DumTeeDum - A show about BBC Radio's 'The Archers'

Unforgettable Ambridgeans

This week’s podcast is presented by Stephen and Jacqueline.

We hear from:

Jeff from Romford, who isn’t convinced about the plans for the EV charging station;
James, a first-time caller-innerer, who was somewhat surprised by Sunday’s episode;
Ros from South Wales who is enjoying the unexpected visitors;
Andrea from Beautiful Brittany who has found things to laugh at amidst the scamming;
Michelle who is wondering how new listeners are handling the haphazard nature of this week’s stories;
Katherine, who challenges us to find a long-term storyline for at least one of the week’s new visitors;
Ros again, who is enjoying having an archaeologist in Greenacres;
Helen from Hampshire, who would just like it all to stop;
Glyn, who would have preferred a different start to the week;
A different James, who has a plot prediction about a couple of our visitors;
and finally Claire from Clapham, who’s glad it’s all over.

We also have an email from Chris in Indiana.

Plus: we have the Week in Ambridge from Suey, a roundup of the Dumteedum Facebook group from Witherspoon, and the Tweets of the Week from Theo.

Please call into the show using this link:

www.speakpipe.com/dumteedum

Or send us a voicenote via WhatsApp on: +44 7810 012 881 (07810

012 881 if in the UK) – Open the WhatsApp app, key in the number and click on the microphone icon.

Or email us at dumteedum@mail.com

How to leave a review on Apple podcasts: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/podcasts/pod5facd9d70/mac

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Duration:: 1h 14m
Broadcast on:: 01 Dec 2024
Audio Format:: other

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This week's scripts are written by Sarah McDonald Hughes, and I'm afraid the themes she had to work with left quite a few Dumpty Dummers wanting their money back. Coming up, we have calls from Jeff from Ronford, who isn't convinced about the plans for the EV charging station. James, a first-time coronavinar. Hooray! Who was somewhat surprised by Sunday's episode. Rose from South Wales, who is enjoying the unexpected visitors. Andrea from Beautiful Britain, who's found things to laugh at amidst the scamming. Michelle, who is wondering how new listeners are handling the haphazard nature of this week's stories. Catherine, who challenges us to find a long-term storyline for at least one of the week's new visitors. Rose again, who is enjoying having an archaeologist and green acres. Helen from Hampshire, who would just like it all to stop. Lynn, who would have preferred a different start to the week. A different James, who has a plot prediction about a couple of our visitors. And, finally, Claire from Clapham, who's glad it's all over. We also have an email from Kristin, Indiana. Plus, we have the Week in Ambrage from Suey, a roundup of the Dumpty Dum Facebook group from Witherspoon, and the Tweets of the Week from Theo. So, let's go straight into the Week in Ambrage from Suey. Hello, lovely people. It's Suey, green or tart here. I know every week, I say, well, that was a special week. Well, oh boy, was this a special week. Too long didn't read, strange people turned up in Ambrage, Kate was going to them, yack up was not. There was no room at the end, so they all bedded down in the Brookfield barn. Eddie bigged himself up, and there was a happy ending with the Thanksgiving lunch. Oh, some details. You want some of them? Well, Faith and Chuck from America used the key under the plowpot to access Jakob's house. Having booked it, ready for the BBC scam Awareness Week. Kate told them to stay, Jakob wanted them to push off. Kate and Jakob ended up sleeping in a yurt. He was not a happy camper, of which he used to be able to say that. Jakob moved in with Jimus and Aleister for the duration. More people showed up in Brookfield, a family staying out of the way whilst her abusive husband packs up and leaves the marital home. You know that's going to end badly. Then an archaeologist Joel showed up before lunch at Domus, Jimus, when everyone knows Holiday Let's start at 1600. There was some solid male bonding, and he was another one decanted to the barn. He must be getting a bit crowded in there. Brookfield supplied the barn. Everyone else in the village seemed to rally around with camping beds and bedding. Faith turned out to have been at school with Eddie back 60 plus years ago. Mars threatened to throw everything left in the barn at Grange Farm out on the bit of land. And Bill, they pressed groondies. So Eddie decides to upcycle things and sell on as much time as possible. He felt to make any real impression, apart from a sink, and telling Faith and Chuck that they were antique dealers. Turns out Eddie is a big amist on top of all his other crimes, as he married Faith in the school playground when they were about six. He was found out over a dinner when Clary admitted they were not all that successful. Instead of a harvest supper, they ended the week with a late Thanksgiving lunch using a Grundy turkey. That's going to come back and haunt them when Eddie's poor bookkeeping catches up and they run out of birds on Christmas Eve. Poor Clary love. Apparently a Grundy turkey is the best gift that Faith has ever received. Chuck, you need to try harder with birthday gifts. She couldn't steal Yakov's precious coffee machine because it wouldn't fit in her suitcase. But now they have to find room for a last-minute Grundy gift of a spoke-shaver out of the barn. One less thing for Miles Tuffthrone in the skip then. I hope we're all going to be very much more circumstances when booking our holidays from now on. I'll talk to you next week. Thank you for that, Sui. Listening to it, it might even have made the week sound worth listening to. Ah, cheap, Steven! Right, we'll get onto that subject in a minute. But before that, exactly, how has your week been? I've been a real mixed bag apart from the fact that I haven't seen sunlight since a week last Tuesday. We've had such a grey, miserable, horrible week. It's even started to get to me now. It's grey and foggy. And on one morning, Tuesday morning, I had to go to an old people's home, pick up an old man, an old English man who's very very deaf and doesn't speak any French whatsoever and take him to a family court to help the judge decide whether he was competent to do his own paperwork and control his finances and the house. 'Cause up until now, as a volunteer, I've been helping him. And I don't want to do it, Trevor, because I'm worried that I legal things and whatever. So it was a really trying morning, but it had such a funny moment because you're sitting in a family court waiting room with all these little rooms off it. There's not a giant court. It's all little rooms with individual judges and stenographers in them. And one of the persons who I was never introduced to didn't know what they were for. And it's very quiet. It says silence in the waiting room. But of course, this guy is so deaf. And I bought, got an amplifier maybe, a mini voice thing that plugs into his ears and I talk into it like that. And he's like, "What the heck can he use?" He's a really, really, really loud voice. And all the ostriches are like, "So that was quite funny, really. I had to laugh first in the end. And the judgment will land on the 12th of December. We shall see." How about you, Stephen? Has you been busy with you? It hasn't been too busy. I must just warn listeners that we are recording extra early and Tangle's food has not been delivered to her. It will turn up in just under an hour from now. So she is complaining. So you may hear plaintiff calls from Tangle, but she's perfectly fine. It's very clear to read, but good luck with the poor Tangle. I think she's just an extra deaf. Otherwise, the week's been okay. We've had some sun. Trouble is, I've been at work during the daytime, so I've been able to see the sun through the window. But haven't really had the benefits of it. And we had a very foggy day, just the one very foggy day earlier in the week. But it's pleasant winter. It was chucking it down the weekend. Yeah, last weekend was very wet, wasn't that? But it's been fine since then. I did another 10K on Wednesday. That's good. We've had a day one on Sunday and then a one on Wednesday. I've shaved about nine minutes off my time, but it's very boring to talk about running. So that's enough about running. That's probably enough about us. So it's time to get on to the important bit, which is you, our lovely caller, Inneros. And first up is going to be Jeff. Hello, tiger. Hi, Jeff here from Robford. Not quite a new caller Inneros, but you'll have to go back several years to find me. That's because I usually listen to the omnibus on a Sunday. And by the time I've finished, it's too late to record anything in time for this week's pog task. If it would appear next week, things would have moved on, so it would sound out of date or be superseded by later events. But recently, there's been a story which is just frustrating. As