IF ANYONE lived in Oldman's Terrace in the 50s I knew two things about them, for sure.

First, for historic reasons and via a long-dead Aunt Oldman, they were all somehow my relatives. Second, they were all fully-paid-up devotees of The Archers.

Actually, The Archers should have ranked first in that paragraph. It certainly came first along the terrace. From Great Aunt Lizzie at one end to Cousin Nellie at the other, every episode was listened to, debated, dissected and sides taken. Every day.

Visitors were expected to be fully equipped with the knowledge to join in. It was an early lesson in the great divide, the plunging gorge between those who follow the goings on in Ambridge and those don't give a toss. There are no half measures. It's every episode or none.

At ordinary times, Ambridge can grab the headlines so it's been a really bad week for those of us who race for the off button at the first note of Barwick Green. Even our ordinary Radio 4 listening caught us unawares with one-minute extracts of the more wither-wringing moments. Norman Painting (Phil Archer since episode one) chose his Desert Island Discs. Book of the week was devoted to personal views from famous listeners and even Dead Ringers did a spoof.

Fifty years old, nationally, on New Year's Day, the programme was actually piloted in the midlands late in 1950. It wasn't referred to as a "soap" then, and was meant to be "the farming Dick Barton" - as exciting as the contemporary radio special agent but putting across propaganda from the Ag and Fish.

Over that 50 years the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has become just another acronym as MAFF, and The Archers has become just another soap opera of crises, trauma, tangled relationships and an interweaving of any passing bandwagon of headline-catching "issues".

I'm sure there are, somewhere in rural England, people just like every single character in the cast but for one village to suffer them all tests suspension of belief to destruction. Mind you, if you think Ambridge is full of neurotics and wimps, don't ever try Westway, the BBC World Service soap based round a medical practice. It would be bad enough in broad daylight; in the small hours it's the stuff of nightmares.

Before I'm lynched by loyal Archers fans for writing from a basis of sheer ignorance, I plead that I did give it a fair try. For several years, as I got Sunday lunch on the go, I listened to the omnibus edition. That was in the days of Peggy and Jack and Doughy Hood. Even Walter Gabriel can't have been more than middle-aged and Sid Perks arrived as an offcomer who probably still took his baths in front of the fire.

I stayed loyal, in spite of Shula getting more and more of a pain as she grew older, but it was the sudden domination of every week by the feckless Grundies that turned the off switch for good.

From what I read, nothing's changed. I won't be back