SOMETHING is amiss in Ambridge. Regular Archers listeners are up in arms over the DavidRuth-Sam love triangle, complaining that the characters have been portrayed in an entirely out of character fashion just to create a cliff-hanger for last Tuesday's 15,000th episode.

Out of character? You're not kidding. There we are, a knowledgeable, worldly-wise, mature audience, and the scriptwriters are asking us to believe that Ruth is the only woman from the northeast of England NOT to drop her knickers on a first date.

Even so, you have to admit that they carried out this cynical ploy with some skill. There was the perpetually whining Ruth, off to visit a "college friend called Laura who lives somewhere near Oxford". There was the nave stupidity of her husband (who had himself come close to playing hide the sausage in recent weeks), telling her she could "go off with a clear conscience? and if you enjoy it, you can go again".

There was the homemade card from the kids reading, "Have a wicked time". There was the tortuous, traffic-jammed car journey to the immoral tryst, punctuated by mobile phone calls from friend and family, and then ? then, there was Sam the priapic cowman, lurking in a cheap hotel off the A40 with a bunch of garage flowers and a warm bottle of Borchester Brut.

After months of anguish, the denouement in the car park was almost an anti-climax: "I can't do it, Sam. I can't go through with it."

Well, thank God for that. Can we all now get back to worrying about whether or not Lynda Snell has recruited enough dwarves for her panto?

Old people like Archers listeners shouldn't be subjected to torment like this. They've already had their pensions stolen and they've already been denied lifesaving cancer drugs unless they live in Scotland or Wales; to have the state broadcaster toy with their sensibilities in such a shoddy fashion is an insult too far. One can only wonder what they'll make of the gay wedding at Christmas.

OH HOW we laughed when The Sun and the Daily Mail ran stories about swan-eating asylum seekers. What tosh. What racist rubbish.

Err, well, hang on a minute. In a not entirely unrelated story, a 150-strong squad of High Impact Fisheries Enforcement Officers (crazy name, crazy guys) has been set up to stop Eastern European immigrants decimating the nation's stocks of freshwater carp.

Apparently the fish is a delicacy in those parts and assorted Poles and Ukrainians are netting them illegally on a massive scale.

I make two points: firstly, have you ever tasted carp? It's like eating doormat hairs coated in mud.

Secondly, expect this storyline to turn up on The Archers before long. And won't Eddie Grundy be cross that he hadn't thought of it first?

MUCH outrage among the chattering classes because British Airways has banned children from sitting next to male strangers just in case they're exposed to kiddyfiddlers.

Child protection campaigner Michele Elliot, director of children's charity Kidscape, said: "It is utterly absurd. It brands all men as potential sex offenders."

Listen, love, I couldn't care less.

Call me a nonce all you want, but if it means that I'll never again have to sit next to a whining, mewling, shrieking, kicking, puking brat for eight transAtlantic hours, then I'm a happy bunny.