Death in the afternoon

After weeks of waiting, it was all over in a matter of seconds. Weeks in which I’ve listened to every episode, just in case. Weeks of enduring night after night the awe-inspiringly-dull Annette and Helen saga. Weeks of wondering how The Archers’ scriptwriters would cope with the death last October of Norman Painting, the actor described as ‘the lynchpin’ of the longest-running radio soap. Would they try to replace him, or simply do away with his character, Phil Archer? Then, when it came, we were given so much advance warning it was as if Health & Safety had visited BH and told the Controller: there’s to be nothing sudden, or too frightful. We don’t want a repeat of that dreadful evening when Shula’s husband Mark Hebden was killed (it was so shocking I almost caused an accident on the Elephant & Castle roundabout).

‘There’s a sad shock in store for Jill at Glebe Cottage,’ the announcer declared in her most soothing, must-keep-the-listeners-calm tone of voice. There could be no mistaking what was coming somewhere between 7.03 and 7.15 last Friday evening. Jill Archer had been out for the day with Peggy and Chris. Cue: lots of reminiscing about how she had first met her husband Phil. As she walked through the door on their return, we heard the strains of music. Swooping violins, a bit of Elgar, everything carefully designed to prepare us for what was to come.

Jill discovered Phil in his chair, a cup of tea by his side. Nothing was said. But the violins kept on swooning up and down, playing us out of the episode. It could have been moving — except that it was all so tasteful, trying so desperately hard not to upset us that it sounded as if we were in a Funeral Parlour, or the waiting room at the Crematorium.