Keri Davies Q and A

I recently did a Q and A for the newsletter run by Charlot King. Charlot is the author of the Cambridge Murder Mysteries, and the owner of a quite extraordinary looking dog, Moobear often appears in the photographs which Charlot shares on Twitter.

She has kindly agreed that I can reproduce the interview here. It goes into some detail about my path to the astonishing privilege of being allowed to write for The Archers, and into even more detail about how I do it.

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Can you tell us more about your journey as a writer – where did you start and how is that journey progressing? 

I’m not a very academic or introspective person; I tend to just get on with things. So I might not have very enlightening answers to these questions. In fact, the idea of my having a ‘journey’ as a writer sounds absurdly pretentious to me. I may have a very specialised, very limited celebrity, but inside I still feel like little Keri Davies who grew up in a dull Wiltshire town. Sorry Trowbridge, but you have to admit you’ll never be Prague…

I have always had some facility with words, which has bubbled up in all of the rag bag of jobs that comprise my ‘career’ (not so much chequered as houndstoothed): bank clerk, RAF officer, PR, advertising, presentation training… I was in my thirties when I joined the BBC as a press officer, and I only moved over to The Archers temporarily, to fill an emergency vacancy. That was in 1992, and sometimes I still can’t believe that I work on the programme that I began to listen to in my well-ordered room at RAF College Cranwell.

Surprisingly, my time in the RAF was a direct step on the road to where I am now. While a recruiting officer, I suggested and wrote the script for an audio-visual package about officer life. And off-duty I wrote and directed plays and pantomimes. These amateur efforts were a long way from professional drama; when I started work on The Archers, I had a massive learning curve. But it all helped, as does having a wide range of life experiences to enlighten my writing.

I suppose we are drawn to things we are good at, and this is the one thing I’m really good at. I’ve just been so lucky that by a catalogue of accidents I’ve found a niche where I’ve been able to earn a living at it for so long.

 

How do you write? What is your process?

I don’t really have a process. I have deadlines. Ninety percent of my writing is scripts for The Archers, so the requirements of the programme dictate my approach (about which more below).

Do you remember the first radio play, tv or film that stuck with you? And the library in your formative years that you remember fondly?

I’m going to swerve this slightly, because one of my greatest influences is the fact that my parents were active in the local musical theatre scene. In fact, before I was born they were members of the Welsh National Opera Company, in the days when it had an amateur chorus. Some of my earliest memories are sitting in rehearsals of The Mikado or South Pacific, and it infected me with a lifelong love of music and drama.

And the library… oh yes. Scratch any writer (or any decent writer) and you’ll find a reader. Precocious little swot that I was, at primary school I remember asking if I could use the upper school library, because all the books I was meant to be reading were too ‘babyish’. And later, I’d cycle regularly to Trowbridge Library. Four books every week for years. Science fiction and PG Wodehouse were particular favourites (Wodehouse still is – perhaps the nicest compliment I was ever paid as a writer was that I was a cross between PG Wodehouse and Hunter S Thompson).

You are known for the writing The Archers, can you tell us about that? 

A caveat: my answers to this question reflect the ‘usual’ Archers, which from May 2020 will be replaced by a simpler format until things return to whatever normality will then be in place.

One of the great things about writing The Archers is that it’s a blend of team and individual working. As writers, we work hand in glove with the production team, who in fact are responsible for a lot of research, story creation and early drafting.

The whole team gets together twice a year to brainstorm long term stories, but the detailed planning is done in script meetings every five weeks. At this stage we are working with ‘storylines’ – short stories written in the present tense, which outline in some detail what will happen to our characters approximately three months hence.

Individual writers are each responsible for a week on air – six episodes Sunday to Friday. So five out of the dozen or so on the team then return to their lonely writers’ garrets. They each have to turn their week, containing seven or so storylines, into six episodes of drama that also works as one 75 minute play.

