Former Editor of The Archers, William Smethurst has died

William Smethurst, Editor of The Archers in the 1970s and 80s, has died. Smethurst joined the programme as a writer in 1974 having started his career as a journalist and writer of radio plays at the BBC. When original Archers producer Tony Shryane retired, the roles of script editor and producer were combined into one. Smethurst was Script Editor on Play for Today working with writers such as Malcom Bradbury and David Edgar at the time he was appointed as Editor of The Archers in 1978.

The early seventies were a dark period for The Archers with listener numbers plummeting and the show's future questioned. When Smethurst took over the show, he felt strongly that The Archers should be rooted in village life. He said the show 'must be the authentic voice of the shires. The programme began as a dramatised agricultural advice service: it has evolved into the story of an English village. It must accurately reflect rural life; if it has attitudes, they must be the attitudes of rural England.' He emboldened his writing team to aspire to the writing of Jane Austen, Laurie Lee and H.E. Bates and injected a strain of English social comedy into the programme as well as heightening the class divisions in the village. But his keenest instinct was to modernise the aging programme - then twenty five years old - by introducing new writers, including 'Woman in Black' novelist Susan Hill, writer of 'The Day Trip To Bangor' folk hit, Debbie Cook, and feminists like Helen Leadbeater, and Mary Cutler who continues to write for the programme - the longest serving writer in Archers' history.

Mary Cutler writes:

"William Smethurst is the reason I'm still writing The Archers thirty-seven years later. He took a chance on a young English teacher who had never had anything on radio before on the strength of one unsolicited script where the first good line - he kindly told me - did not appear until two thirds down the first page. It is a cliche but in this case completely true - William taught me everything I know. He told me the Archers was essentially a social comedy - like Jane Austen - a group of interesting characters in an English village. This meant that though terrible things could, and do, happen to our characters - the good would end happily and the bad unhappily. He told me I could write anything I liked at all - shock the audience to the core in one scene as long as the next scene was Tom Forrest listening to birdsong on Lakey Hill. William knew that audience and it would not be an exaggeration to say he saved The Archers for them."

Shepherding The Archers at a pivotal moment, Smethurst oversaw the death of many of the original characters- including Dan and Doris Archer who headed the eponymous clan. He was also responsible for refreshing the cast with vibrant new blood, such as Caroline Sterling (nee Bone), Susan Carter (nee Horrobin) and the Grundy family. For a time, the feckless Grundys challenged the Archers as the central family of the programme. His introduction of the aristocratic Nigel Pargetter at the height of the 80s ‘Sloane Rangers’ was an instant hit with listeners, as he wooed Shula Archer dressed in a gorilla suit. By his own admission, Shula was Smethurst's favourite character and she would eventually marry doomed solicitor Mark Hebden in the year of the Royal Wedding (1981), her portrait taken for the Radio Times by Lord Lichfield. His second favourite character was Captain, Jack Woolley's faithful dog. In 1984, Smethurst successfully persuaded Princess Margaret to make one of the programme’s most celebrated guest appearances.

In 1986, Smethurst left The Archers in order to become Executive Producer of Serials for Central Television, taking over the stewardship of the motel soap opera, Crossroads. He subsequently wrote several books, including The Archers: The True Story in 1996. On its publication, Radio journalist Gillian Reynolds dubbed Smethurst the 'man who turned The Archers into a cult'.

Angela Piper commented:

"As Editor of The Archers, William wove the social layers of Ambridge with a great deal of colour and imagination. He was an incredibly talented writer, creating a number of characters within the village with great skill, vivid imagination and a wicked sense of fun."

The Archers Editor Sean O'Connor said:

"William Smethurst had a great, vital reputation when I joined The Archers in 1999. He boldly steered the programme through a time of crisis when it was fighting for its very existence. He's the man who made it recognizably the programme it is today - high drama married with gentle humour. Many of his characters remain at the heart of Ambridge which is a testament to his inventiveness, his instinct for drama and his deep love of the programme."