The reason, explains Kate Oates, one of the programme’s three producers, is that the show is recorded between four and eight weeks in advance. "We can never be certain whether we’re going to be talking about rain during a drought," says Archer. "We try to avoid hostages to fortune."

This is just one example of the measures taken to keep The Archers sounding as if it is happening in the real world, and the show’s biggest weapon is the last-minute topical insert, recorded on the day.

Any changes interfere with very long-range planning. There are two meetings every year, during which the writers, producers, editors and archivist weave plots with slow outcomes, such as Jack developing Alzheimer’s. Sometimes, a great story will sit for several years, because the production team is trying to balance drama and comedy, agriculture and domestic.

The long-term stories are fleshed out at monthly meetings, written up and then recorded in six-day stretches in Birmingham. Each burst produces a month’s worth of episodes, and the first of these is usually due for broadcast a month after recording.

Dramas and crises

Fitting topical stories into this, to keep the show current, happens in two main ways: when a big football match is approaching, for instance, it is possible to predict various outcomes and record different reactions. Something like the World Cup is trickier, because the situation changes day by day, but luckily England’s recent quarter-final coincided with one of the show’s location recordings, which was produced very near the time of transmission, and could be changed at the last minute.

But you can’t broadcast a daily soap opera set in England and not have any of the characters notice that there has been a terrorist bombing. Kate Oates says that the production team attempts to avoid inserts, which are expensive, but that they'll try to include anything "which it would be weird if no one in Ambridge mentioned".

For a sudden, unpredictable event, such as the Queen Mother's death, the team will look at the script as soon as they hear the news, hunting for a scene in which it can be brought up, then contact the actors, zoom them to Birmingham, record, edit and broadcast that evening. Senior producer Julie Beckett says that, "In the past, as well as booking studios to record and edit the new scene, we also had to book a studio in London with a technician and a high-quality telephone line to transmit the new episode to Radio 4 at Broadcasting House. This time we were able to use new system called VCS. It was just like sending an e-mail!"

Sometimes, inserts and rewriting need to be more wholesale. Kate Oates explains that the Foot and Mouth epidemic dominated the national headlines for months. It had to be the primary topic of discussion in Ambridge, where the farms’ livelihoods would have been threatened. This meant constant rewrites, and "the production team had to be on their toes". It was well worth the effort, says Oates: "It produced some great drama."