This is the moment where artistic ambition bashes heads with budgets and logistics. We need actors to tell our stories. Actors (quite rightly) cost money, so there is a limit to how many we can use in a week: actually 39 appearances, from around 25 or so individual characters. To make it even more interesting, not all the actors are available for all recording sessions. So at this stage, it’s like doing a jigsaw when you’ve lost the lid with the picture on.

We have to decide which parts of which story we will tell on each day, and how; which characters we need to hear; and which bits we can hear ‘by report’. And where possible, we try to find ways to link stories, so the listener isn’t simply jumping back and forth between isolated strands.

All Archers writers work differently, but the way I do it is to take a sheet of A3 paper and rule it into six columns, one for each day. Then I work through the storylines, jotting major plot segments – ‘beats’ as we call them – onto little sticky notes, using a different colour for each storyline. Ah, the glamour of showbiz…

You can see my most recent plan here:

The scribblings are quite cryptic: “Lee to Lynda. Lynda furious with Robert”, “Ben bumps into Chloe. Josh – hilar”. But it’s enough to trigger in my mind the full content of the scene in question. Within the constraints, I distribute these beats through the week to form an interlocking web of dramatic arcs. I try to get a good balance of big and small, drama and comedy, domestic and farming, with ‘hooks’ to keep the listener tuning in, and of course an extra-large hook on the Friday.

It’s a case of trial and error – or ‘trial and improvement’ as children are now taught. Once I’ve added up all my actor bookings, I frequently have to revise my initial thoughts. For example, I might decide that we’ll hear the run up and aftermath of a meeting using two characters, rather than dramatising the full thing with three.

Once the maths is done, it’s time for the English again. I use my chart as the basis of a scene-by-scene synopsis. For the week we’re looking at, mine started:

1. INT, HOSPITAL WARD. 1400 HRS
LYNDA, CHLOE, ROY
Chloe is attending to Lynda [I’ll research something appropriate for Lynda’s condition and Chloe’s likely experience level]. Chloe is encouraging about Lynda’s progress but it falls on stony ground…

And so on over 18 pages or so, until the final moment of Friday’s episode:

7A. INT. HOSPITAL, CORRIDOR. CONTINUOUS
GAVIN
The door closes behind Gavin. Dad, it’s me, he says darkly. We might have a problem.

How long do we have to do all this? A long weekend. Archers deadlines are pretty brutal.

At this point, we pause. All five writers send their synopses to the Archers editor Jeremy Howe, the agricultural advisor Sarah Swadling, and two producers who as part of their jobs also work as script editors. You won’t hear their names unless they happen to direct episodes, but the script editors are the unsung heroes of The Archers. They compare our synopses with the storylines, to make sure we stay on-piste, and that everything hangs together across the five weeks. And they often give insightful comments that tighten and improve the drama.

After a detailed conversation with our individual script editor, we can finally start to write the actual scripts. We don’t have long for this; usually about 11 days. It would be impossible from a standing start and a blank screen. But as you can see, a vast amount of work has already been done, so now it’s a case of making the outline live and breathe. At this stage I am writing as fast as I can type, taking dictation from the characters in my head. In any other walk of life, hearing voices might be worrying. For us, it’s a positive advantage.

Again, the script editors work through the five weeks of scripts, and we have a weekend to do any rewriting that’s requested. Then pretty soon the pack for the next scriptmeeting will arrive in our email: ninety or so pages of research, briefings, archive references and draft storylines.

And it all starts again…

The Archers has responded to the Covid-19 crisis in a very creative and laudable way. What can you tell us about what’s been happening behind the scenes, and how that will play out in the programmes to come? 

My production colleagues have worked minor and largely unseen miracles. Our response has been twofold. First, the challenge of recording episodes which were already written and scheduled for transmission. This usually requires a large and changing cast flowing into and out of the BBC’s studios at The Mailbox in Birmingham, many of whom are well past normal retirement age. One (June Spencer who plays Peggy Woolley) is over 100 years old. I can’t begin to imagine how they managed it, but I understand a great deal of disinfectant was involved.

