Birth of a long-running story of country folk
IF you tune in to Radio 4 each evening at 7pm – or 10am on Sundays for the omnibus edition – then you are an Archers fan.
The world’s longest-running soap opera was first broadcast nationally on January 1, 1951 and 68 years on is as much a British institution as afternoon tea or talking about the weather.
The programme was devised and originally scripted by Godfrey Baseley, who lived near Tewkesbury at Corse Lawn in a house named, appropriately, Ambridge.
The idea for the fictional farming community came to him when he was working as a producer of agricultural programmes at BBC Midlands, as he explained to the Gloucester Journal, weekly sister newspaper to The Citizen, at the age of 64, in 1969.
“The creation of the Archers attempted to do two things,” he said. “To make the material more acceptable to the whole farming family and to help the farmer to be better understood by the masses in towns”.
Mr Baseley also pointed out that in his imagination, Borsetshire nestled on the borders of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.
Baseley wrote the pilot series of five episodes that started on Whit Monday in May 1950 and was broadcast to listeners in the Midlands region of what was then called the BBC Home Service.
In these debut programmes, incidentally, the Archers lived at Wimberton Farm, not Brookfield.
The trial run of the drama proved
popular with the radio audience and when it was given its national airing , The Archers ousted Dick Barton, Special Agent from the peak time 6.45pm slot.
The initial series of an everyday story of country folk, as the programme makers billed it, was scripted by Geoffrey Webb and Edward J Mason, who had also been the writers of Dick Barton.
Geoffrey Webb was from Dursley and was unfortunately killed in a road accident in the late 1950s on his way back from the Badminton Horse Trials.
Edward J Mason went on to write extensively for radio, TV and the movies.
He also devised a number of radio quiz shows such as My Word in which Denis Norden and Frank Muir appeared for many years.
Webb and Mason weaved material from the Ministry of Agriculture into Archers’ storylines, as the show was intended not only to entertain, but also to inform farmers and smallholders of ways to increase food production in post Second World War Britain.
Since 1970 the Ministry of Agriculture has had no input in the programme, although as all listeners know, contemporary farming issues are often touched upon.
Although they obviously aren’t well- known faces, cast members of the programme have long enjoyed celebrity status.
Actor Bob Arnold, for example, who for many years played the part of Tom Forrest, was invited by the organisers of Quedgeley village fete to open the event in 1967 and the Citizen’s photographer was there to capture the moment when he entertained ladies on the bottle stall with a rural anecdote or two.
The list of people in the public eye from all walks of life who have made cameo appearances in Britain’s bestloved radio soap is extensive and in some cases unlikely.
It includes Bradley Wiggins, the Duchess of Cornwall, the crime writer Colin Dexter, Princess Margaret, Judi Dench, England cricket captain Mike Gatting and everyone’s favourite visitor to these shores from Down Under, Dame Edna Everage.
Long after his official retirement, Godfrey Baseley continued to work on the programme, both as script editor and creator of new storylines.
He also played the role of Brigadier Winstanley.
If you are a fan of long standing you may recall Doris Archer owned a dog called Trigger.
This part was barked by Godfrey Baseley’s Jack Russell of the same name.