Why I Won’t Be Buying The Archers Naked Calendar
News of Ambridge matrons set to perform a Calendar Girls play on radio this Christmas is flustering – I’m too prudish for any nakedness
26 Nov 2015
Sunday mornings are sacrosanct in my house. I might occasionally give church a miss, but not The Archers omnibus.
For weeks now, I’ve been reeling at the news that, this Christmas, Lynda Snell will be staging Calendar Girls featuring a cast of redoubtable Ambridge matrons – I mean, maidens – with their kit off.
And weirdly, given that most years poor Lynda can barely summon up enough dramatis personae to put on Waiting for Godot, everyone from Jennifer Aldridge to Elizabeth Pargiter is queuing up to disrobe behind the maraschino-nippled cream cakes.
I’m a bit flustered. You see, not only is the full thing going to be broadcast as a standalone play, on December 27, I’m worried there’s going to be a commemorative calendar in real life.
Penelope Wilton, Helen Mirren and Julie Walters in Calendar Girls.
And because I’m such a loyal listener, and want to help with funds to rebuild the village hall, I’ll feel obliged to get one, even though I have such a prudish suburban streak I really can’t be doing with naked calendars of anyone.
Not hearty women rowers with the strong athletic thighs of a Betjeman girl. Not rugby playing lads or art students or fireman, well, maybe big, brave fireman – but no! Not. Even. Firemen.
That said, there’s a nude odalisque with a distinctly post-coital gaze hanging on my sitting room wall, but as she was painted in oils by an actual artist, my petit bourgeois sensibilities are assuaged.
Back in radioland, I can’t help but feel that for all his controlling menace, maybe Rob was on to something when he banned Helen from disporting herself behind a wheel of Borsetshire Blue.
Timothy Watson plays the controversial Rob Titchener. Photo: Rex (File)
She’ll thank him later, when the rest of the village are ogling Kirsty, you mark my words. Or maybe by then he will have placed her under house arrest.
Which is what I hope someone will do if I even so much as think of investing in a saucy Ambridge Calendar.
News of Ambridge matrons set to perform a Calendar Girls play on radio this Christmas is flustering – I’m too prudish for any nakedness
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