That gave us a buffer of episodes, which at the time of writing we are eking out to early May, at five transmissions a week rather than our usual six. We’re then going to broadcast a few weeks of archive episodes before we start broadcasting in our new format. Because the existing episodes were written before the realities of Covid-19 became apparent, for a while Ambridge has had to remain unaffected by the virus. I know it would have been nice if we could have reflected the national situation in real time. But that would have meant ditching practically every storyline, because almost all of them involved people meeting in some way, or refer to activities that were now not happening (mass VE Day celebrations, to take just one example). We’d then have to invent all-new stories, and then write completely new scripts. From my answer above, I hope people realise how impossible that would be. So it was a case of temporarily virus-free Archers or none at all.

The second challenge was to conceive and then create a drama which could carry the torch of The Archers, but which could be made under lockdown conditions. So for a while, the format of the programme will change significantly. We will hear single voices – several in each episode, but not directly conversing with each other. And we’ll use all the techniques available to us to tell stories about Ambridge getting on with life despite the restrictions. These include telephone calls, voicemail messages, even the occasional video blog – and we’ll hear our characters’ thoughts as they go about their daily work, reflecting their actions and their interactions with their fellow villagers.

Covid-19 will be present, but it will not be central to our stories. We feel people are hearing quite enough about that on the news, and indeed in their own lives.

We have equipped our actors with audio gear and training so they can record their scenes at home. And our talented sound engineers will use all the magic of the radio studio to conjure up the familiar Ambridge, which our listeners know almost as well as their own neighbourhoods.

I was in the first wave of writers to take on the new format, and I don’t mind telling you it was a bit of a white-knuckle ride for all involved. But now I’m through the other side and looking forward to my next episodes, I’m confident that it’s going to work. It’s still The Archers, with its conflict and comedy, countryside and character; just told in a different way.

 
Are there any other projects you are involved with that you can speak about?

Are you kidding? No, seriously The Archers keeps me pretty busy. But in 2019 I was lucky enough to be asked to write a spin-off book: The Archers Year of Food and Farming. It takes a month-by-month look at what happens in the farms, gardens and kitchens of
Ambridge, with recipes, archive memories, and newly imagined stories, exclusive to the book. It was a new style of writing for me, but I’m pleased to say it’s been very well received.

And I recently trained with Humanists UK to conduct non-religious funerals. It uses my writing and presentation skills in a very direct way, to help families at a crucial time. People can read more about my approach and practice on my celebrant webpage

 

Whether writing, performance, music, painting, sculpture and more – I think the arts have never been more vital. What is your take on the arts and their role in society?

Given that what we call civilization spans five thousand years or more, I’d hesitate to say ‘never more vital’. ‘Seldom more at threat’ seems more the mark, as market fundamentalism has denigrated anything that doesn’t increase shareholder value. If the only way you can access high quality art, in any medium, is through a high-priced ticket, we have failed art and we have failed society.

I think of my parents in the 1950s. A carpenter and a sewing machinist jumping on the train after work and rushing down to Cardiff, not just to consume but to participate in grand opera. We need more of that inclusivity.

 

Finally, three albums you’d take to a desert island and one book? 

I mentioned how important music was to me, so this is torture. Very quickly, then: Blue by Joni Mitchell, so I can have a good cry. Settle by Disclosure, so I can have a good dance. And something I’ve never heard before, washed up at random on the shore. I’m a great believer in the importance of new experiences to keep you alive.

For the book… let’s have a PG Wodehouse omnibus, so I can immerse myself in that beautifully crafted world-that-never-was.

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Charlot King on Twitter

Charlot King’s website

The Archers Year of Food and Farming – A Christmas reading

For the December extract from The Archers Year of Food and Farming, I’ve gone the full Jackanory and actually read a passage. I’ve tried to conjure up the magic of Christmas as seen through a child’s eyes (in this case Pip’s daughter Rosie). I do hope you enjoy it.

If this whets your appetite, you can buy The Archers Year of Food and Farming as a hardback or ebook through all booksellers. If you’d like to buy online, could you consider using Hive, which supports local bookshops.

You can read other extracts from the book on this blog under The Archers tag.

