At a meeting in 1948 between representatives of the BBC, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the National Farmers' Union, one farmer, Henry Burtt, opined that what was needed was "a farming Dick Barton." The idea seemed preposterous; Dick Barton-Special Agent! was an immensely popular daily thriller serial. But Baseley started to muse on the idea of using radio drama as a medium for education, and he worked doggedly to persuade his BBC masters to let him make a trial of the idea. He recruited the writers of Dick Barton-Geoffrey Webb and Edward J. Mason-and obtained funding for five pilot episodes, which were aired in May 1950 on the BBC Midlands Home Service. The pilots were well received, and on 1 January 19 51 the official first episode was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme.

     The program was set in the fictional village of Ambridge, in the equally fictional county of Borsetshire, but its geographic location was clearly intended to be equivalent to the area somewhere to the south of Birmingham, and so typical of much of the farming country in Britain. The central characters were the Archer family of Brookfield Farm: tenant farmer Dan Archer; wife Doris; their daughter Christine; son Phil; Phil's unreliable elder brother Jack; and Jack's city-born wife, Peggy. Of the other characters, the most notable was the comic creation Walter Gabriel, a ramshackle smallholder whose cracked­ voiced greeting "Hello me old pal, me old beauty" was to become one of Britain's best-known radio catch phrases.

     The program was an instant success, gaining an audience of 2 million within a few weeks of its debut. It was soon moved to take over the evening slot previously occupied by Dick Barton, and its audience grew to 4 million hy May and 6 million by the end of the year. Listeners enjoyed the mixture of comedy, as Dan helped Walter out of his regular scrapes; drama, as traditional Dan and progressive Phil clashed over plans for Brookfield; and romance, through Phil and Christine's respective love affairs.

     But underlying these universal tales was the educational purpose that was the program's raison d'etre. So when proud Phil wanted to marry Grace, the boss' daughter, he decided that he needed sufficient capital of his own to refute any suggestion that he was marrying for money. He resolved to raise £5,000 (a substantial sum then) by breeding pedigree pigs, and over the next two years listeners unconsciously learned about the finer points of pig breeding as they followed the tale of a young man's pursuit of this headstrong, well-to-do young woman.

     Phil achieved his aim, and he and Grace married in 1955. But their happiness was short-lived, as the decision was made to kill Grace while she was heroically trying to save a horse from a stable fire. The fictional death-heard by a record audience of 20 million-provoked national mourning on a completely unexpected scale and in the process eclipsed the launch of independent television the same night.

     The Archers has always had an air of reality unusual in a drama series. In the early days, the actors were encouraged to use a non-histrionic, understated style of delivery, which was designed to give the impression that the listener was eavesdropping on the lives of real people. Each day in Ambridge portrays the real day and date of transmission, so the program reflects the changing of the seasons that is so important to the farming community. And when the listener celebrates Easter or Christmas, the Archers do, too. The characters grow old in real time, and many cast members have been on the program for decades. The first episode featured Norman Painting as Phil and June Spencer as Peggy, both of whom were playing the same parts well after the program's 50th anniversary.

     This intermingling of fact and fiction was reinforced by the inclusion of a "topical insert" in 1952, when the Archer family was heard discussing the content of the budget announcement that had been made to Parliament by the Chancellor of the Exchequer only hours earlier. Topical inserts have continued to be a feature of the program, and in more recent years they have reflected both farming matters, such as the crisis over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or "mad cow disease"), and more general events, such as the Gulf War and the death of Princess Diana. Real-life celebrities have also been keen to appear on the program, and visitors to Ambridge have included actor Richard Todd, jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttleton, veteran disc jockey John Peel, and actor Britt Ekland. Most notably, the Queen's sister, Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, appeared as herself in 1984.

    Farm production eventually grew to a position of surplus, and as the original hand-in-glove relationship between The Archers and the government became less appropriate, so the educational function of the program was removed in 1972. However, it retained its reputation for well-researched accuracy and continued to inspire public debate on farming and non-farming topics. In 199 3 the jailing of a mother of two who had aided her brother while he was on the run from the police inspired a "Free Susan Carter" campaign that provoked reaction from the Home Secretary. In 1999 the actions of Tommy Archer, who partially destroyed a crop of genetically modified oil seed rape, were soon mirrored in real life by Lord Melchert of Greenpeace. Tommy and Lord Melchert used the same defense, and both walked free from their trials.

     The program moved in 1965 from the Light Programme to the mainly speech Home Service (later BBC Radio 4). Its regular pattern-five weekday episodes, each with a repeat, plus a weekly omnibus edition-was increased by the establishment of a Sunday evening episode in 1998. With weekly audiences averaging 4.5 million, it is the network's most-listened-to program after the morning news sequence Today. But ir.. place in Britain's culture extends far beyond its regular listeners. The bucolic "dum-di-dum" of its signature tune "Barwick Green" still conjures up for many an image of a mythical rural heartland, the actual decline of which the program has been charting for more than 50 years.