a long term advocate of electric vehicles, I can't help wondering what sort of business brains the people behind the charging station have. Although drivers will often just turn up as they need to charge and take whatever is available, as much as possible, people tend to plan ahead. The most common thing drivers look for is plenty of available working rapid charge points, so they know something will be available on arrival. But the next thing on the list is facilities, which they can use while waiting to charge. The ZAPMAD app has a log of all charge points. It notes what else is available and users can add comments of their experience and give ratings. People use this to plan, such as "Let's go for breakfast, and while we're eating, the car can be clubbed in. That will set us up for the weekend." Or "We have a long journey, and we'll need a comfort rate somewhere along the way. Let's combine that with some way we can get a decent coffee and cake while we're charging the car." If there are more than one place in the area, people will obviously go to the most pleasant. No one would choose to sit in a concrete factory unit if there is a large, glossy glass and steel cafe two miles down the road. So the decision to move Fallon to a small unit and then out of the way to the corner unit sounds mad. What on earth are they planning to put in the bigger units? After fuel, food is the biggest draw at any road services? Or is the EV station just a cover for a more dubious plan? Well, thank you very much for that, called Jeff. I, for the year's first, I don't know anybody. Oh, that's pretty untrue. I do know one person who's got an electric car here. So to have a call from a user questioning the EV station in Ambridge is extremely interesting. Yeah, comfort breaks, there's been no talk of the toilets and just these units, the EV charging station, made me think, because here, anywhere in the middle of the countryside, we're in the middle of the village, so we're on main sewage. But I've lived in another house on the outskirts of this same village, which was a septic tank. And that's the case where a lot of people here, so presumably, field is close enough to the village to be. Deceptic tanks still exist in the UK, they must do isolated houses and things. Yeah, septic tanks definitely exist, but this facility is right on the edge of the village, it's not very far at all. It's just the other side of the road from a bunch of houses, so definitely. I don't think there's a problem with that side of things. I wanted to answer Jeff's question about the motivation behind it, because anything that Justin is involved with, I'm suspicious of, I just think of him as the dick dusted lead, and so he's involved in this, so it must be some kind of scam in some way of trying to get something out to someone that, about spending a lot of money, may be putting something that is going to be a white elephant. Who knows, but very interesting question, Jeff. I think that we've got plenty of talk about scams on our other call, so I'm going to treat this one without going down that particular route. I think the simple answer, I absolutely agree with Jeff at the first thing that EV owners are going to look for apart from actual EV charging points is food. And therefore, the most likely thing in the bigger units that Alan has been kicked out of is another food concession, and at least one of them. So I think the answer is she's offering one type of food, they will probably have somebody else offering a different type of food, perhaps appealing to a different market. So, rather than dairy tree meat free, all that sort of stuff, it will be a much more traditional place that doesn't fry up or something like that. And they've just had bids from two food producers, and it's as simple as that. The third one, I don't know, maybe a place selling accessories and things for electric vehicles. Or newspapers books and so forth, but those also tend to sell soft drinks and things like that. If you think about the various places in your typical service station, they're going to sell some sorts of food, not fresh food, but yeah, there could easily be a news agent, come magazine shop, come tack shop, plus two food outlets, magazine or three units. I think that the lose and so forth will be a separate building, and obviously they're only talking about the ones that people can bid on to run. Yeah, true. The organization itself will run its own lose. Do you still see foreigners ending up there? Yes, I do. I think eventually she will. When Justin comes back with his tail between his legs, because whoever it was who came in first isn't going to be able to fulfill their contract or something like that. So I still think that the EV charging station will be an important hub of the village in due course. And who knew there was an app called a zap map? I certainly didn't. I don't have an electric vehicle. I don't have any vehicle at all, apart from a couple of bicycles. There we go. Let's move on to our next call. And this one is from a first-time cholera. It's James. Hello, dumpty dummers. I, James from Berkshire here, cannot understand for the life of me what was going on Sunday nights episode. Yeah, I started to put it on. And then these American tourists, I'm like, what the heck? And then suddenly it's a scam and it's a little bit of a public service announcement. This seems more odd than the justice and the artificial intelligence. What? What is it doing? What are the writers doing? Honestly, I was suddenly worried that potentially my wife had put the wrong type of mushrooms in my risotto. Anyway, thanks for the podcast. It's actually fantastic. Ta-ta for now. Thank you for that call, James. And I think your call epitomizes exactly why we love having people calling in and talking to us rather than either contributing to the Facebook group or just sending us an email, although some of our regular emails are very good at that form of the art. I just love the utter incredulity in your voice, the shot from what was a very bizarre episode. And we found out a bit more and if anything, it became even more bizarre during the course of the week as that number of visitors built up. But I just felt that, yes, that Sunday episode deserved exactly that sort of reaction. What on earth was going on? And now we know what was going on. And I think there's probably a majority who felt that maybe it shouldn't have been going on, but we'll get on to that. I'm sure as we go through our calls. I'm so James, thank you very much for your first time colouring me in. But I can't say anything now without covering all the future calls that we've got to handle the day and say that I don't agree with Mr. Bowdoin. That's a plot development for this episode of Dumpty Dum. That will, we think, evolve naturally. Let's move on to our next call, and this one is from Ros. Hello, Stephen and Jackie and all Dumpty Dumas. This is Ros from South Wales. Who would have thought in the modern, online world that the everyday story of country folk would have to start coping with people scamming holiday bookings of absolutely loving the interplay between Kate and Yakov. And I had this wonderful vision of all the stuff he must have stuffed in the garden to rescue from his unexpected lodges. And I do like the grumpy American husband, so I hope it plays out well. It's good. Anyway, thanks to all your work on the podcast, and I love listening. Oh, and Stephen, you're the expert on the ancient history of amvage. So can you think which cottage it was that was there before Gleeblands was built? Is this quite a long time ago, isn't it? I'll leave you to answer that question from Ros, Stephen. But I agree with Ros. I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the continuity of the story. It's kind of like a bubble week of a story around dirt and characters. I've enjoyed Yakov enormously. As Ros says, his reaction to things alongside Kate, the contrasting characters and personalities, yet the vision of him going around collecting things. I know that if that happened to us, I know exactly what my husband would be putting a padlock on half the house to so somebody couldn't go anywhere in the rest of the house because I've tried to persuade him to do home share things and he would be reacting exactly the same way as Yakov did. Maybe not quite so negatively, but there were some brilliant lines given to Yakov this week. And one of them was when he said he felt like he was in the three bears. Yeah, just fascinating. Yeah, I'm completely with Ros on this story. Go on, I'll let you have a go then. I'm good to hold back at this point and talk about Gleeblands because through the week they did some very good work in terms of calling back to the past. But there was an exception to that, which is Gleeblands. Gleeblands was built in 1978. It was financed by Jack Woolley. For those who don't know where in the village, it runs along the south edge of the green between the village green and the am itself. And when it was built, there was a lot of concern from the locals that