And do let me know what you think of the book – or these snippets –  by leaving a comment here or on Twitter: @keridavies 

The Archers Year of Food and Farming – a taste of November

Here’s the latest extract from my book The Archers Year of Food and Farming. This is from the November chapter, and gives an insight into what some of the farmers of Ambridge are getting up to in that dank month. 

For the farmers of Ambridge, it is the dampness of November which raises the greatest challenges. This is a key time of transition for Bridge Farm and Brookfield. At the start of the month, both have their cattle out in their fields. By the end, most of them will be housed indoors. The big question is, when to bring them in?

Johnny is in Long Meadow, gazing thoughtfully at the dairy herd. Montbéliardes are officially a red pied breed. ‘Pied’ in this case just means two-coloured, originally in reference to the black and white of the magpie. Each one displays a unique coat of random white and red-brown patches. They are good-looking beasts. But at the moment, Johnny is more concerned about the ground on which they are grazing.

With the reducing temperatures and elusive sunshine, the grass is getting dangerously low. And the more rain that falls, the more the horny, cloven hooves of the cattle will ‘poach’ the soil into mud. They must be moved into their winter housing before the ground is damaged, or it will not provide the high quality grass they will need come the spring. But as soon as they are inside, Bridge Farm’s costs will effectively rise, as the cows will be housed on straw, eating silage.

“What do you think, then? Tony joins his grandson in the gateway. “How much longer?”

“I were going to ask you, Granddad.”

Tony does not really get on with the ‘Monteys’. For him, they have too much Gallic obstinacy. But he knows his land, and has been checking the weather forecast.

“We’ll probably be all right for another week.”

Perhaps a fortnight after that, Tony will bring in his suckler herd of Angus cattle. A suckler herd is pretty much what it sounds like: cows who are still feeding their calves, although it must be said that by now these are pretty big calves. He will need a few helpers, so most of the family will turn out: someone leading, another driving them from the rear, plus a couple of stoppers in the yard, to make sure they don’t make a break for it and end up among the mismatched vintage crockery in Fallon’s tea room. The temptation to make a bull in a china shop joke here is almost irresistible…

At Brookfield, Pip, David and Ruth go through a similar anxious process. Although their timings might be a little different, the principle is the same. One evening after milking, rather than being walked back to the field, the dairy cows will find themselves directed into a strawed-down barn, their quarters for the next five months.

And within a few weeks, they will bring in their Herefords too. But not all of them. They will leave some youngstock (a term which covers anything from a calf to a heifer about to give birth) in the fields all winter. The Hereford is a hardy breed, perfectly able to ‘outwinter’. But any animal that is in the final stages of fattening is best brought under cover, so they can use their energy to put on condition, rather than keeping themselves warm against the chill winds and frosts of December.

If this whets your appetite, you can buy The Archers Year of Food and Farming as a hardback or ebook through all booksellers. If you’d like to buy online, could you consider using Hive, which supports local bookshops.

You can read other extracts from the book on this blog under The Archers tag.

And do let me know what you think of the book – or these snippets –  by leaving a comment here or on Twitter: @keridavies 

The Archers Year of Food and Farming – an October nugget

This is the second of a collection of extracts from the book I wrote in 2019. The Archers Year of Food and Farming is published by Seven Dials.

The October chapter starts like this:

I have to warn you, there is a lot of sex in October. And it is described with very direct Middle English words, so buckle up.

‘Tup’ is both a noun and a verb. It’s the old name for a ram, and you will still hear it used in that way. More frequently it is used to describe the act itself. At many farms, including Brookfield, October into November is tupping season.

As the morning sun lances through the mist, giving an ethereal quality to the familiar pastures, David and his younger son Ben drive their bleating ewes. David nods with approval as sheepdog Bess responds fluidly to Ben’s commands. A firm “Come bye!” and Bess moves to the left, clockwise around the flock. “Away!” means the opposite. When Bess is at a distance, Ben uses the whistle – a curved-sided metal triangle that sits on his tongue. A quick, high double note through the small hole signifies Come Bye, a single mid-tone Away. Now Ben blows a longer, higher blast and Bess immediately drops to the ground, alert and ready for the next command.

