Radio review: The Archers — Soapland’s response to our post-9/11 world

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).