You’ve got to have conflict (and cheeky kisses!) 

David Archer – or Tim Bentinck as he’s much, much less well known – was on a train to Birmingham to record The Archers recently when he found himself sitting next to a handsome chap he couldn’t quite place.

‘It was Idris Elba,’ he says ruefully. ‘I missed a trick. Can you imagine if he’d said, “I’ve listened to every episode since 1990-something and I would die to be in The Archers.” I mean, people do. If only I’d known. I could have asked him.’

What on earth would Idris Elba do in The Archers? ‘Oh, anything,’ says Tim, airily.

He makes it all sound so normal, the idea of an A-lister in Borsetshire, the fictional county in which the Radio 4 drama about everyday country folk is set. But had Idris dropped in to crown next month’s coronation celebrations in Ambridge, the village at the heart of The Archers, he would have been in exalted company.

Queen Camilla is such a big fan she took part in an edition of the show in 2011, chatting to Ian Craig, chef at the Grey Gables luxury hotel, about his ‘delicious’ homemade shortbread. In other years Alan Titchmarsh judged Ambridge’s gardens, Kirstie Allsopp opened its fete, Professor Robert Winston played a fertility consultant, and Griff Rhys Jones headed the campaign to restore the Cat And Fiddle pub.

Dame Judi Dench once bagged a role as a housekeeper, but reportedly an approach from Bill Gates was turned down because no one could work out why the Microsoft boss would be addressing the local Women’s Institute.

Next up is Rylan, one of the presenters of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest. He’ll be hosting Ambridge’s own Eurovision Variety Show in an Archers special on 12 May.

These celebrity fans are among the five million or so people who’ve been tuning in for years to the world’s longest-running broadcast drama, on air since New Year’s Day 1951.

It began as a means of giving information to farmers to encourage better food production following the war. Today, though, it’s something else entirely.

Contemporary storylines have included teen pregnancy and abortion, drugs, modern slavery, the male mental health crisis, domestic abuse, food poverty and alcoholism. There’s been a young male gigolo escorting his way through university – and now the show is featuring one of the hot-button topics of our time, with the row about whether a treasured painting of a slave ship should be removed from view at Lower Loxley, Ambridge’s stately home.

And that’s not going to be settled over a pint of Shires bitter in Ambridge’s pub, The Bull, is it, David? I mean, Tim.

‘People say to me, “I want The Archers to be nice,” but nice can be bland,’ says the actor, who’s played Ambridge’s easy-going farmer since 1982.

‘You’ve got to have conflict, the nature of drama is conflict, you need a page-turner. If it were only nice it would be as dull as ditchwater. If it’s gritty, it makes you care. Too much of the Flower And Produce Show and people will turn off.’

Contemporary storylines have included teen pregnancy and abortion, drugs, modern slavery, the male mental health crisis, domestic abuse, food poverty and alcoholism

I ask him about the rump of traditionalist fans who claim The Archers has become too progressive and should return to its farming roots. ‘I say keep listening. If you don’t enjoy this storyline or that one, then well, it’s like the weather – it will change!’

His opinions are shared by other cast members. Katie Redford plays Lily Pargetter, currently stuck in the middle of the row between her twin Freddie and their mother Elizabeth over the controversial painting at the family seat.

‘The Archers is good at highlighting topical issues, and this storyline reflects different generational perspectives,’ says Katie. ‘Elizabeth is saying we can’t erase history, and Freddie is saying the family has a duty of care to everyone who sees the picture. Now is the right time to have that argument.’

Hollie Chapman, who’s played Alice Carter since she was 12 (she’s now 34), also pushes back on any accusation of wokery.

‘I think they’re nailing it because these things are happening in society. The characters are having difficult conversations about addiction, mental health, abortion… It’s good. People love drama. They’d switch off without it.’

That said, these punchy scenes are woven into a more traditional narrative in which the rituals of rural life – jam and cake-making, the village fete, harvest and the Christmas panto – take centre stage.

You can still rely on The Archers for a long, slow-burn row over a stained glass window.

‘That’s what people love,’ says Tim. ‘They come home from a tough day and there’s someone worrying about the size of their giant marrow.’

(Although there’s plenty of sex in The Archers, the words ‘giant marrow’ aren’t a euphemism.)

‘Just for a while listeners get caught up in the minutiae of that instead of the news, which is all war and murder and ghastliness. It’s about balance.’

Despite a vast portfolio of acting jobs – including playing the manager of Chelsea FC in Ted Lasso and being the voice of some of the biggest computer game villains – Tim knows that ‘when my obituary is published it will say “David Archer dies”‘.

Fans address him as David and berate him for things David’s done, because Archers aficionados like to imagine the series is a documentary rather than a work of fiction. 

In real life, Tim can actually deliver a lamb and is a devotee of Clarkson’s Farm. Has he learned anything from Jeremy Clarkson? ‘Crikey, yes I have!’

It’s surprising to hear him talk with genuine tenderness and insight about his 35-year on-air marriage to Ruth (Felicity Finch), and how her near-adultery with a herdsman in 2006 informs his portrayal of their relationship today. ‘He’s silly in love with her – but still suspicious.’

