Norman Painting - the voice of Phil Archer - who has just died aged 85, was a charming man. I used to meet him occasionally when I went to the BBC's Pebble Mill Studio's in the1970's and before that their Broad Street predecessor in Birmingham to present real farming programmes.
But physically he was as unlike his radio image as it was possible to imagine. He probably stood no more than 5 feet 6 or 7 inches and rather than the swarthy weather beaten look of most farmers he was delicately built and wore a goatee beard. Despite that he was an excellent actor and writer and turned in convincing performances as Phil for over fifty years. He will be much missed.
I met several of the Archers cast at various times. Gwen Berryman for instance, who was Phil's radio mother, looked and behaved just like her fictional alter ego and the actor who played Dan, her husband and the original patriach of the soap, looked like he could have been a real farmer.
In those early days, before there were hundreds of TV channels, The Archers was even more popular than it is today. I well remember, in 1955, I was visiting my father in hospital where he had just had a hernia operation. Visiting time was 7.00pm and at that time the programme was broadcast at 6.45pm. As I walked into the ward at the beginning of visiting time every patient in every bed was in the middle of taking off their wireless headphones and all looked aghast.
Whats the matter? I asked my father who looked equally shocked. "Grace is dead" he replied with a face as white as the sheets he was lying on and went on to explain how Phil Archers first wife, Grace, had been burned to death trying to rescue her horse from a fire in the stable and how Phil had had to be restrained from going in there to try to rescue her. It was an incredible illustration of how powerful radio drama can be. All those hernia patients felt they had lost a real friend and it was more painful than the operations they had just endured.
And what a "spoiler" for the first night of ITV. Hey ho. Those were the days.