{"id":694384,"date":"2026-05-26T07:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T07:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/694384\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T07:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T07:34:08","slug":"im-an-absolute-gurner-im-worried-the-archers-stars-on-their-flower-power-stage-show-the-archers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/694384\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m an absolute gurner. I\u2019m worried\u2019: The Archers stars on their flower power stage show | The Archers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m very careful not to betray my true levels of excitement when I speak to The Archers<\/a> actor Susie Riddell, before a nationwide theatre tour to mark the rural radio drama\u2019s 75th anniversary. I may be an Ambridge superfan but I still don\u2019t want to scare the horses (nor indeed the cows, pigs or sheep). Riddell\u2019s character Tracy Horrobin (who will be appearing with husband, Jazzer, local lush Lilian and cravat-wearing criminal Brian) is not one to hold back however: \u201cIt\u2019s like a dream come true for me too!\u201d she confides, slipping easily into broad Borsetshire. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d see the day that I was interviewed by the Guardian. I\u2019ve seen it in the Bull!\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bull, for the uninitiated, is a half-timbered pub on the village green offering ale, artisanal food and, it seems, copies of the Guardian. It\u2019s a thrilling thought: I briefly entertain the idea of rock star turned vegan baker turned wedding caterer turned pub chef Fallon sitting in the snug, poring over my pie recipes in the Guardian. But it\u2019s stretching credibility to believe an old-fashioned village boozer would find room for any reading material more substantial than Farmers Weekly. Riddell concedes the point. \u201cMaybe Helen left it behind?\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markAre we going to try to look cool on\u00a0tour? Or will we do Barbours and\u00a0tweeds?<\/p>\n

Helen\u2019s mother, Pat, certainly takes the paper. Indeed, this was the centre of an early 80s storyline, when she put her foot down and made her husband, Tony, switch his allegiance from the Mirror. The Horrobins, meanwhile, long the bad apples in the rustic basketweave of Ambridge life, definitely buy the Borchester Echo, \u201cbecause Bert likes to look at the racing\u201d. But when it comes to her own character, a mother of two responsible for an elderly parent and several part-time jobs, Riddell says: \u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019s got time to read the flippin\u2019 paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

That \u201cflipping\u201d is very Tracy \u2013 a woman, one senses, who is more constrained than most by the BBC\u2019s rules on language. Riddell has happy memories of shouting obscenities from just off-mic during a cricket-season storyline on abusive language, and being told: \u201cYou can\u2019t say that on Radio 4!\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, we muse, how little details such as choice of newspaper help to round out a character. \u201cLike someone\u2019s favourite food,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a shorthand way of placing them.\u201d And when I ask her fellow pint-puller Sunny Ormonde, who plays the \u201cgin-swigging, smoking, man-hunting\u201d (her words not mine) Lilian Bellamy, about the secret of the show\u2019s enduring success, she hardly hesitates: \u201cIt\u2019s the characters. The Archers is very, very much character-led. And I think the characters are brilliant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet radio is a peculiar beast. As Ormonde says, the fact that \u201cwe have to use our imagination so much, unlike television, where you\u2019re spoon-fed everything\u201d, encourages a feeling of ownership. Certainly Archers devotees tend to be protective of these fictional figures whom, in many cases, they\u2019ve known for longer than the scriptwriters or other actors have.<\/p>\n

Tim Bentinck, who has played farmer David Archer since 1982 (and will be appearing on stage along with David\u2019s son, Ben, village busybody Susan and pregnant beaver-botherer Kirsty), recalls the outrage when David\u2019s wife, Ruth, embarked on an affair with Sam the cowman: \u201cA lot of listeners said that\u2019s completely out of character, which was very valid. But I mean, people do behave out of character and I like that. Otherwise, if you always know what\u2019s going to happen, that\u2019s a bit dull.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s a weird sort of dance\u2019 \u2026 sound effects artist Vanessa Nuttall in her booth, with director Kim Greengrass, Tim Bentinck (David Archer) and Sunny Ormonde (Lilian Bellamy) rehearsing in the Radio 4 studio. Photograph: The Washington Post\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

He recounts a story about sitting next to a woman at a dinner party who was \u201ca bit tiddly on wine\u201d and had no idea who he was. She started \u201csounding forth about The Archers\u201d. All of which brings him to the point: \u201cIf there are 5 million listeners, then there are 5 million David Archers \u2013 and not one of them looks like me!\u201d<\/p>\n

