Wogan tributes
The Archers Radio 4
The past few weeks have seen a few well-known faces who chose to keep their illnesses private and who slipped away quietly from the world stage.
First it was David Bowie, then Alan Rickman and last week Terry Wogan.
The airwaves have been crackling with tributes and memories.
On Wogan, one Radio 2 fan sighed: “He was the only passenger who travelled with me in all of my various cars over the past 30 years.”
The magic was in the connection – that golden rule of radio – you are only ever talking to one person and for many, Wogan was a friend.
I’ve never been a fan of The Archers. It feels like a tip toe too far into that green and pleasant land that is forever middle England.
But I know Archer addicts and the Helen and Rob saga has hooked them, even if they are appalled.
Creepy Rob Titchener appears to be love bombing Helen Archer when he’s really invading her, Hitler style.
It's all about the subtle forms of domestic violence - the undermining, the control – the smooth velvet on the arm and the small sharp dagger to the guts.
He’s a boa constrictor slowly squeezing his prey.
He's "as slippery as an eel covered in swarfega" one listener tweeted.
It's all couched in "darling this" and "darling that" - but the clothes she orders are just a little too revealing and her friends are not really right.
And when they go out to The Bull for lunch, he recruits her son, young Henry as his ally, asking if they should cut up mummy's meat into small pieces like they used to do when Henry was a baby.... ho ho.
And when Rob orders her sticky toffee pudding behind her back although she doesn’t want it and tells her to eat up .. You know that there’s arsenic behind his honeyed tongue.
You want to scream: "Run Helen, run, run, run.”
We’re not far off “Whatever happened to Baby Jane?” territory.
I’m hooked.