it was spoiling a rather attractive part of the village. And there was absolutely no mention as far as I can see, and unfortunately I haven't been able to get back and listen to the actual episodes from 1978. But there was no discussion about there being any buildings on that site beforehand. The name Gleeblands, it was built opposite Gleeb cottage. So I'm not sure whether it was genuinely former Glee land, but that seems to be the most likely thing. And Gleebland is land that is owned by the church and which has stuff grown on it for the direct benefit of the vicar of the church. This is the land owned by the church, which is then rented out and the benefit of the church is money. This is a place that actually food is grown. And Gleeblands would by that nature be agricultural, or at least horticultural. And there wouldn't have been houses built on it until 1978 when it was developed. Now that is very interesting, that's a little inconsistency with the past for someone as knowledgeable as you and other people as well, who are able to look back and see that, that the script writers and the editor have not picked up on. Because there was another inconsistency in the story when Yacob and Kate arrived back from their walk and saw lights in the house. They said, "And what's that strange car doing there?" And then it went describing their arrival. Chuck said something about she made the cab drive stop. So why was there a strange car on the drive? There's little inconsistencies this week did detract from me from the beauty of the whole rolling out story. Because I don't know why I think it's been doing "Dumpty Dum" I'm much more aware of what is happening at each storyline, because I often listen two or three times. These strange things that actually it was a glaring error. So where did the car come from and where did the cab go and was it wrecked? More questions created. But a good answer seemed to Gleeblands, so there never was a cottage there. I don't believe there was. I think that was a figment of somebody's imagination. But they did get some other ways of building in the past really quite well and we'll come on to that in a bit. But next up we have Andrea from "Beautiful Brittany". Hi, Jacqueline and Steve and our lovely "Dumpty Dum" is all over the world. Andrea from "Beautiful Brittany". It's only Tuesday. I am already worn out after being hit repeatedly over the head with the scammer hammer. Hopefully people have got the message and it will end very very soon. Hopefully, which we'll think in maybe. But on Tuesday there were two laugh out loud moments for me. The first one Clarrie was talking about Eddie playing up being "Lovejoy" in the sheds that brought back memories of back in the '80s. My friends mom absolutely used to swoon over "Lovejoy" as I think did most middle-aged women at the time. And I just really can't imagine anyone swooning over Eddie. Probably not even Clarrie. Probably not even back in the '80s but there we go. And the other one was Jakub when he and Ruth were having a good moment together saying that Kate was swooning around like Mother Teresa. In every sentence I thought I would hear. I thought that was quite amusing. So hopefully the scamming is going to end soon. I really don't care about this woman and her two kids who might be six years old or might be teenagers. We're not really sure who was sleeping in their car and go home until Friday. Please let that go away. Anyway, have a good week everyone. Speak soon. Thank you for that call Andrea. And they did all seem to go away in the end so that's okay. I think you picked up on a couple of really good lines and Jacqueline you already mentioned the three bears live. I think in amongst some things that we didn't like there was some absolutely brilliant writing. That was really good. There have been complaints about the for once the lack of Americanisms in the arches after all these people have complained about too many Americanisms. We have some Americans turn up at least one American and one expat Brit living in America and people start saying in social media that they are using terms which an American wouldn't use. But let's not worry too much about that. Let's focus on Angie's point that she is being hit over the head of the scamstick and that tends to be how I felt about the week. I thought that when the second lot of victims turned up that's Ellie and her two daughters who turned out to be 16 rather than six. I agree that when we first heard that it was quite difficult to tell exactly how old they were but they were definitely teenagers later on so they turned up and then we had Joel turning up and that's yet another one and it just felt that going from nothing to three within four days was just a bit heavy handed and I felt that the program having decided it was going to go along with a bit for scam safe week had gone right in over its head into the scamming waters and it was just not right. And I think that perhaps before I say too much more we might get on to Michelle's call and discuss it after that. What did you think of Andrea's call? Well, Andrea's call was great as they always are and yeah the lovejoy line was an absolute classic and then the picture of Kate's mother Teresa because Kate is definitely I know you love Kate and Kate is someone I love to hate. I hate perhaps it's too strong a word but she irritates the hell out of me sometimes and I think it's her when she's at that Kate is her best or worst, most self-centeredness and here she was being kindly said the mother Teresa. She was actually very, very reasonable and very carried on being reasonable going over to the barn once they all moved over there. I just enjoyed Kate's reaction as much as I thoroughly enjoyed the Akobs reaction as well. Yeah, good lines picked out there Andrea. Next up is Michelle. Come on, yeah, it's Michelle ringing in on Wednesday. I'm sure others will have lots to say on the week so far how realistic the dialect is, how heavy handed the public information on scamming is. But my main thought is what do rules and you listeners think? As I've said before the storyline that got me hooked into the archers was Helen and Rob. After very casual listening in my twenties it became a full on obsession in my thirties and now I'm stuck for the long haul. I imagine the George storyline may have had similar effects on others. We've also had lots of new people on our Facebook group. We've seen the BBC plug the George storyline everywhere and create their own follow up shows. So I'm assuming this has been done partly to drum up listeners out there. And I'm wondering what a better thinking of it all at the moment. This shift from the well paced, written and performed events of a month or so back have gone to stuff that's just all over the place. So I enjoy the light and dark and the mix between humour and drama. And this time of year we often have something a bit silly with the Christmas show but it all seems really haphazard at the moment. Genuinely interested in what the listening figures are at the moment compared to say a month ago. I'll stick with the archers because well I always do but I do wonder what newer listeners, if there aren't newer listeners, make of it all. And are they still listening? That's it. There are a bit. Thanks for that Michelle. Very thought provoking. Yes, newer listeners. It wouldn't be great if someone is a relatively new listener. Maybe in the last year or so who also listens to Dum D Dum could call in and tell us what they thought of it. We can say what we think of the week but yeah I'd love to hear from a relatively new listener rather than as old as. But the one thing I would say is that one of the reasons I started listening to the archers apart from Biosmosis because my mother listened to it, is because I love a story. I love being told a story and the ongoing long term story of the archers is something that I thoroughly enjoy. But I've enjoyed also this is a standalone week. As I said earlier, it's a bit of a bubble week and I've enjoyed that. I've enjoyed having these people, these characters come in with all the shock and surprise and that their shock and the owners of the homes are shocked and Ruth's reaction compared to David's reaction. Jakob's reaction compared to Gates reaction. Jim and Jazz are calming him down and then him becoming a lifelong buddy with the archaeologist. But I've thoroughly enjoyed that. So in a normal week we skip from the ball to Brookfield to Gileb Cottage. Yeah, all over the place. Gileb Cottage now, what's Jim's place called? Green Acres. Green Acres that's a new kind of G but this week it's been very much a small group of actors and characters. Some of the episodes had quite a lot of characters in them and others less. I think Sundays were just the four people. Jakob and Kate and Chuck and Faith. But yeah, interesting and very interesting to know what new listeners think. I can tell you what I think which is that this wasn't quite as bad as the Christmas Carol episodes from my perspective. The thing I think is vital about the archers