These ewes are being placed in various fields depending on their weight. Too skinny and they may not ovulate, but too much fat will bring problems come lambing time. So they will be fed appropriately to bring them all near the ideal tupping weight of about 70 kilograms. This will be a daily job for someone, and they need to as nimble as Robert Snell in the Village Hall doorway. Keen Flower and Produce Show contestants are as nothing compared to hungry ewes hearing their dinner tumbling from that large plastic sack into a long metal trough. David has had his legs bowled from under him on more than one occasion.

Ben turns to his father. “So we’re not doing anything for Harvest Supper this year?”

David’s face darkens. “No. Uncle Tony’s giving them a side of beef.”

“That’s good isn’t it? If we don’t have to bother – ”

“Because your uncle Kenton reckoned Bridge Farm beef was better than ours.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. Thanks, brother.”

Celebrations of the end of harvest exist all round the world. In Britain, the tradition dates back to pre-Christian times and is synonymous with this time of year; literally, given that the Old English word ‘haerfest’ actually means autumn. A good harvest could mean the difference between life and death. So when everything was safely gathered in, it was usual for the farmer to host a meal to thank everyone who had been involved. ‘A meal’ makes it sound like a sedate and civilised affair. But we can imagine that the relief after a month of toil, coupled with free food and (especially) drink gave the peasantry licence for the hooliest of hooleys. Imagine the Grundys in full flow, with a side order of Horrobins, and you will get an inkling.

The Ambridge Harvest Supper is a true community affair; lots of people mucking in with the arrangements and the catering. There is usually entertainment of some sort – often a barn dance with the steps called by buxom, buckskin-clad Jolene Rogers, the one-time Lily of Leyton Cross.

At various times the meal has been held at the Village Hall, Brookfield Farm, Bridge Farm, The Bull, Home Farm, and even in a marquee on the village green. In 1997 it became a truly moveable feast, on ‘safari supper’ lines. One course was served in each of the surrounding villages: Darrington, Edgeley, and Penny Hassett; while in Ambridge, Jennifer Aldridge waited with the desserts she had lovingly created. And waited… And waited. She eventually learned that each village had gone so over the top with their catering that most people were stuffed to bursting and could not consume any more. Poor Jennifer!

If this whets your appetite, you can buy The Archers Year of Food and Farming as a hardback or ebook through all booksellers. If you’d like to buy online, could you consider using Hive, which supports local bookshops.

You can read other extracts from the book on this blog under The Archers tag.

And do let me know what you think of the book – or these snippets –  by leaving a comment here or on Twitter: @keridavies 

The Archers Year of Food and Farming – a September morsel

In 2019, I wrote a book, The Archers Year of Food and Farming. It was published by Seven Dials in September of that year. 

As it has twelve chapters – one for each month of the year – I thought it might be nice to dust off my ancient blog and put up a monthly extract, to give people a flavour of the book.

As I’ve only just had this idea (in November, duh), I’ll put up three this month and one a month thereafter. 

This is how the book starts:

No, you haven’t opened the book at the wrong page – and the publisher has assembled it in the correct order. A teacher will tell you that of course the year starts in September. And so will a farmer, so that is where we are starting our Archers year

But for many Ambridge worthies, September also means a culmination. Armed with weighing scale and preserving funnel, trug and trowel, they are preparing to do battle in the annual Flower and Produce Show. Two rivals are gearing up for this gladiatorial contest. It started with an unthinking remark from Fallon Rogers, during a busy Sunday in her Ambridge Tea Room. Apparently unaware that the 1950s ended some time ago, Jennifer Aldridge had treated her stepson Ruairi to a slap-up end-of-the-holidays afternoon tea. A wizard wheeze, Ruairi had dubbed it, although Jennifer did not quite catch the irony. In any case, both had been sent into raptures by the scones and driven quite ecstatic by the Victoria sponge.

