Other sites can give you day-by-day summaries. If you’re new to all this, you may not have time to wade through 15,000 plot summaries, so here is a cut-out-and-keep instant guide to Who’s Who and What’s What.

THE ARCHERS STORY SO FAR...  

AMBRIDGE is a pleasant community of some 270 souls in the English Midlands, near the town of BORCHESTER, famed for its Department Store, UNDERWOODS, its CASH AND CARRY, JAXX KAFF, and its pizza houses used by Young People (ie anyone under 50). You won’t find AMBRIDGE on any official maps

because it exists in a peculiar space-time vortex in which conventional geography has no meaning

because it is home to strange ailments, which in their mildest form attack the vocal chords, either rendering the sufferer totally mute, or drastically transforming the way they speak (it is, however, considered ill-mannered to enquire of anyone so afflicted what has happened to them.) More seriously, they can be fatal, which accounts for the high turnover of marriage partners or the sudden departure of residents to BRISTOL when they fear an attack coming on. (Again, however, it is considered extremely bad form to refer to such people ever again.)

For reasons just explained, most of the land in Ambridge has been owned by a succession of people, most of whom (such as CAMERON FRASER, SIMON PEMBERTON, or the current MATT CRAWLFORTH, a Cockney wide boy, and JACK WOOLLEY, a 50s/60s property speculator, who affects an idiot bonhomie, but has retained enough wits to continue to launder his money through GREY GABLES, a sort of Crossroads-meets-the Munster House) have been crooks of one type or another.  For reasons unclear, CRAWLFORTH has a first refusal on all property that comes on to the market in Ambridge, while WOOLLEY, while affecting, doubtless for tax purposes, a loss of marbles, is the focus in a battle-of-love (of money) between his wife PIGGY and adopted daughter WITCH HAZEL. The exception to all this crookery is BRAIN ALDRIDGE, one of the few people in the village committed to making an honest and credible living. However, most of this living is earned from a people-smuggling business in HUNGARY managed by his adopted daughter DEBBIE, but for tax efficiency the proceeds are run through the books of HOME FARM, which is run by MADAM, a failed goat farmer, and ANDIANJEV, a mysterious and silent Eastern European.

The only other farm of any size, BROOKFIELD, is owned by the ARCHER dynasty, founded by Grandad DAN, who cheated his brothers out of their inheritance and forced them to flee to Canada and New Zealand. History repeated itself, as the farm was inherited in turn not by his older son, JACK (another Jack, please pay attention), but the younger, PHIL, who drove his brother to drink and the grave, and by the latter’s second son, DIMWIT, who continually struggles against the attempts of his elder brother, KENTON, to reclaim his inheritance. DIMWIT is married to ROOOTH, who has three children, one breast, and no head for business whatsoever. For good reason all agricultural husbandry at BROOKFIELD is therefore contracted out; the agrarian to BRAIN, the dairy to sinister bovicultural genius SAM, and the bees to ROOOTH’s mother-in-law.

PHIL has been married twice, first to GRACE, the daughter of an earlier rich landowner. She was famously murdered in a stable fire organised for the insurance money. Amazingly, the police accepted PHIL’s cover story that they had gone out for a meal as there was “nothing on the box” (this was the first night of ITV). However, to this day he remains wracked with guilt, and for some reason cannot therefore eat gorgonzola cheese. His second wife, JILL, is a 70 odd year-old wonder woman on some sort of amphetamines, doubtless supplied to her by local drugs baron and gambling addict ALISTAIR, the “vet” husband of her daughter SHULA..

SHULA is also on her second marriage, her first husband MARK having collided with something even more wooden than himself. She has one child, DAMIEN, allegedly born of IVF treatment after MARK’s death, but undoubtedly the outcome of something much more murky, and possibly the reason why SHULA had MARK removed. She is a millionaire, having inherited not only this insurance money, but also a cottage belonging to her grandparents (she has a remarkable history of being alone with people when they go, and then inheriting off the back of it. New listeners are advised not to listen to SHULA alone.) She currently lives at THE STABLES, an obviously loss making front for the drugs business that she bought off her AUNTIE CHRIS, the widow of GEORGE BOREFORD, a professional Yorkshireman, and a licensed persecutor of peasants.