is the realism. Yes, it's heightened realism in the sense that it's dramatic. And if you just had a literal fly on the wall not commentary in a village, it would be very, very dull indeed. However, well, you edited it. So you need to have stories. And this week didn't break the idea of it being natural, realistic, slightly dramatic with stories. It just did it too heavily. There's too much banging over the head. Whereas the Christmas Carol stuff veered, I think, into the supernatural Miranda magically turning up unexpectedly and booking the same table that Justin has got. And the AI rep talking to Justin, the purse disappearing from Kurt's mother's bag and then mysteriously reappearing at the end of the week. All of that just was a bit implausible and a bit woo. And I didn't like that. Whereas this, I think, was just too heavy-handed. Any single element of this week's episodes would have been absolutely fine. It was the combination of the three of them together, which I felt was a bit excessive. Even this wasn't as bad as, from my perspective, the awful Robin Helen period, when the obsession with one storyline over such a long period did real damage to the fabric of village life, in that nobody was born, nobody got married, nobody died. And the way that has to carry on naturally through time was ignored by the editor of the day. But I've spanked that particular drum so many times, so I'm going to stop at that point. Yeah, I've heard you say that several times before, Stephen. But in that case, I do agree with you that that was a period that was very detrimental, not only to the ongoing life in Ambridge, if we consider it is a real place, but also to the listenership, because I know a lot of people, myself included, who were extremely made to feel very uncomfortable about that whole story, the denouement and everything, and actually stopped listening for quite a long time. I know that drew some people in because everybody likes different things in their fiction, but I agree with you on that case. The only thing I would say is that it was a week where we saw the village doing what villages do best in fiction, which is come together to support each other and to help out strangers. And so that's one of the reasons I liked it, because I felt that, yeah, we saw the development of the working together in the events barn. It's all a fiction on that, okay. I won't go into that because I think that comes up in a later call. So instead, we'll hear what Catherine has to say. So Wednesday night, scam week, tedious, isn't it? However, they must have had extra funding for the archers to support all these extra cast members. Faith and Chuck, terrible acting, awful accents by whoever plays them. They have been irritating. The woman can't remember her name with her non-verbal twin children. And then we've got Joel, a slightly more careless, library dweller, in Jim's bungalow. Just imagine booking that as you're going for a rustic break, you think, yeah, get a 1960s bungalow. Anyway, so here's my challenge. I think it's 3 so far and any other two appear. Perhaps tomorrow night, you've got to choose which you would keep in the cast as a permanent character and what their storyline would be. So Faith and Chuck, oh, I think something interesting about their marriage or divorce or pensions or something like that. They could stay, but I'd hope for them to stay because, as everyone said, acting so bad. And also the script writers, why are they not put some Americanisms in there, really, for development by that? The mum with the twins know as a teacher, anybody who takes year 11 out of school, pointlessly, particularly to get at Ambridge in the end of November, probably with mock week happening all around the corner. No, she's out and she's quite cursed and she's not like her. So it'd have to be Joel, our chatty library dweller, who seems quite funny and nice. Can't think what his story would be, though, had to be something interesting. Couldn't be a murderer on the run. I'm sure we've had that already with the kind of horror bin. Some interesting reason why he's on a holiday by himself in a bungalow in November. I'll leave it with you. Bye. Thank you for that cool Catherine. Just a point about Jim's bungalow. It's not a 1960s bungalow. Now, where Gleeblands was not, I think, built on the site of a previous building, Greenacres absolutely was because it used to be the site of the police house, which was lived in by George and Christine Barford, until Clive Horribin in March 2004 firebombed it, while Chris and Jill were inside. They escaped safely, the building burnt to the ground, and then was replaced with Greenacres, which I think was finished off at the end of 2009, and Jim was looking to buy it in early 2010. So actually, it's not a 1960s bungalow. It's a very modern bungalow from 2009, 2010. That's not really an important matter. In terms of your challenge to find a long term use for one of the characters, we've got a later call from James, who has a plot prediction, which is very much down that street. So I'm not going to talk about that one. I think that Joel is a character. He's a bit too nice, enthusiastic, jolly, and tolerant, but I could see him being employed at Lower Locksley as an architectural historian and so forth, because archaeologists and architectural historians can end up overlapping. Depending on what period they're interested in. So I think that after a long walking holiday around the area, he might accidentally bump into Elizabeth, perhaps, and then find that there's a role for him at Lower Locksley at minimum wages. And then, well, we all think that there's too much returns to his repair people off. He could then become a love interest for either Lily or Freddy. Yeah, that's an interesting pop-up to my immediate response to that question would have been, yeah, Joel. I liked him. I liked his enthusiastic voice. I liked his kind of bla haze except to be locked into Jim. Chris's arrest had been affected with the teleprint on the inside of the room. I just, that was a very funny episode. I really, really enjoyed it. But in fact, thinking about it, whilst listening to Catherine's call there, and Joel, you were talking, she quite liked the idea of Ellie, the mum with the twins. She was so enthusiastic about the farm and all that's farming. I have to say as well, Catherine, I would somebody taking the children out of school. But then you called in before we found out the reason that she has a horrible husband who started picking on the children, so maybe we can forgive her for taking the children out of school for a week. But I think that should be an interesting addition. Also, the teenagers, 16-year-olds, they're going to start to be speaking, and we're always looking for the next generation. So, I think maybe of that family would be a good addition to Ambridge, and they would add to the mix of the upcoming generation of Poppy. Is it Poppy? Poppy? And there's another child as well, isn't there? That's Kira. Kira, that's the one. Yeah, and Henry, and we've got Khalil that's just been introduced. They're all in their early teens, so these ones are slightly older. It all adds to the mix of the next generation, so I would go for them. They sit in a gap between, as you say, Henry and Khalil and the early teens, and then the Bradmear, George, Buncha, in their very early 20s. Exactly. On the subject of this all happening, Ambridge, going back to what you said earlier, this was all a bit too much for you, that it was, if one scam saw had been enough, but the three olds gathered. It made me think that Ambridge was being particularly targeted, so then the question arises of who's behind it. Good question. We may find out, or we may have moved on from scam week after this, and we may never find out whether that was the case. They were just so infuriated if we don't find out who is behind it. Meanwhile, Rose has been enjoying the week so much that she called again. Hooray! Hi, Steven. It was again. I just couldn't resist calling in a second time to say how much I enjoyed Wednesday's episode. I love the fact that Faith and Eddie go a long way back. I'd like the fact that Eddie's decided to be loved joy. I think Clarrie is going to have a blue fit with all the work they've got to do when he discovers that they've got Americans coming to dinner. I predict that Eddie's not going to mention that they don't own the farm unless Oliver's there. And Jim Lloyd's made friends with an archaeology is what could be better. Oh, I did need chewing up this week, and it's certainly done it. Oh, that's brilliant, Rose, and that's pure enthusiasm from your point of view for what I also enjoyed this topic. I've thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. Clarrie is a point. Clarrie, poor Clarrie, I think your prediction was completely correct because you called in before the dinner together. No, or the cider drinking session with Eddie and Clarrie, but Clarrie is, as always, hyper stress out. All we need now is Linda to decide to do a show and need 55 elf costumes running up