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MeI am very careful not to give away my true happiness when I speak Archers actress Susie Riddell, before embarking on a nationwide theater tour to celebrate 75 years of rural radio drama. I may be a big fan of Ambridge but I still don’t want to scare horses (not even cows, pigs or sheep). Riddell’s character, Tracy Horrobin (who will be seen with her husband, Jazzer, common Lilian and cravat-wearing criminal Brian) is not to be held back: “It’s like a dream for me too!” he reveals, slipping easily into the broad Borsetshire. “I never thought I would see the day he was interviewed by the Guardian.”
The Bull, for the uninitiated, is a semi-detached pub on the village green serving ale, modern food and, apparently, copies of the Guardian. Fun idea: I briefly relish the idea of rock star-turned-vegan baker-turned-wedding chef-turned-pub chef Fallon sitting down, reading my pie recipes in the Guardian. But it stretches credulity to believe that an old country man could find a place to read more than the Farmers Weekly. Riddell agrees with this point. “Maybe Helen left it?”
Helen’s mother, Pat, is actually taking the paper. Indeed, this was in the middle of the story of the early 80s, when she put her foot down and made her husband, Tony, change his loyalty from the mirror. The Horrobins, meanwhile, long for bad apples in the rustic basketweave of Ambridge’s life, of course they buy the Borchester Echo, “because Bert likes to watch the competition”. But as for her character, a mother of two who has the responsibility of an elderly parent and multiple part-time jobs, Riddell says: “I don’t think she has time to read the newspaper.”
That “turn” is Tracy – a woman, one feels, who is more constrained than the BBC’s language rules. Riddell fondly remembers an off-screen profanity during a cricket talk on profanity, being told: “You can’t say that on Radio 4!”
It’s funny, we remember, how little things like choosing a newspaper can make a difference. “Like a person’s favorite food,” he says. “It’s a shortcut to put them in.” And when I ask her pint-pint co-star Sunny Ormonde, who plays the “swigging, smoking, manhunting” (her words, not mine) Lilian Bellamy, about the secret to the show’s enduring success, she doesn’t hesitate to say: “It’s the characters.”
However, radio is a strange beast. As Ormonde says, the fact that “we have to use our imagination more, unlike television, where you are fed with a spoon”, encourages a sense of individuality. Indeed, Archers devotees tend to defend these fictional characters who, in many cases, have known them longer than other authors or actors.
Tim Bentinck, who has played farmer David Archer since 1982 (and will appear on stage with David’s son, Ben, Susan, a busy villager and Kirsty), recalls the anger that David’s wife, Ruth, started an affair with Sam the cowherd: “A lot of people said it was childish, but I do inappropriate things. Otherwise, if you always know what’s going to happen, it’s unpleasant.
He tells the story of being next to a woman at a dinner party who was “a little winded on the wine” and had no idea who she was. He started “hearing about The Archers”. All this leads him to the conclusion: “If there are 5 million listeners, then there are 5 million David Archers – and none of them look like me!”
So there is an inevitable risk of disappointment: Riddell says even he Tracy pictures differently. However, they are all excited at the prospect of creating a specially written episode, set on Ambridge’s annual flowers and putting on a show, in front of an audience. “I’m looking forward to it!” Ormonde said. “All I have to do is get on stage, say ‘Hello dear’, smile, and that’s it!
Although they are all stage actors by training, I wonder if the addition of a visual appearance is less nerve-wracking. “How are we going to live?” wonders Bentinck. “Are we going to try to look good? Or are we going to wear Barbours and tweeds and all that? I don’t know.”
Although he often doesn’t have to think about things like clothes, Bentinck assures me that in some ways, recording in a radio studio is not so different from being on stage: “You see the distractions we put ourselves through – it’s not just talking on the microphone.”
If you’re cutting carrots, Riddell explains, “you have to do all the movement, all the loud noises of what you’re doing.” (This is in line with the sound provided by Archers audio expert Vanessa Nuttall.) It’s a “wonderful dance” that should be “very interesting for the audience to see, and odd”. Riddell laughs that there are some things that worry him, especially because when he sings Tracy’s song, “I’m just a gunfighter!” and what is he doing with his face?’ But I have to cry, or Tracy’s voice won’t be clear!”
Doing a radio show, they all say, can require as much thought as listening to someone else. Bentinck compares it to being an artist: “The more you think you’re there, the more the audience will believe it.” Riddell admits: “I believe in Ambridge. I know it’s strange, but it’s a place that exists for me. And even, when I listen, I know that I was standing in front of the microphone with the script, and Ness is doing the sounds behind me, in my head there is Bull, or the living room at No 6, The Green. I also like everyone else listening.”
Riddell enjoys the idea of being “in a room full of people who love the game as much as I do – we could talk about it for hours!” But there will also be Bull pub quizzes, not to mention an unknown number of Q&A nights to prepare. With stories going back three quarters of a century, few actors would expect to know as much about Ambridge as older viewers of the show, or even younger viewers like me.
When I politely ask Tracy’s brother, Stewart, who, according to the 1994 Book of the Archers, is wearing a smart leather jacket “reportedly stolen in Birmingham” – Riddell pleads ignorance of its existence. We choose to look at Ryan Kelly, who plays Jazzer, because “his knowledge of Archers is amazing” – no doubt helped by the fact that, as a blind artist, he learns his lines by heart instead of reading as he writes.
Likewise, Bentinck looks momentarily puzzled and reminds him, after revealing his suspicions that David “may not be very bright”, that the scion at Brookfield acres failed A-level maths twice. But I’m not the only archer fan willing to be brutally honest: a listener came up to him after hearing a lecture they’d all attended taking on the Marxist idea of the Roman Empire (not a topic often discussed in the Bull) and told him how funny it was to hear him ask questions – “because you sound so smart!” He laughs loudly.
I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that she finds it easier to tell the difference between her and David than I do, though she does cringe a bit when I ask her why she’s angry. Riddell once overheard someone scolding Tracy. “I was very angry,” he says, “because it was like someone telling me I was the worst.” He breathes a sigh of relief. “Maybe I should get a little out of character.”
In fact, however, they both love their change. Ormonde “loves Lily Billy as I call her”, and Bentinck is so wedded to the idea of David’s good character that he refuses to even consider who else in the village would want to marry him but Ruth, although I promised his wife would never know. After all, if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that he’s not one of the show’s Guardian readers.
