I have a confession to make, although it is not a particularly well-kept secret. I am an Archers addict. I have been listening to the inhabitants of Ambridge for more than forty years, through births, deaths, marriages, affairs, farming crises, village fêtes, floods, fires and an impressive number of arguments about things which, to anyone outside Ambridge, might appear to matter very little indeed.
I first started listening when I was at university. I’m not entirely sure what drew me in, because I was hardly the obvious target audience for a radio drama about farming and village life. But somehow it stuck. In those early years, The Archers became part of the rhythm of the day. I would often prepare my evening meal while listening, chopping, stirring and occasionally stopping altogether because something particularly dramatic was happening at Brookfield or The Bull.
And I have never really stopped. The technology has changed rather more than Ambridge has. These days I don’t have to arrange my life around the Radio 4 schedule, because the programme arrives conveniently as a podcast. I can catch up on a train, listen in the car or take Ambridge with me when I’m travelling. There is something rather wonderful about being hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles from home and discovering that, wherever I happen to be, Lynda Snell is still organising something and somebody in the Grundy family is probably embarking on a scheme which may not withstand too much scrutiny.
Part of the appeal is simply continuity. Characters grow older. Children become adults. People we have known for decades change, but not always very much. Relationships carry histories which are not conveniently forgotten at the end of an episode. A careless remark can echo years later. That is much closer to real life than most drama, where characters tend to arrive fully formed and disappear when their usefulness to the plot is exhausted.
Inevitably, I have my favourites. Lynda Snell is high on the list. She can be infuriating, magnificent, overbearing and extraordinarily kind, sometimes within the same episode. I suspect I recognise rather more of myself in her than I should admit: the conviction that a community event would be considerably better if only everyone would listen to the person who has actually thought it through, coupled with the occasional failure to notice that everyone else might not share quite the same degree of enthusiasm.
I have always had a soft spot for the Grundys too. Eddie’s optimism in the face of overwhelming evidence is one of the great constants of Ambridge, while Clarrie provides the warmth, resilience and common sense which so often keeps the family together. Their story over the years has also been a reminder that rural life is not automatically comfortable or prosperous. Ambridge may sometimes sound idyllic, but money, housing, work and insecurity matter there just as they do everywhere else.
And then there are the Aldridges, whose family history could probably sustain a radio station on its own. Brian has, over the years, demonstrated a quite remarkable ability to combine charm, confidence and spectacularly questionable judgement. Jennifer’s death genuinely moved me, partly because when you have listened to somebody for decades, their disappearance feels surprisingly personal. That is one of the peculiar tricks The Archers plays on us: these are fictional people, but our history with them is real.
I also enjoy the characters who hold Ambridge together rather than dominate it. There is something very recognisable about the people who sit on committees, organise things, volunteer, gossip, complain and then turn up when somebody needs help. Perhaps that is one reason the programme has always chimed with my own experience. I have spent much of my life around voluntary organisations, charities, civic life and communities, and Ambridge understands a truth about all of them: communities run on relationships rather than organisational charts.
It also understands that volunteering is rarely tidy. People volunteer for a mixture of reasons. They want to help, certainly, but they also want company, purpose, influence, recognition, fun and the chance to belong. Sometimes they want to do something because they have always done it and see absolutely no reason why anybody should interfere. Anyone who has spent much time around voluntary organisations will recognise that particular dynamic.
There is something familiar, too, in the way Ambridge mixes the serious and the ridiculous. Real communities do not stop organising fêtes because somebody is ill, nor do personal tragedies prevent arguments about parking, planning applications or who has booked the village hall. Life carries on at several levels at once. I have always liked that about The Archers. It can move from grief to comedy without either feeling entirely out of place, because that is more or less what life does.
Its rural setting probably resonates with me more now than it did when I was a student. Living in an Oxfordshire village, I recognise some of the rhythms of Ambridge rather better than I once did: the importance of the pub, the church, the village hall, the people who know everything that is going on and the people who think they know everything that is going on. Weston-on-the-Green is emphatically not Ambridge, although there are moments when the distinction can seem thinner than one might expect.
Of course, The Archers occasionally drives me mad. There are storylines when I find myself arguing aloud with the radio, characters whom I want somebody to shake vigorously and moments when Ambridge appears to contain a statistically improbable concentration of disaster. But irritation is part of the relationship. After more than four decades, I am no longer simply listening to a programme. I have opinions.
Perhaps that is why it has lasted for me. Across all those years, my own life has changed almost beyond recognition. I have changed jobs, homes and responsibilities; travelled around the world; met extraordinary people; acquired rather more titles than the university student stirring his supper could ever have imagined; and grown older alongside the people of Ambridge. Through all of it, that familiar music has continued to announce that for the next few minutes I am going somewhere I know.
I sometimes wonder what my world would be like without The Archers. I would certainly have saved a great many hours, although I’m not convinced I would have used them particularly productively. There would be fewer imaginary people to worry about, fewer occasions when I shout advice at a car radio, and considerably less knowledge of the agricultural and romantic affairs of one fictional corner of Borsetshire.
But something would be missing. For more than forty years, Ambridge has been there: sometimes gripping, sometimes infuriating, sometimes wonderfully funny and sometimes simply reassuringly ordinary. It has accompanied dinners, journeys, changes of career and different chapters of my life. I hope it carries on doing so for a good while yet.
After all, I need to know what happens next.
