BACK in 1955, when I was a teenager, I went one evening with my parents on a social visit to an aunt and uncle in Stockton. The aunt met us at the garden gate.

Plainly excited, she gasped: “You’ll never guess what’s just happened. Grace Archer has died in a fire.”

This cataclysmic event, the death of young Philip Archer’s wife, dominated the evening’s conversation. It filled the interludes between the hands of whist (this was 1955, remember).

By sheer chance I fondly recalled the occasion this past Christmas, on the card my wife and I sent to the aunt, now a widow living near Northallerton.

But The Archers’ wheel – a tractor wheel, naturally – has come a much fuller circle.

Grace’s sensational demise has been echoed in the equally dramatic death of Nigel Pargetter, husband of Phil’s daughter Elizabeth.

He slipped from an icy roof as he and David Archer, patriarch of the family following Phil’s recent death from old age, removed a New Year banner.

In 1955, radio hadn’t quite been eclipsed by TV, which consisted of only two BBC channels.

Coinciding with the launch of ITV, Grace Archer’s dramatic death delayed TV’s inevitable conquest by a few hours.

Today, of course, many people have access to hundreds of TV channels. There are also DVDs, the internet, 24-hour shopping, more travel – endless diversions.

So it is astonishing that the new storyline achieved almost as much impact as Grace Archer’s death. Within seconds it was the chief topic on Twitter. The tragedy even made it on to the BBC News, and it occupied acres of newsprint.

Anticipation had been whipped up by the programme makers, who promised an event that would “shake Ambridge to the core”.

They deserve credit for avoiding an OTT Emmerdale or Corro solution – perhaps a terrorist bomb at Lynda Snell’s panto.

But did it “shake Ambridge to the core?”

Fans of the programme felt it didn’t and, as an unaddicted occasional listener, I must say I agree.

Though married to an Archer, Nigel Pargetter was neither a farmer nor a front-line character. A mild figure of fun (in the actor’s own words “a bit of a silly ass”), his loss is not critical. But had it been head-of-the-family David who fell to his death, a question mark would have been raised over the very future of the Archers in Ambridge – a coreshaking scenario indeed. But the opportunity, left open at the end of the cliff-hanging (or rather roof-sliding) episode, was missed.

A quieter but more sensational storyline has been staring the programme makers in the face for years without being recognised.

The things people say to each other in Ambridge would mean that by now no one would be speaking to anyone else. So, after the tumti- tum opening music, each night there would simply be silence.

This would accurately mirror the often bitter feuding that is a reality of rural life. I suggest this for the next core-shaking moment at Ambridge – perhaps another 50 years or so from now.

ON what I thought was New Year’s Day, I read that to combat obesity, stairs in stations and other public buildings could be adapted to play tunes on each step – encouraging people walk up, rather than choose the escalator. Then I realised I must have slept through three whole months.