Save our Helen!

Never before has a radio soap crossed so far over from fiction and into the real world. Never before has it become imperative to listen to each and every episode of The Archers (just after 7 p.m. on Radio 4, every day except Saturday) as if by being there, listening in on the ether, we can in some way stand alongside Helen Titchener and defend her from her poisonous husband Rob as he tries to entangle her further in his stifling, controlling web. Some listeners have been so appalled by the current storyline, horrified by the insidious way Rob is trying to take control of his wife, that almost £60,000 has so far been raised in a real live charity appeal on the internet. Just look for ‘The Helen Titchener Rescue Fund’ on JustGiving.

Unfortunately no such relief will actually reach Helen; the charity Refuge, for victims of domestic abuse, to which the money will go, has not made it into fictional Borsetshire. We can only sit by and listen as Rob slowly squashes the spirit out of Helen, wondering at her failure to recognise what is happening, and desperate to reach into the radio and save her.

But why do we care so much? Why go to the length of setting up a rescue fund? After all, Helen does not actually exist, nor Rob. No one will really get hurt as this storyline unfolds. She’s the mere victim of capricious scriptwriters in search of a hook that will keep listeners tuned in day after day to the Radio 4 soap. The only man guilty of torturing Helen is Sean O’Connor, the soap’s editor, who has form on using domestic violence as an audience draw: his previous work experience was on EastEnders. Yet such is Helen’s plight that listeners are taking to extreme measures in her defence.