to which Clarrie will have to do as well. Yeah, good. Good call, Rose. Thank you very much for your enthusiasm. I hope you're as enthusiastic for a dumb to dumb as you are for the arches this week. Just as I was a bit critical about the detail around Gleeblands that you mentioned in your earlier call. As you say, it was great that Faith and Eddie go back a long way, and there were a few details which really worked. One of which, and I'm oh what's coming up to Sally Cadel on academic arches, but Faith was talking about the friend that she had at Ambridge Farm. At the time we're talking about that she was born in that 1951, same age as Eddie, and she left when she was 10, so that was 1961, so her memories will have been from the late 50s. Ambridge Farm at that point was owned by Ken and Mary Pound, and they had a daughter Marilyn also born in 1951. Back then in late 50s, the grundies hadn't been invented because the grundies are retrospectively added to the arches, so they turned up not even as formally silent characters, but as completely fresh names, but they weren't freshly arrived in the village. It turned out that they'd been there all along, and there have always been grundies at Grange Farm. Just to get back to a point that various people have made, Catherine was saying they must have an extra money for the cast members, actually there were only 12 speaking parts in the entire week, so it's fewer than usual. There were the four new voices, and then eight villagers, I hope all there was. Yeah, fascinating, remembering a lot Steve, and yes thanks to Sally Cadel for helping you remember. So those are the first few calls, and there are some more to come, and also that email. If you'd like to join in by calling us yourself, and as we've said we'd love to hear you call, or dropping us a line by message or email, Jacqueline is here to tell you how, and all the details are also in the show notes. The first option is to record a message or a plot prediction by going to www.speakpipe.com/dumb to dumb, where you can leave a message of up to two minutes. Alternatively, you can send us a voice note or a written message via WhatsApp on 07810 012881. If you're calling from outside the UK, start with +44 and drop that first zero. Please try to keep your call to a maximum of two minutes, although not enforced like it is on Speakpipe. And finally, we have an email address for you to contact us on if you would rather write us with your views. Please aim for a maximum of 250 words. The email address is dumb@mail.com, and do bear in mind you need to be at least 18 to contribute. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit 1peloton.com When it comes to weight loss, no two people are the same. That's why Noom builds personalized plans based on your unique psychology and biology. Take Brittany. After years of unsustainable diets, Noom helped her lose 20 pounds and keep it off. I was definitely in a yo-yo cycle for years of just losing weight, gaining weight, and it was exhausting. And Stephanie, she's a former D1 athlete who knew she couldn't out train her diet, and she lost 38 pounds. My relationship to food before Noom was never consistent. And Evan, he can't stand salads, but he still lost 50 pounds with Noom. I never really was a salad guy. That's just not who I am. Even through the pickiness, Noom taught me that building better habits builds a healthier lifestyle. I'm not doing this to get to a number. I'm doing this to feel better. Get your personalized plan today at Noom.com. Real Noom users compensated to provide their story. In four weeks, a typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit. At Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the communities we call home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. All to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit colorado.chefron.com Now let's hear from Helen. Hello, dumpty dummas. It's Helen here calling from Hampshire. It's been a little while since I've called in. This week, well, well. Mmm, interesting. So I was just at the gym this morning. It was weird because I was just, my eyes went up to the TV and there's a program on called Ripoff Britain and on BBC One. And it was this woman and she was there talking about the archers and it caught my eyes up. Watch this. She was saying, I think she was one of the messages maybe had gone into this program. Ripoff Britain's explaining the storyline and why they put it in for this week. It's Stan week alert week. So it happens a lot, apparently, and just trying to get the message out to the normal folk that it might happen around us. And it's important to know. Yeah, it was quite interesting to have a little look at that. And fair enough, it might happen a lot, but honestly, after last night's episode Wednesday, when it happened for the, what, the third time with Jim and that Joel guy, I just thought please stop. That is enough. This is so weird. I've had it. It's seriously weird. Why would Jim lock the man in the lounge and the man's like, oh, that's fine. I'm just going to look at these books. Well, that's great. And then Jim lets him out and he's like, oh, you've got a great library. I thought, you wouldn't you be a bit like mad if you're the man saying, oh, you know, what's happened to this booking and wouldn't. I don't know. The whole thing was so crazy. Just enough. Please stop. Thank you. Goodbye. Thank you for that call, Helen. And it has stopped. So at least we know that. I tend to agree that Joel, while he was quite an interesting character, was just a bit unrealistic in terms of how laid back he was about the whole situation. He just seemed to take it and was cheerfully sitting in Jim's sitting room and overhearing Jim talking to Jazza and yelling out a few words here and there and joining in the conversation with the other side of the door. Just being desperate for the Lou by that point as he made clear. And it was just a bit unrealistic. And then Jim swiveling straight from thinking that he was a villain to pouring out the best single malt whiskey that he had in the house, which seemed to be a bit over the top. But I suppose that's Jim's way of barking his hospitality and his apology and talking about turning himself in, which was quite fun. Yeah, that was quite fun. But then after they'd eat, they'd drunk big slugs of whiskey to get over all the chocolate Jim proposed driving Joel to Brookfield. That worried me. I think, oh, how would you always give you a drug that they're going to get into your car. There's another little message that they forgot they were getting a gross. Yeah, I can keep on banging on saying I've got to quite enjoyed it. I think that Joel was coming across as a happy, outdoorsy type of person who was looking forward to walking lots and discovering the countryside. Now Catherine said, what earth is he doing book in a holiday in a bungalow in the middle of a borsature in November. Well, maybe that's just what run the long distance war because what do you call yourself. I don't call myself a rambler, but a lot of people use a term rambler for that rambler. Yeah, that's right. Because we say round on a can't think get with the English equivalent would be. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't find him on really seeing I find him a very enjoyable character. And as I said earlier, I love that talking to the door scene. November is not a great time for doing long walks as days are short. The days are short and the risk of pad weather is high. It's not that it was a problem if it rains because there's no such thing as bad weather. There's just inappropriate clothing. However, the lack of a long day means that you can't really do a long walk because it doesn't get light early enough to make it worth going out and it gets dark too soon. And you really don't want to be walking in the dark, particularly at the end of the day, as I discovered when I went. Yeah, I was to say you did that a few weeks ago, didn't you? Yes, and got slightly off my course onto another course and was ending up 90 minutes late on a walk, which is due to end as it got dark anyway. So I think there's always that risk of just getting caught out by the darkness. So long walks, definitely a summer thing. And short walks, I guess, has got good walking territory. There are probably some long distance walks there of the Borsicher Trail, perhaps. Who knows? The maps don't show that. Who knows? No, your maps don't go that wide, do they? Let's hear from Glen now. Hello, Dumpty Dum. It's Glen here with a Thursday night call. Well, where to start with this week's goings on? Let's go right back to the beginning and Sunday evening. I would have liked there to have been some scene setting as a faith and chuck coming across somebody in the village shop or in the ball and saying, "Oh, we're staying here for a week." And then going and not being able to find a key and effectively breaking into Jakob's cottage, et cetera. At least then I would have known what was going on rather than still being halfway through the episode and