As a longtime fan of the Archers, Mary joined a Facebook appreciation group for the radio programme in 2019. “I’d started listening to it when my children were young and got hooked,” she says. “I thought it would be a good place to chat with like-minded people about the show.” At the time, she was living in Worcester and working as a floodwater resilience expert.
During the Easter holidays, she spotted a picture of some hot cross buns that another member, Nigel, had posted on the group. “I was rude and told him they looked as if they belonged in a rockery. We started having a bit of banter,” she says. Some of the other fans didn’t like the distraction, so the pair joined a splinter group of 100 people, where they could talk about anything they liked. Nigel, a widower, told the group he was living in Winchester and working in graphic design.
