The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
I was there
June Spencer (aka Peggy Woolley) on 70 years of The Archers
I first heard that I was in The Archers in the BBC canteen – I’d been doing a lot of work for radio in London and Birmingham. It was 1950, I was 30, and I was queuing up for lunch when a young woman [Gwen Berryman, who played Doris] said to me, ‘Oh, you’re going to be in The Archers, aren’t you?’ And I said, ‘What’s The Archers?’ Godfrey (Baseley, the creator) had been talking about it in the bar, saying, ‘June Spencer will play Peggy Woolley’ – I hadn’t even been asked!
Peggy was to be the town girl who was brought into the country and didn’t know anything about it, so it was a way of explaining the country to the listeners in towns. She was married to Jack Archer, and they managed the Bull. And we were told, ‘This isn’t a drama programme. It’s real life, overheard.’ And to this day, we’re the only programme on air where there are no credits read out at the end. And still so many people think we are real. Just the other day somebody said to me, ‘We so enjoy listening to you in The Archers – have you ever done any acting?’
In those days it was recorded on tape, all in one go, with a big old-fashioned microphone – we recorded all five episodes, and if we made a mistake we had to go right back to the beginning. When I started, all broadcasting was live, so by then we were used to not fluffing. Nowadays we sit around in the green room and read through it and it’s timed; then we go into the studio and record it scene by scene.
Paddy Greene [Jill Archer] has been in The Archers longer than anybody else, because although I’ve been in it since the pilot episodes [there were five in 1950], I had a long break when my husband Roger and I adopted two children. I’d resigned because I didn’t think it right to adopt a baby and then go off and leave it for three days a week, but I went back after a few years.
There have been many rewarding times but also a lot of humdrum times, when my character was just ticking over. But I’ve recently been getting far more scenes that are verging on comedy, which I’m revelling in. For donkey’s years Peggy never had a sense of humour.
I feel very proud of the programme. The Archers has done a lot of good – with its domestic abuse theme [Rob and Helen], for example – and we don’t do it sensationally. They wanted an Alzheimer’s story. Vanessa Whitburn – the editor at that time – knew that Roger had it, and asked how I’d feel playing the part of a wife whose husband had Alzheimer’s when I’d been through it in real life. I said I was all for it. It was something that I felt should be brought into the open. They asked me to go to a script meeting to talk about it, and they used quite a lot of that input. I went on to become an ambassador for Alzheimer’s Research UK.
On my 100th birthday last year, Jeremy Howe [the editor] had said to me, ‘What sort of celebration would you like?’ And I said, ‘Oh a nice little tea party with whoever is in on that day.’ Well… it developed into something quite huge: so many people were there.
I still really enjoy the job, and there are probably not many people who are still working aged 100, are there? — Interview by Jessamy Calkin