As The Archers takes on Calendar Girls, the question is: Did they or didn’t they?
STANDING around the piano, these are the stars of The Archers as listeners could only dare to imagine them.
The actresses who voice the farming folk of Ambridge in the Radio 4 soap little expected to appear in front of a camera – let alone in the nude.
But the cast members posed for the picture after it was announced they would be performing Calendar Girls for the village’s annual Christmas production.
And as they disrobed for a Radio Times photoshoot, it was revealed they had also ‘really entered into the spirit’ of things while recording the episode too.
When asked if they actually took their clothes off for the nude scenes, Sean O’Connor, the soap’s editor, added: ‘No comment. But I can tell you that, for the first time, the Archers studio was a closed set.’
The cast were also told to stay silent about the undress code, but Annabelle Dowler, 41, who plays Kirsty Miller, said: ‘Let’s just say
‘I won’t strip unless Lynda Snell does’
we all know each other a lot better now.’ She added: ‘You’d walk down a corridor at the BBC and you’d hear conversations like, “Well, I’m not taking my clothes off unless Lynda Snell does”. So it was a bit odd.’
The women will retell the true story of friends from a WI who raised money by posing naked for a charity calendar. The story became a hit film and a West End play.
O’Connor acknowledged the idea of doing Calendar Girls for radio began as ‘a joke about doing something very visual in a nonvisual context’. But it soon became reality.
One of the stars of the stage show, Sian Phillips, 82, will become an honorary resident of Ambridge when she takes part in the production as Jean harvey, mentioned but never heard in The Archers over the years.
She will be joined by Sunny Ormonde, 61, who plays Lilian Bellamy; Alison Dowling, 55, (Elizabeth Pargetter); Carole Boyd, 74, (Lynda Snell); and Charlotte Martin (Susan Carter). The episode will air on December 27.