Wow, Christmas over and New Year on Saturday. Ambridge studio is just like the number 38 bus; nothing for three weeks then 24 eps (episodes) come at once. Its funny recording Christmas in November.
Silly me, with no panto this year I thought it might be a walk in the park but how wrong I was, first the bit when... Oh I forgot, I signed the AOS.
Well at least we can put 'Now that's what I call Christmas hits 1963 to 2027' back in the drawer for another year! What is nice is that on Saturday, after the new year celebration we can get our post-holiday blues out of the way pre-holiday!
Today I have to read 24 eps and mark up the scripts (in a special sound recordist code) and then I will don warm coat and boots to trek out and record a few backgrounds for next year. I can guarantee that at least one person will ask, "What are you filming?" Oh - anyone know what AOS* is?
Michael Harrison is a Programme Manager in BBC Radio Drama.
- AOS means 'Archers Order of Silence' and describes the ancient code that forbids Archers people from giving away the storyline.
- Archers Week ran on the Radio 4 blog from 23-30 November 2009. 19 blog posts were published in all, from 17 authors. They're listed here.
- Radio 4's Archers web site is full of good stuff, like a map of Ambridge, family trees for all the big clans and a detailed who's who. There's also a 'two-minute guide' for Archers newbies.
- The Archers messageboards are among the busiest at the BBC - nicknamed Mustardland because of the distinctive yellow page backgrounds. They're a bit sceptical about Archers Week, though.
- There are two Archers podcasts: one for the daily episodes and one for the Sunday omnibus.
- Hedli Niklaus, who plays Kathy Perks in the serial, also runs the Archers fan club, Archers Addicts.
- Norman Painting, who played Archers patriarch Phil for nearly sixty years, died on 29 October 2009. The last episode he recorded aired on 22 November. Archers Editor Vanessa Whitburn paid tribute to him here on the blog and the Archers Addicts have collected listener tributes.
- The picture shows Michael at his desk in the cubicle. During our visit to the Archers' home in Birmingham dozens of photographs were taken, many of which feature pictures of cast members (and an ironing board).
- Twitter was put to use during Archers Week. #archersweek was the hashtag and we learnt that Tim Bentinck, who plays David Archer (@timbentinck) and Keri Davies, who writes scripts (@keridavies) are both Twitterers. Follow the Radio 4 blog on Twitter.
