has heart enough to love Lilian (although we still don’t know quite what role he had to play in Paul’s death; perhaps we’ll have to revise our opinion of him as well in the not-too-distant).
Paul has (or rather had) no redeeming features. He was just rotten all the way through, and we knew it. But, mysteriously, Lilian never saw through him, allowing the ghastly Paul to turn her into a weak and winsome female (no longer a woman), ever willing to drop everything to rush over to their squalid flat in Felpersham and fall into his arms for another bout of squishy sex. No longer Tiger; not even Pussy-cat. A pale shadow of her former self. And for what? Champagne and kisses?
But of course we’re in Soapland here, where characters switch character at the whim of a desperate scriptwriting committee. They needed an affair to spice up Ambridge life. The actress who plays Lilian (Sunny Ormonde) was available for extra duties.
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