thinking, "Am I really listening to the archers?" I know some people like the mystery, but it just didn't work for me. And then I know this is anti-scam week and all linked into that, but scamming has a negative effect on people's lives. But by tonight, by Thursday, everybody seems to be getting on wonderfully and having a great time apart from poor Jakob. And it was supposed to be deeply ironic that Faith and Chuck were having dinner with Eddie when one of his scams went wrong. And then Eddie was portrayed as a bit of a cheeky-shappy in scam awareness week. That didn't sit well with me. And finally, if Faith remembers Eddie, I would have thought she would also remember Tony because Tony and Eddie are of the same age. There's only about a month between them in terms of when they were born. But no mention of that so far. Well, stay safe, everybody. Finally have a good week in Umbridge next week and speak to you again soon. Bye! Well, thank you for that call, Glenn. Yeah, Eddie, the contrast with the scamming of the boss of geology cottages and Eddie and his ongoing trying to make a quick book. I found that the whole contrast thing between the two sides of the same story. Fascinating because we do tend to dismiss Eddie as a bit of a lively cheeky-shappy, but what he's doing is selling false goods. And he's always trying to make a quick book out of nothing. What I was more fascinated in was the fact that Miles has decided that they've got to empty the barn and it has to be done by this week. Yes, and what about the Tony bit? I think that the promise Tony didn't feature, so we don't know whether she would have remembered Tony or not. I thought that slightly auto was when she described the Brookfield Archers as village royalty from her youth. And there was Jill, and we know that Jill was there because she was mentioned several times. And so why didn't Faith mention Jill or because she must have remembered her? Faith would have been four years old when Grace was killed in the fire at the stables at Grey Gables. And she should have been able to remember, given what else she's remembered, the arrival of Jill and the marriage to Phil. And so this younger couple at Brookfield, of course the Brookfield royalty that she's referring to will have been down and Dorit's archer. But even so, Jill is somebody from her past and she didn't mention her at all. Tony, she mentioned Bridge Farm, but didn't again say anything about that and about the fact that she would have known Tony. She would have known Jenny and Lillian, who were older than Tony and would have been if she'd done any riding, they would have been the sort of pony club girls that she would have looked up to, but perhaps too. Well, no, I was going to say too posh for her, but they weren't posh at that point. No, they lived in the pub. So it's interesting that she doesn't remember any of that lot. Well, if I did, I thought that was, sorry, I just could say that because she went to the pub for Half of Shires with Eddie after they'd met in the church house, it is strange that she didn't remember that Tony was the same age as them in the same class at school, was living in the pub at the time. But she wouldn't have gone to the pub herself. No, but she would know where classmates would live, wouldn't she? Quite possibly. The other point that I wanted to pick up out where I disagree with Glenn is about the way that the whole week started with that. We're not quite sure what's going on. I thought from a dramatic perspective, that was really quite effective. It reminded me in some ways of the very first scene in the very first episode of EastEnders, a much, much younger program than the archers, but even so, it's obviously can learn a bit from the archers. And the opening scene of EastEnders involved a door being kicked down. I think the opening shot was from the inside of a dark room and the door is kicked down towards the camera and some people rush in and discover a dead body. That was a very dramatic way to start up the BBC's first ever televised soap opera. And I thought that this was similar to that it was stick you in the middle of the action and let you work out what's going on over time. And obviously a lot of people are jumping to the view that this must be the gills. Oh, really? But it wasn't the gills. No, not at all. We're all living in hope that we'll hear from the gills one day. I think that's a storyline that's been lost into the annals of time. We'll never hear from the about the Albion kitchen again. Well, it's a long time since the Albion kitchen was kicked out. But they're still there at home farm. Maybe they'll turn up. Yeah, they're fun now. Let's hear now from James. Hello, Stephen and Jacqueline. James here calling in after Thursday's episode. And although this week has been a bit weird, I have been enjoying it and I have been laughing quite a lot. And now I'm going to make a plot prediction that will probably be totally incorrect. Come Friday's episode, but I'll give it a go anyway. So I think Chuck and Faith might move into Kirsty's old house, which I'm forgetting the name of. But Faith seems to have fixed her marriage by coming to Ambridge. So maybe that's what they'll do. But again, I'll probably be completely wrong. Come Friday. And also, I saw in a certain British newspaper, the poor BBC getting slammed for not registering the domain name Borsettshire Breaks, which I think is very harsh because dare I say it, the arches isn't real. And it's a bit unfair on the BBC. I think people do realise that Borsettshire Breaks isn't a real website. So I don't know why they're getting black for that. But yeah, thanks for the pods and goodbye. Thank you for that call, James. And yeah, I think that your prediction wasn't ruled out by what happened on Friday. It would still be entirely possible for Faith and Chuck to decide to move into the village. And yes, they could buy Kirsty's house, which I don't think has a name, but it's on the Beechwood estate, which was formerly Bridge Farm Land. So yes, why not? That will fit with Catherine's request for people to come up with predictions for them. They would then fit into the village. The same age as we've discussed as Eddie and as Tony. And it would be interesting to see what sort of role that they would play as perhaps Faith has done during the course of this week. They could be a means for pulling back things from the ancient past and enriching the tapestry of the village by reminding listeners of past storylines that have largely been forgotten. Just add to the whole richness of the program. Yeah, in fact, when James mentioned Kirsty's house, I thought immediately of Willow Cottage, I thought he was talking about Willow Cottage. And it's only now when listening to you that I've realized, of course, it's Kirsty's real house, the one she owns. Let's forget. I know we've just had that storyline. I forget that she owns that house, think of it as Helen's house. Listen, I'm going to be Helen's house much longer, is it? But I'm glad it made you laugh, James. And I think that he's a very good up prediction. I can't see Chuck agreeing, though, because he was such a miserable monster. He rarely was moaning and didn't like the countryside and whatever, but I think maybe Faith will persuade him. Who knows? On the point about the website, think I agree with those who say that this was a missed opportunity by the BBC. If you invent a website and you talk about it a lot, then somebody can go out and create one, particularly if you use an entirely legitimate type of net. And the BBC could have used that as an adjunct to the whole scam-safe week, and they could have used it as a site to carry information about how to avoid scams and so on. So I do think that was a missed opportunity, and I think the BBC should, really. If they were going to use a name that could be invented, and they kept saying boughtchesterbrakes.com. If they just said the boughtchesterbrakes website, it would have been different because it might have been a .com or .co.uk or perhaps one of these other new ones was a springing up. There might be more, but they were very specific about the .com. And I think having done that, it was a mistake not to register the site themselves. I think it was very clever of the person that actually did that. As you know, I am the least technical person ever. The fact that I get on here every Saturday morning is a surprise to me. But yeah, it was a good find. It was a good part of the story and a missed opportunity. Why not? Let's have our final call for this week, and it's from Claire from Clapham. Hi, Dante Dham, it's Claire from Clapham here. I think the last time we called in, it was to basically have a massive moan about the ridiculous Christmas Carol storyline with Justin. And frankly, this week, it didn't believe it was more ridiculous. Yeah, goodness me, I love the archers, don't get me wrong. But it's definitely one of those weeks where I would not have advised someone to start listening this week. But isn't it weird? And it went on all week. Very peculiar. I did