Hi, I’m Kat Brown – I’m 36, and I am addicted to the long-running BBC Radio drama, The Archers. My cat, Ambridge, is named after the village. I buy the official calendar. My ring tone is the theme tune. My friend Will and I were the faces of the BBC’s Twitter moment about Helen Archer’s ‘not guilty’ verdict, and last Valentine’s Day my husband bought me dinner with two cast members. I find it one of the most irritating programmes in this known universe and yet I need it in my ears every day the way I need to clean my teeth or they’ll fall out.
It’s a common misconception that The Archers is listened to exclusively by the ancient – but everyone has to start listening somewhere, and it’s very often in their teens and 20s, having grown up with it as an unconscious listener when your parents had it on in the kitchen.
“It’s normal to reject it as ‘your parents’ thing’, but pick it up as a way of connecting with your past – in my case, I was 19 and living abroad – or listening at university as a way of connecting with that home ritual,' explains the writer and broadcaster Lucy Freeman, who co-hosts the Archers fan podcast Dum Tee Dum which, like its parent show, has a huge global audience. “People start listening for comfort, rather than actually paying attention to the storylines and then find themselves going, ‘Well, I must find out who won the flower and produce show.’”
But it’s not all soil erosion and milk yields. When I started listening properly, in 2003, there was the purple patch of Brian Aldridge and Siobhan Donovan’s affair (she died in 2007! His wife Jennifer raised their love child!), and Emma Carter’s frisson with Ed Grundy, the brother of her fiancé Will. She later slept with Ed but gave birth to Will’s son before marrying Ed. Vv awks all round, but incredibly addictive – especially as a background to coursework and exams when a 13-minute programme is pretty much all your attention span can handle, and something regular and grounding can keep you afloat. And this week, the show's ongoing fermented food storyline (I kid you not) even got a mention in a report about how kombucha is apparently the drink of the summer.
'There’s a culture of listenership, like with the Serial podcast or Love Island even, when you’re totally immersed in something,' Lucy says, explaining the draw of the programme to younger listeners who may otherwise have no contact with farming. 'At certain times in life, you crave something that is very comfortable. The Archers is daily, predictable (in a good way!), and a self-contained universe with its own rules like Doctor Who.'
'My knowledge of dairy farming is amazing. I feel like I could do it,' says Sarah Douglas, 30, who is absolutely not a dairy farmer, and who has been listening for 10 years since she began an evening commute. 'It’s basically EastEnders on a farm. When you start listening to it it’s really difficult to find out who everyone is, and then you get sucked in. I love it because it’s a real radio drama: there’s a knock on the door and then it’s, ‘Hello, it’s my brother David Archer! Hello bro!” 'Oh look, it’s Kenton in my house!’'
If The Archers sounds like a cult, it is – a really, really massive one. The hashtag #thearchers trends during every episode’s ‘tweetalong’. For Sarah, the tweetalongs are a key part of listening: the BBC shut down the Archers noticeboards years ago, but social media and podcasting has brought listeners together in new ways. “You wouldn’t turn up to the pub talking about what’s going on at Home Farm and Jennifer’s kitchen tiles.”
The podcast regularly tops the iTunes chart, and is one of the BBC’s most popular radio programmes. To be fair, The Archers has the jump on pretty much every other programme going: it’s aired nearly 19,000 episodes since January 1 1951. The longest-running drama in the world, it’s had cameos from celebrity fans ranging from Princess Margaret and Anthony Stuart Head to Judi Dench, usually opening the Ambridge village fete or voicing a total cad (wonderfully, Dench 'voiced' one of the show’s famed silent characters).
There are also familiar voices among the cast: Felicity Jones launched her career playing the brother-baiting Emma Grundy, while Helen Monks played Caitlin Moran in Raised By Wolves after leaving her role as the unfathomably irritating Pip Archer behind her. Angus Imrie (Claire’s creepy stepson Jake in Fleabag) plays Josh Archer, the news journalist Felicity Finch voices his mother, Ruth, and the comic actress Tamsin Grieg pops up every now and again as Debbie Aldridge, who was shipped out to live in Hungary when Grieg’s career on Green Wing and Black Books took off.
However picky listeners can be (and oh, we can be extremely picky, especially when the actors are recast) this is a cult with a good heart. When, in April 2016, Helen Titchener stabbed her husband Rob as the culmination of a domestic abuse storyline centred on coercive control, listeners rallied together and raised an astonishing £173,000 for the women and children’s charity Refuge. Three years on, donations continue to come in.
Ultimately, The Archers exists far beyond the realms of its cast and crew. They may change, but Ambridge springs eternal