[There’s a recipe for Victoria sponge at this point]

The sugar rush might have had something to do with it, but Jennifer was effusive in her praise. “It’s just as well you can’t enter your cakes in the Flower and Produce Show, Fallon”, she had said, dropping her change into her Moroccan leather purse.

“It leaves the way clear for people like Emma”, Fallon joked as she closed the till, unaware that her employee had suddenly turned as cold and chippy as the mint choc ice-cream in their freezer.

“What did you mean by that?” The cafe was now empty, and Emma was sweeping the floor with unnecessary vigour.  “Are you saying I’m an amateur?”

“Um…” They usually rubbed along well, but sometimes Fallon was reminded that Emma was Susan Carter’s daughter. Both could take offence in an empty room, if they thought it was casting aspersions on their status.

“’Cos I bake as much of the food here as you do.” This was not strictly true, but Fallon knew better than to quibble.

“No, I just meant… you have put stuff in the show.  Your…  those Brazilian things.”

[Recipe – Brigadeiros]

Fallon blundered on. “It just wouldn’t seem right for me to enter, somehow. I’ve been a judge.”

“If you did, I’d give you a good run for your money.”

“I’m sure you would, but I can’t, can I.”

Emma’s eyes narrowed. “Not with a cake, maybe.”

And so the battle lines were drawn and the weapons selected. Cakes were clearly off limits. But the chutney that the tea room serves with its Ploughman’s Platefuls comes from a small supplier in St John’s Parva. So there could be no accusations of professionalism in that category.

[This imagined story continues through the chapter, interspersed with explanations of what’s happening on the farms in Ambridge, food-related stories from The Archers Archive, behind-the-scenes insights and lots of recipes. Over the months, I’ll choose bits from all these categories.]

If this whets your appetite, you can buy The Archers Year of Food and Farming as a hardback or ebook through all booksellers. If you’d like to buy online, could you consider using Hive, which supports local bookshops.

And do let me know what you think of the book – or these snippets –  by leaving a comment here or on my Twitter stream. 

See One, Nineteen in Birmingham this weekend

My friend and fellow Archers writer Tim Stimpson has a play on this Friday and Saturday, at the Old Joint Stock Theatre in Birmingham.

I saw One, Nineteen when it was premiered in London. It’s fast moving, funny and thought-provoking. It got great reviews, including four stars in Time Out.

Since then it’s been performed in Suffolk and Salford, and finally comes to Tim’s home city of Birmingham.

And given the news from the other side of the world, the subject matter is, to say the least, prescient. To quote from the press release:

“…Freak storms bring devastating floods to the English coast, but before the rescue effort arrives, the media are already in town spinning their story.
A play about the power of the news, the strength of the government, the question of climate change, and of course, and the search for Sam, Jack and little Chloe…”

See you there, I hope.

More details and to buy tickets

Flyer and production company details

Singles reviewed as if they were Archers characters

The Lipster has reviewed this week’s singles (well, some of them) as if they were Archers characters.

Morrisey’s new single is described “as all rather spineless, but in a pleasant enough way”, which equates it to “wet” Nic Hanson.

And Thunderheist’s Sweet 16 is compared to sexy Annabelle Schrivener.  “…Rather like Krystal Carrington with her high-falutin’ head for business and bod for sin, Annabelle also has a fearfully dirty way of intoning sentences about protection orders on local bird’s nests. She is, to use modern parlance, well fierce…”

It won’t mean much to non-Archers listeners, but The Lipster clearly knows her (I suspect it’s a her) music and her Archers, which makes her a top bean in my book.

(Do books have beans?)

Stephen Fry’s “L” competition – and the little voice

When I started following Stephen Fry on Twitter (and was stupidly chuffed that he followed me back), I was one of just a thousand(ish) who did so.

Unsurprisingly, this figure has grown hugely.  As I write, he’s being followed by over 63,000 Twitterers, and to mark passing the 50,000 mark, he set a competition for his fawning accolytes (one of whom I cheerfully admit to being).

You had to write a tweet (a Twitter message) which contained exactly 50 “L”s – L being the Roman numeral for 50.  Quite a challenge, given that tweets have a rigid 140-character limit.  Even more so, when spaces count as characters.