like Ruth having some boundaries. And I liked Ruth sensing that something was a myth for her potential guest and helping her be positive about having separated from her husband. That was a good thing. And I think it was interesting to see how Kate came to understand that Jakob had a right to be a bit annoyed that she was offering her health shock to random strangers. Yeah, I don't really understand the American couple, that was all a bit weird. But hey-ho, let's over. Let's hope we never have that kind of thing again, eh? Yeah, I'm looking forward to things getting back to normal, probably leading up to some storyline about Mick being homeless at Christmas. Linda suddenly pulling a Christmas show out of the nowhere and all the way over the world. Jima, good work. Speak to you soon. Thank you for that, Claire. I think if you've got this far through listening to Dumb To Dumb, you'll know by now that I actually enjoyed the week and my view is quite different to yours. But I agree with your point about Ruth. We did see Ruth in a better light this week because last week we were really upset with her because of the way she spoke to Fallon, dealt with the stress of that situation. And here she was still stressed, she was a bit much. She was very short with Ellie when she first met her when Ellie got out of the car, enthusiastic. And she didn't react very well to Ellie, I didn't feel. And it took David being Mr. Nice the next morning, finding us leaving in the car with the only bodies trapped in his cows and everything through. But Ruth came across as the Ruth that we know when she was communicating well with her bestest friends, interesting and able to talk to somebody and empathetic so she could bring the best out of them and get information out of them without even trying to see what I'm trying to say. Being a friendly face, yes, she's redeemed herself this week in my eyes. Yes, I think she did come across well towards the end of the week. I found Ellie a bit implausible, just as I found Joel a bit too nice. Ellie was just a bit too eager to step into things and I found that Ellie explained in Kate about her relationship with Yakob. A bit unrealistic, she's only seen them a few times and yet she seems to have this business telling Kate how different the two of them are. Kate knows that Kate would have seen all of this sort of stuff, I think would have been a bit pissed off with a complete stranger turning up and diagnosing her relationship. So I thought that was a bit over the top and Ellie was just a bit too reasonable, rational and empathetic in a different way from Joel, but similar sort of fault. But takes all sorts to make the world, Stephen. So those are the calls for this week. Thank you so much for calling in. As we've said, we love hearing your views on the Week in Ambridge. So don't hesitate to call in about the events of this coming week, which we hope won't involve a whole lot more of us just turning up being a scam. We had an email. Yes, and it's from Chris in Indiana with the subject line, give us a bar such a break and it goes like this. Look at them doing something new in Ambridge, greeting Stephen, Jacqueline and all them to dumb land. Today is Thanksgiving in the States and we raise our hands in thanks for all that we've been given and bless God that we have not been scammed by poor such a breaks. Am I the only person who thought we were finally meeting the gills on Sunday night's episode? Well we weren't. We were meeting Faith and her ear of her husband Chuck, whose voice is awfully familiar from other BBC dramas. After lambasting his American accent, we found out head scratch he's actually American. If anyone ever needed a beer at, please. It's definitely him. Okay. Holiday makers are turning up all over Ambridge, mistaking the town for an Airbnb and making friends with the whole community, except for Jakob and Ruth. Will we find out who's behind this scam? Will it turn out to be baseball and George? Will this be another dropped plot? Will this end as some have suggested on Christmas Eve with a pregnant young girl and her husband giving birth in Brookfield Bar? Will Helen, Tom and Tony become bearing gifts of sausage, cheese eggs and hilda? Leave it to Ruth to say there's no room in the inn. Chris in Indiana. Thank you for that email, Chris. And thank you for putting Jacqueline through the task of saying bh police. But I think that's probably quite enough of that phrase for a very long while. And if it turns up future emails, I think we'll probably stick to a very proper English pronunciation of bitch, please. Absolutely. That will mean that nobody gets the pleasure of hearing us mangle the phrase. So you're definitely not the only one who thought that that was a gills. It was exactly what I thought when that started that not that those were the gills that we were hearing, but that it was home farm house that we were listening to and it would be a way of introducing them. But it turned out, as you say, not to have been the gills and not to have been home farm house, but to have been the rookery or as I believe Chris renamed it the Hobbit. So I think that there's an issue there, another minor thing, but I guess the scammer wouldn't have known that. But I think if Chris had renamed it the Hobbit and if Jakob had known it as the Hobbit, he would have said it's not even the right name. They've changed the name so it can't be right. I wouldn't have advertised it under its new name. Never mind. We've been picking enough about aspects of the plot, but I don't want to go down that route again. Thank you for that. And it was brilliantly written as ever, Chris. Yeah, absolutely Chris. We love receiving your emails because they're amusing and they pick up on lots of the things that have been going on on the Facebook group and in the actual week in Ambridge. Yes, cheese eggs, I'd almost forgotten about cheese eggs. I think that's a good idea as a gift. A brilliant combination of three gifts, sausage, cheese eggs and hilda. That's excellent. The gold frankincense and mer of bridge farm. Absolutely excellent. Thank you again, Chris. As we've mentioned a few times now, Patreon backers have done to dumb get an ad free early release version of the podcast around 6 p.m. on a Saturday. This is not however a guarantee, some aim as I may be weeks where other demands on my time means that I can't do the edits until later unless as of this week, again, I've got five in the morning to start recording, give me time to get it done before I go off to see some rugby later. Patrons also get a weekly email about dumb to dumb and the archers which this week included a feature on young Kirsten Miller. We are in the process of updating our Patreon arrangements. This is going to involve Patreon backers being asked to move to a new Patreon feed, which will come with a lower subscription rate. We are aiming to launch the new Patreon early in the new year. Let's move on to Facebook and give a warm, dumb to dumb welcome to the following people who have joined our Facebook group in the past week. Tracy Archibald, Caroline Richardson, Andrew Beachham and Stella Gardner, welcome to all. Don't be shy about joining in and never hesitate to start a new conversation, but even better than posting in the Facebook group, why not call in with your thoughts or your plot predictions. Now, let's hear what's been going on in the dumb to dumb Facebook group this week from Queen of Spoons. Greetings dumb to dumbers around the world. It's with the spoon and Angus Haggis here on Friday morning with this week's social media roundup minus responses to later today's episode. Well, I guess it's appropriate that an American brings you the social media roundup this week. Do I sound like Chuck? In addition, I wish you all, especially those who celebrate it, a very happy Thanksgiving weekend. As Stephen pointed out, the first episode of the week fell on stir up Sunday, and boy were dumb to dumbers stirred up. There were just too many Facebook posts to review them all, so I'll just highlight a few. Laura Jackson and Pat Haniman gave us lists of British phrases that Americans would never utter, but Faith and Chuck did. Our old friend, the Reverend Nigel Massey, compared the episode to a Harold Pinter play. Richard Oppenshaw summed it up with the statement, "It's a tough competition, but that must be the strangest episode I've ever heard." And Michael Duffy added, "What the heck was that all about?" Well, Maggie Dorsman answered that question. It was the BBC taking part in Scam Safe Week. And yes, Scam Safe Week is not a scam. I agree with my fellow American Tracy from California, a.k.a. T. Brown artist C.A., who said that Jakub should have put Faith and Chuck out along with Kate. In our Tracy style, she imagined Jakub saying, "I'm so sad to see that this happened to you. I'll call the first place to see if they can take you while you pack your shit." Tracy didn't spell out shit, but I interpolated. On Monday, I commended Ruth for how she firmly handled the situation with the mother of the two teenagers. In