The Archers at 60

For those of you who don’t know, today is the 60th Anniversary of the longest running soap opera in history. If you want to understand British rural middle class life and values you have to listen to it; there is a podcast. To celebrate this we had a special half hour episode (normally 15 minutes six days of the week) in which Helen’s had an emergency caesarian and Nigel appears to have fallen off the roof of his mansion. Assuming Nigel is dead (listen in on Monday) then his Brother in Law David will have eternal guilt for initiating the banner removal, the two young children may escape public school (hooray) or be placed there in memory to Nigel by his wife Elizabeth (boo).

Personally I had my money on Tony (Helen’s father) collapsing with heart failure unforgiven by his daughter who then would name her son Antony in memory and spent a life time atoning for the consequential guilt. I had an even money bet on Helen stuffing it, Tony then suffering a stroke with Pat left with an invalid husband and a child to bring up. Now that would have been fun. An everyday story of country folk, its older than me and will probably survive me.