However, David’s wife woes are nothing compared to those of Brian Aldridge, played by the molten-voiced Charles Collingwood, who’s lost both his Archers wives recently.

First there was his on-air wife Jennifer, who’s just died in the show so the actor Angela Piper, who played her, can retire. Then there’s Charles’s real-life wife Judy Bennett, who played Shula Hebden Lloyd.

Shula recently trained as a vicar and has now taken up a ministry in Sunderland so Judy can retire too. Charles recalls how he’d wine and dine both ‘wives’ alternately at his favourite Italian restaurant in Birmingham, only for his regular waiter to ‘have a fit of the vapours’ when he walked in with one on each arm after their recording schedules finally coincided.

His role began inauspiciously in 1975. Heading to the canteen on his first day, he found himself sharing the lift with a glum-looking Archers actor who said he’d just lost his job.

When Charles sat down for lunch with the rest of the cast, they told him, ‘Yes, he’s been written out because you bought his farm!’

Brian, Ambridge’s cravat-wearing, claret-swigging lothario, has had multiple ex-mistresses and a love child.

‘As an actor you try to bring something the writers hadn’t thought about to the character, something they might be able to latch on to. From an early stage, I thought I’d go a bit Leslie Phillips – and it changed my career,’ he says.

Fans have a very particular idea of what he might look like.

Once he was introduced to a woman who sniffed, ‘You don’t look like I expected. I thought you’d be tall with a full head of hair. Like Michael Heseltine.’

It’s that gift of a voice, a blend of sexiness and gravitas.

‘People who can’t place me tend to think I’m a doctor,’ he chuckles.

Brian was responsible for a lot of the sex in Ambridge. These days he leaves the saucier scenes to the younger generation, including Lily and her ex-college lecturer (or, as it turned out, letch-urer) Russ; and Tracy Horrobin and her fiancé Jazzer McCreary, who bowled his middle-aged maiden over in, er, the cricket pavilion.

‘The kissing never gets less awkward,’ says Katie. ‘It’s a kiss on the hand to the microphone, but it’s more about the breath. There are intimate moments where we must “embrace” and we know it’s going to be awkward standing next to each other.’ 

Hollie remembers Alice’s first real night of passion with her now ex-husband Chris in a tent at Bestival on the Isle of Wight.

‘We had an actual two-man tent in the studio, and were under a duvet inside to keep it real.’ Apparently voices sound different lying down for true pillow talk.

The Archers’ sound effects are legendary. There’s an ironing board that clanks in imitation of farm gates, and two sinks – a posh ceramic Belfast sink and a regular one – to differentiate between the well-off and less-well-off families’ kitchens.

Any Champagne you hear is an Alka Seltzer dissolving, while roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is replicated by the actors eating a segment of orange.

You want a cow to kick someone? That’s a log striking a cabbage.

Also legendary is the tum-ti-tum theme tune, a 1924 maypole dance called Barwick Green so embedded in British culture it was heard at the 2012 London Olympics and was suggested as an alternative national anthem by Billy Connolly.

It has remained untouched even as other parts of the show have entered the digital age: scripts are now emailed to the actors, although some still enjoy getting a paper version through the post. Susie Riddell, who plays Tracy, is one of them.

‘There’s something special about marking it up,’ she says. ‘It’s such an honour and a privilege to be part of a show which is a little bit of British history.’

All of the actors say something similar.

They receive scripts about a week before each month’s eight-day recording period, but will get plenty of warning if they’re going to be involved in what Susie calls ‘a whopper of a storyline’. Alice’s battle with alcoholism comes into this category. 

Some fans think her addiction came on so fast it stretched credulity, but Hollie says the idea was seeded in 2017, so far in the past she thought the editors had abandoned it. With lockdown, its time arrived.

‘The editor said, ‘Be prepared because it’s going to go bang!’ Hollie recalls. ‘Then the episode came through and I went, ‘Oh, OK, you weren’t joking.’

So, here are my predictions for the next few months. Lily and Freddie will diverge on the culture wars at Lower Loxley.

Alice won’t fall off the wagon and might get back with Chris. (‘We both really hope they do,’ says Hollie, referring to Wilf Scolding, who plays her ex.)

Charles Collingwood says he’ll go on as long as they’ll have him, so it sounds like Brian isn’t about to die of a broken heart.

We now know that dastardly Rob Titchener – whose abusive treatment of his then wife Helen gripped the nation in 2016 – is back in the UK, and a plan to celebrate the coronation will set off village rivalries.

As for Tracy, once a comic turn and now the emblem of coping and can-do in the face of economic adversity, she and Jazzer will have several switchbacks on their way to the altar but will enjoy their happy-ever-after when it comes.

‘It’s not going to be smooth – it’d be very boring if it was,’ Susie says with a smile. ‘There’ll be glitches. I want a spin-off!’

Then she adds the loveliest thing, which goes to the heart of why The Archers enjoys such longevity in this era of on-demand radio and endless TV.

‘I know we’re all in a studio but for me Ambridge exists as a place in my head, and when I’m not playing Tracy I know she’s going about her business in the village. It’s a little bit like believing in fairies. You’ve just got to keep believing. That’s the magic.’

The Archers, Sunday-Friday, 7pm, BBC Radio 4.