my Brit in New Jersey pal, Debbie Grossman Lansing agreed. Yet, finally, someone in Ambridge with boundaries. Regarding the fake listings early in the week, Paul Norris wondered whether someone was putting them up for a laugh or to get back at people. But I agreed with John McGee that it was a random scammer trying to make money. By midweek, Ellie was more sympathetic, and Karina Payton wondered whether Faith would drop Chuck and stay in Ambridge. Helen Cook compared David's plan to use the barn to the story of Christmas. There was no room at the inn, so sleeping on camp beds and a lowly events barn was the only option. Joanne Smith likened it to a version of the Broadway musical "Come From Away" where a community welcomes unexpected arrivals stranded in a crisis. And then we had the arrival of another traveler, Joel, the archaeologist. It looks like Jim has a new bestie. At this point, Chris Gibson announced that he was officially interested in Faith and Joel. I assume he meant only platonically. Pat Hanovan decided she was quite enjoying the scam story, dust siding with our co-host Jacqueline, but Kay Gough and Darcy Jorgensen were decidedly not, and thus were in Stephen Boden's camp. By Thursday, things for our visitors and Ambridge residents appeared to be looking up, and there was even mention of Thanksgiving. Chris Gibson said he loved the episode, but there were still naysayers such as Mary Finn, who requested to make it all stop. Well, will today's episode bring? I'll let Gillian Kargin have the last word about it, as long as it all ends with the scammer being caught and punished accordingly. Now, I have to head to the gym for five hours to work off the holiday feast I had yesterday. Talk to you soon. Thank you with a spoon, and thank you so much to everyone on the Dump to Dump Facebook group. If you'd like to join them, please do, but don't forget to answer all the membership questions so that we know you're a real person. And if anybody out there would like to write us a review, please do. There is a link to instructions on how to do this in the show notes. If you can't leave a review, or if you already have, talk to your friends and family about us and about the archers. Don't be shy. The love of all things Ambridge is not something to hide from those around you. Now we'll move on to Blue Sky, where you'll find us at DumptyDump.BSky.Social. Make sure you include the archers hashtag using a capital T and A, so the visually impaired who use screen readers can enjoy any archers-based tweets. As well as @dumptydump, I can be found at whenlock, etc, etc. And I am @jayburto, etc. We're also on Twitter @dumptydump, so let's find out who has won the Skeetie and Tweetie medals for this week from Theo. Tweet, tweet, pushcat. Or should that be XX these days? Hello, Jacqueline, Steven and Dumptydum as everywhere. It's purple pumpkin here with Tweets of the Week. This week, whatever platform you were on, there was really only one topic of conversation. I think it was at least five and maybe ten to one of people, Anty, this week's storyline, to the handful who were pro. And the Anties were really very anti. John Conroy at Sort Yourself Out thought this week's the archers were brought to you by the Twilight Zone. Harry Turnbull, at Turnbull Isimo, thinks there's no excuse for this lame and unbelievable fairy tale. And Chris Lone, at Strutty B 1956, wasn't alone in feeling like an alien spaceship had landed on Ambridge and completely upset the natural order of things. And those accents. Well, I'll give the last word for the Anties to Patricia at Olympians who categorically said that this week is on a par with the inner monologue during COVID in terms of making a want to scream, please make it stop. For the pro contingent, there were a rare few who, like Elizabeth Crawford at E.G.M. Crawford, were absolutely loving it. Another Eddie Grundy trust me clarry moment, Jacob and Ruth on the trail of fraudsters, Brookfield Barn, a refuge for the scammed, classic ambridge. And Ambridge Olman, at ambridgeolman.bsky.social, wondered if she was the only listener who'd been thoroughly enjoying the silly episodes. She thought everyone else sounded rather annoyed, but surely Eddie and Faith rediscovering each other after so many years is rather sweet, isn't it? The educational value of the storyline was a little doubtful. James Cooper, at JPC101 on Twitter and @JPC101.bsky.social, was the person who bought the website, Warsichabrakes.com, and posted advice on it for the BBC, who had obviously missed an opportunity to provide some genuine scamming advice. On a website they gave a lot of airtime to this week. James's prank was picked up by the times of the telegraph, and maybe elsewhere too. And Rachel Ramsey, at Ms. Rachel Ramsey, was not alone in being staggered at how bad the executed a warning about scammers had been. Not only not using that website for education, but a fast called Barn camping scenario, and the scammed people all being welcomed into people's homes. For an educational storyline, it couldn't be more unrealistic. But if educational is your thing, then be sure to follow Brenda Sullivan. @Brenticellwin.bsky.social, who pointed out that Faith said that as a child she'd had a friend at Ambridge Farm. "The tenants there in the late 1950s were Ken and Mary Pound," says Brenda. The Pounds had a daughter Marilyn, who, like Faith and Eddie, was born in 1951. Marilyn and her husband Harry Booker came to live with her parents in 1973, when Harry left the army, and they subsequently bought a house in Penney House. They became silent in the 1980s, and there's no record of them moving away. And Jane's Kintbury, at Woolbury 2024.bsky.social, then pointed out that Mary Pound had been played in that latter part by Isan Churchman, who had previously played Grace Archer of late and honourable memory. There is truly always something fascinating to be found in the Tweeter Long. But now, over to this week's medals for blue sky skates, threads and the X-posts, all of which we consider as Tweets of the Week. In Brahms' position, it's trubs@troubshaw.bsky.social. God, I love being grumpy about the archers. Never change. The Silver Medalist is Ayman O'Tianney at EoTianney. The continuity announcer plugs the archers unseen by Julie Beckett. I think the Tweeter Long should collaborate on the archers' ob scene. They then follow some suggestions. And the Golden Medal goes to Charlie Naughton, at CharlieNaughton.bsky.social. Have you been conned into listening to a set of ridiculous setups designed to heighten awareness of scams on the presents of an everyday's tale of country folk? You could be entitled to literally some compensation. Call Scambridge today. Composition may not exist. Composition does not exist. And on that educational note, that's it for this week. I hope to see you all on hashtag the archers on Twitter, threads or blue sky next week. Thank you for that, Theo, and congratulations to all who were mentioned in this week's roundup. And don't forget, we're on Instagram at Dumpty Dum. Please send any of the archers or podcast relevant photos to the Dumpty Dum email and we'll publish them with credit to you at stumptydum@mail.com. And this week, we have a great rendition of Barwick Green, sent in by Harry Talbot, featuring two 14-year-olds, and you can find that on our Instagram page. We'll be recording next week at the normal time, which is actually well before dawn on Saturday morning, so please get your calls in by midnight on Friday, UK time as usual. And as we come to the end of this episode, we need to say thanks to all our wonderful contributors and to the team of Dumpty Dumas behind the scenes. We'd say great big thank you to all of you who are listening to us too. We love making this podcast and sharing our love of the archers around the world. And we must say thank you to Kim Durham and Sonny Ormond for their voices and pay our respects to the creators of this podcast. Thank you so much for listening and joining us today. Now we are off to list Dumpty Dum on the barstitchabrakes.com. And so it's Aurovoir from me. And it's goodbye from me. Dumpty Dumpty Dumpty Dum, Dumpty Dumpty Dum, Dumpty Dumpty Dum, Dumpty Dumpty Dum. Kenny's family health care benefits kicked in the day he started his hourly job at Amazon. But two kids, he was a big fan of that. Then he took advantage of Amazon's on-the-job skills training program that helped him launch a new career in software development. Kenny liked that too. That led to a bigger paycheck, so he was able to get his youngest Sonny. Drum roll please. Drum set. Next up, drum lessons. Learn more at about Amazon.com. Every day better. Forging ahead together drives Colorado's pioneering spirit. At Chevron, we donate funding and volunteer thousands of hours in support of the community's we call home. We also employ our neighbors to deliver the energy needed as the state's largest oil and natural gas producer. All to help improve lives in our shared backyard. That's Energy in Progress. Visit Colorado.chefron.com [MUSIC PLAYING]