So there is an inevitable risk of disappointment: Riddell says even she pictures Tracy differently. Still, they\u2019re all excited by the prospect of performing a specially written episode, set at Ambridge\u2019s annual flower and produce show, in front of a live audience. \u201cI\u2019m so looking forward to it!\u201d Ormonde says. \u201cAll I\u2019ve got to do is walk on stage, say \u2018Hello darling\u2019, do the laugh, and that\u2019ll be it! I think it could get quite hysterical!\u201d<\/p>\n

Although they are all stage actors by training, I do wonder if the addition of the visual dimension is a little nerve-racking. \u201cWhat are we going to look like?\u201d wonders Bentinck. \u201cAre we going to try to look cool? Or are we going to do Barbours and tweeds and all that? I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

While they don\u2019t usually have to think about things such as costumes, Bentinck assures me that in other respects, recording in a studio for radio isn\u2019t so different to being live on stage: \u201cIf you saw the contortions we put ourselves into \u2013 it\u2019s not just speaking into a microphone.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re chopping a carrot, Riddell explains, \u201cyou have to make all the movements, all the physical effort noises of what you\u2019re doing.\u201d (This is to tie in with the sound effects provided by Archers audio engineer Vanessa Nuttall.) It\u2019s \u201ca weird sort of dance\u201d that should be \u201cquite interesting for the audience to see, and a bit odd\u201d. Riddell laughingly admits to some concerns, chiefly the fact that when she plays Tracy, \u201cI\u2019m an absolute gurner! I\u2019m slightly worried about people going, \u2018What is she doing with her face?\u2019 But I\u2019m just going have to gurn, otherwise Tracy\u2019s voice isn\u2019t going to come out right!\u201d<\/p>\n

Acting in a radio drama, they all say, can require as much imagination as listening to one. Bentinck compares it to being a mime artist: \u201cAs long as you can imagine you are there, the listener will believe that.\u201d Riddell agrees: \u201cI do believe in Ambridge. I know that\u2019s weird, but it is a place that exists for me. And even though, when I listen to it, I know I was standing in front of a microphone with a script, and Ness doing sound effects behind me, in my head is the Bull, or the living room at No 6, The Green. Just like every other listener, I\u2019m there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riddell relishes the idea of being \u201cin a room full of people who love the show as much as me \u2013 we could talk about it for hours!\u201d But there will also be a Bull pub quiz, not to mention the unknown quantity of a nightly Q&A to prepare for. With storylines stretching back three-quarters of a century, few actors can hope to know as much about Ambridge as the show\u2019s older listeners, or indeed younger obsessives like me.<\/p>\n

\u2018His Archers knowledge is amazing\u2019 \u2026 Kelly. <\/p>\n

When I politely enquire after Tracy\u2019s silent brother Stewart \u2013 who, according to the 1994 Book of the Archers, wears a smart leather jacket he is \u201crumoured to have stolen from Birmingham\u201d \u2013 Riddell pleads ignorance of his very existence: \u201cI need to look into that. That\u2019s one of the questions somebody in the audience might ask.\u201d We decide she should check with Ryan Kelly, who plays Jazzer, because \u201chis Archers knowledge is amazing\u201d \u2013 no doubt helped by the fact that, as a blind actor, he learns his lines by heart rather than reading them when they record.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Bentinck looks momentarily startled when I remind him, after he reveals his suspicion that David \u201cmay not be the brightest of sparks\u201d, that the scion to the Brookfield acres failed his maths A-level twice. But I\u2019m not the only Archers fan willing to be brutally honest: a listener once approached him following a talk they had both attended taking a Marxist view of the Roman empire (not a topic one often hears discussed in the Bull) and told him how funny it had been to hear him asking questions \u2013 \u201cbecause you sounded so intelligent!\u201d He laughs uproariously.<\/p>\n

I suppose it shouldn\u2019t come as a surprise that he finds it easier to distinguish between himself and David than I do, although he bristles slightly when I ask him why he\u2019s so grumpy. Riddell once overheard someone criticising Tracy. \u201cI was quite offended,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause it\u2019s like someone telling me I\u2019m awful.\u201d She snorts with mirth. \u201cMaybe I should separate myself a bit more from the character.\u201d<\/p>\n

In truth, though, they\u2019re all touchingly fond of their alter egos. Ormonde \u201cadores Lily Billy as I call her\u201d, and Bentinck is so wedded to the idea of David\u2019s upstanding moral character that he refuses to even consider who else in the village he\u2019d like to be married to if not Ruth, despite my solemn promise that his wife will never know. After all, if there\u2019s one thing we can all agree on, it\u2019s that she\u2019s not one of the show\u2019s Guardian readers.<\/p>\n

The Archers: Live at 75 tour<\/a> is on across the UK from 7 June to 26 November <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m very careful not to betray my true levels of excitement when I speak to The Archers actor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75],"class_list":["post-694384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}