PHIL and JILL have one more child, ELIZABETH who, however, had neither to cheat nor murder for her wealth, but simply married it in the form of NIGEL PARGETTER. Under their joint stewardship their stately home, LOWER LOXLEY, totters from financial crisis to financial crisis, being in short succession conference centre and theme park, though ELIZABETH appears to have abandoned earlier plans to use it as a high class knocking shop.

Other members of the Archer clan include PIGGY, who has been married to both JACKs, just to keep things tidy, her daughters JENNIFER (two marriages, four kids, three fathers); LILIAN (two marriages, one child) who used to live in Guernsey in between face lifts and voice transplants; and TONY an organic farmer whose mother and sisters, along with his daughter HELEN and improbable wife PAT, a Welsh woman who took elocution lessons to lose her accent in her 30s, take turns to persecute him. HELEN’s former partner, THE GRIM KEEPER, took his own life when faced with the reality that Archer women are only permitted to marry millionaires, and the last-arrived of these, OLIVER STERLING, had been snapped up by CAROLINE BIKE, aristocratic owner of GREY GABLES. TONY’s elder son also dispatched himself in spectacular style involving an antique tractor and a ditch when he realised that his passage had been booked to BRISTOL. There is one further son, TOM, whose dreams of making a fortune out of organic sausages have unfortunately soured and forced him to become a labourer for BRAIN, though TOM’s official status of “partner” in the sausage business discharges BRAIN from responsibility to pay him minimum wage.

On your visit to the village, you are well advised to give a miss to THE BULL and its overpriced ale, especially if cheery landlord, bigot and small time crook SID is behind the bar. Instead, remove your shoes, go through a sheepdip and visit POLYTUNNEL VIEW, where SUSAN CARTHORSE should fill you in with all you wish to know, not only about past and current scandals, but ones which haven’t even happened yet. With luck you may bump into LYNDA SNELL, whose husband, ROBERT, is remarkably the only person in the village to be on the internet. Although much derided, LYNDA often keeps the village running single handed, being used to doing these things in Sunningdale, where they know how to organise things better. If you have occasion to ask directions, check that you are not speaking to a HORROBIN – if you are, it is probably too late to advise you to hang on to your wallet. Instead, consult USHA GUPTA, who by ancient tradition handles all legal matters in the village.

If you are taken ill in AMBRIDGE, please note that there is no local doctor. The NHS has placed it off limits, as the job specification involved having it an affair with SHULA and leaving in disgrace, though the last incumbent, DR DIM, broke the mould by having it off with the OLD VICAR (really new listeners may be disappointed to discover this was a woman), while his wife JOAN was 14 months pregnant by BRAIN.  (JOAN and sprog now live ABROAD, which means that any trip outside England is likely to lead to a chance encounter. ABROAD is a place from which people return, unlike BRISTOL (qv).) The NEW VICAR is male, and has other attributes typical of a rural priest such as being a retired accountant and having a Jamaican mother-in-law, a motor bike and a secret passion for Hindu solicitors. If, for medical reasons, such as a bar meal in THE BULL, you do need to leave the village in a hurry, don’t worry, as there is a fantastically frequent and reliable bus service to BORCHESTER and all surrounding points at all times of day and night.

Labour and comic relief is provided by the GRUNDYs, who are continually persecuted by the rest of the village for their efforts to actually earn a living. CLARRIE GRUNDY is particularly forgiving towards the ARCHERS – PHIL’s UNCLE TOM shot CLARRIE’s greatuncle back in the 50s, while DIMWIT killed her father by dropping a tree on his head. In his memory, she named her second child WOODED. (The first, WILL, was named in honour of his godmother, CAROLINE, in the hint and hope of riches to come.) The GRUNDYs are a close-knit and broke family, to the extent that WILL and WOODED currently share WILL’s wife EMMA, and a claim to paternity of baby GORGEOUS GEORGE. A DNA test to resolve this dispute has apparently left WILL one-nil up, but what has not yet been revealed is that it also shows that EMMA is not the mother due to a mix up at Borchester General, thus paving the way for a seamless change of voice for GEORGE in 20 years’ time or so.