And you had to mark the message with a hashtag: #L  so that it could be identified as a competition entry.  So that’s two characters gone already, I thought (fatal mistake, as you will see).

What I wrote

A quick look at the entries as they enthusiastically rolled in showed a lot like this:

gavski82: #L illegal llamas loll, a ball?hells bell!all call a folly.a hill will roll,willy nilly.bill fell ill, all still.a pull will lilt,will fall.

Doesn’t make a lot of sense, really.  Nor did most of the others.

I thought the only way to stand a chance of gaining Mr Fry’s approbation was for it to be about something, and ideally to have a bit of rhythm to it, like a poem.

So after a bit of scratching about, this is what I submitted:

Ill,dull lull. Poll-all well,lol! All hail jolly poll!All roll pell-mell,all ululate,all lalala!Hail BHO!Hail Michelle!Tell world,allswell#L

BHO, I hoped, was recognisable as Barrack Hussein Obama, whose inauguration had just taken place.  And I used as much punctuation and spaces as I could spare to indicate the rhythm of the piece (piece?  tut, pretentious, moi?), which should read like this:

Ill, dull lull.
Poll – all well, lol!
All hail jolly poll!
All roll pell-mell, all ululate, all lalala!
Hail BHO! Hail Michelle!
Tell world, all swell

I was quite pleased with it.  At least it wasn’t total nonsense.

But I messed up the hashtag.  I didn’t leave a space before it, so the hashtag engine didn’t pick it up, which means it wasn’t considered for the competition.

Boo, hoo, so what?

Why am I telling you this?  It’s because of the little voice.

I thought, to protect my idea of doing an Obama tribute, I’d leave it until close to the deadline to post my tweet.

I was writing scripts for The Archers at the time, which takes total concentration.

As I sat at my desk at 9.30 on the Saturday morning of the (noon) deadline, I read my “note to self” to post the tweet at 11.30.  A tiny fleeting thought passed through my mind: “shall I set an alarm?”  No, I thought. It’ll be fine.  I need to get on with writing this script.

Next thing I knew, it was ten to midday. Sudden panic. I grabbed my draft, carefully typed it into Twitter, and sent it.

When I came to the end of a scene about twenty minutes later, I went hunting for my entry in the hashtags.

It wasn’t there.

And then I realised that the #L wasn’t two characters.  It was three, because it needed a space to separate it out from the other text.  A space that I has used in search of my precious rhythm, but could have sacrificed.

God, I was annoyed.  With myself, which is the worst sort of annoyance there is, of course. I’d worked quite hard in my limited free time to come up with this offering, and I might just as well have not bothered, as I told myself, my wife, my nearest son, my Twitter buddies, and would have told the milkman if he’d been around.

Listen, you idiot (me, I mean)

So to make myself feel a tiny bit better, I tried to think what I might learn from this.  And, not for the first time, it was a lesson about that little voice.

My subconscious knew what the right thing to do was, and it told me.  If I’d posted the tweet a bit earlier, my error might well have dawned on me in time to put it right.

But the subconscious is so easily shouted down by the noisy, busy forefront of the mind.

I’ve told the little voice “no, it’ll be fine” before.  And I’ve almost always regretted it later.

So when you get that little whisper, remember me banging about the house at 12.30 on a Saturday lunchtime, ridiculously annoyed about a little word game.

And PAY ATTENTION TO IT!

(And I’ll try to, as well)

Who’s Who in The Archers

 

Every year for the past ten years (more, actually) I’ve written a guide to the characters and places in The Archers. The latest edition –  Who’s Who in The Archers 2009 – is out now.

This is the book that I wanted when I first started listening to The Archers.  So many characters, with their interconnecting lives… Who were they all?  And why did so many people call this Tom Forrest guy “Uncle Tom”?

So when I actually started to work on the programme, I suggested we write and publish a guide and sell it direct to the public.  We weren’t allowed to make a profit, so the purchase price simply covered the production and mailing costs.

Various people worked on those early self-published editions, but it settled down to be my baby, and we sold over 90,000 copies.

