This book is much more of an encyclopaedia, published in 1996, and containing even the smallest characters right back since the 50s, when the soap began. It’s written by some of the actors, and that means they know their stuff. I don’t know if it’s designed to be read as a book, or if it is more of a reference, but I devoured it from cover to cover. I can’t exactly recommend it, as I know no-one else on the planet would care to read a 13 year old book about characters that don’t exist anymore, but still, I give it a big thumbs up.

When The Archers became available as a podcast, I was excited, simply from a podcasting fan’s point of view. Then I started listening, and was intrigued by the way radio soap is put together. The little things fascinated me – having to say character’s names more than you would in real life because they’re not always distinguishable by their voices, managing to make an entire 13 minutes listenable, despite very little happening, and clearly doing plenty of research into current and potential farming techniques.