BBC Books

Eventually BBC Books took it on and published it as a proper paperback.  It’s gone through some small changes over the years – expanded in size, adding a Frequently Asked Questions section and an index of characters’ forenames (as it can be many months before you hear a character referred to by their surname), and this year the cover has been redesigned.

But essentially it’s the same idea as the original – a guide to the main current characters – speaking and silent – and the main locations in Ambridge.  That’s about 120 entries.  We even list the numbers and types of animals and the acreages of the different crops on the farms.

Entertainment

“…Sid Perks is the nicest homophobe you could hope to meet…”

It’s a reference work, obviously, but I try to make it an entertaining read, which led to someone dubbing it “the little book with the big attitude”.  As well as a robust approach to the foibles of the characters, I’ve had fun with how the facts are presented.  Over the years I’ve had some entries that wrap up the basic information in formats such as a postcard from Grey Gables hotel, a rubbish website for Borchester Chamber of Commerce, and a Good Pub Guide review of The Bull, Ambridge.

“…Cynics would say that Kate getting pregnant by a black South African was just another ploy to shock the more conservative elements in Ambridge…”

And if any entry has been substantially the same for two years running, then I completely rewrite it, to keep it fresh.  I don’t want someone picking it up and saying, oh, no I’ve got this already.  This means that in some cases I’ve  written the same basic information several different ways, which makes it interesting for me, too (I don’t always use the word “interesting” when I’m racking my brains for yet another approach, I must admit).

Accuracy

Of course, the main thing is that it has to be accurate, which poses a particular set of challenges.  Most of the writing is done in April/May for a July press date and an early October publication date.  When I’m writing, we haven’t planned in detail exactly what’s going to happen on air in publication week.  I work from our longterm planning “grids”, which give me a fair idea, but there’s always a lot of fine-tuning at proof stage.

Even then I don’t always get it 100 per cent.  In one edition I anticipated by two weeks a character (Kenton Archer) moving in with his girlfriend, for example. A small error, but it annoyed me.

And there’s also the challenge of keeping the book as accurate as possible once it’s been published, because things are changing all the time in the programme.  I’ve developed a cunning use of the perfect tense, so that an entry is still accurate even when I know a character’s circumstances will change over the life of the book.

So, for example, I won’t say: “Ed is serving a community punishment for breaking and entering”, even though that might be entirely accurate at the time of publication.  I’d say: “Ed was sentenced to a community punishment for breaking and entering”, which is true even when the character is no longer cleaning graffiti off the bandstand.

Blogged

The first mention of the book in the blogosphere – at least the first that I was aware of –  was by Tim Relf, who writes Farming Today’s entertaining Field Day blog.  He hates The Archers, apparently, so it was nice of him to give it a mention.

Academic study of Archers fans

For the past few months, a small number of academics has been looking at the online behaviour of listeners and fans of BBC radio.

It’s part of a knowledge-sharing project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

One of the areas of fandom it studied was The Archers, looking mainly at the Archers Addicts fan club, the Archers Appreciation Facebook group and (to the greatest extent) the BBC’s own Archers message board, for which I am the host.

It had some interesting things to say about the conflict – which is certainly there on the BBC’s board – between people who simply want to discuss the characters and storylines in a more or less straightforward way, and those who, in the words of the report, take an “ironic” or “anti-fan” approach.

I’ve posted on the message board in the past about my worries that a very energetic and vocal group who tend to take a negative line can set the tone for the board, discouraging milder users.  Indeed the report says that some users are put off by this, and choose to go elsewhere.

But the BBC board – funded by all licence fee payers – should really be a place where everyone can feel they are welcome to post their views.  It’s a continuing challenge.

Having said that, I should count my blessings, as overall the discussions on the BBC board are of far higher quality than in many other (non-Archers) online forums.

Here’s a brief summary of the findings, by Lyn Thomas, of London Metropolitan University.

You might also be interested in this report on specialist music fans (and indeed producers) by Andrew Dubber and Tim Wall of Birmingham City University.