It's all very disconcerting. There I was, listening to The Archers as I rolled out the pastry for a lemon tart, to Jennifer Aldridge berating her husband Brian for being boring; now, here I am talking to that oh-so-familiar voice on the phone. "Sorry I wasn't in earlier," she says. "But I was with my father. He's 95 you know." Father? But Jennifer's father was Jack Archer who ran The Bull pub with her mother Peggy. And he's been dead for years. Eventually my Archers-activated brain-bypass switches off. This isn't Jennifer I'm talking to. It's Angela Piper, the actress who has played her for the past 34 years. The problem is that I've been listening to The Archers for the last 34 years and when I hear that voice . . . Angela Piper was barely out of drama school, working in weekly rep in Margate with the actress who played Carol Tregorran, when word came through that the actress who played Jennifer Archer had been snapped up for Emergency Ward 10.
Over the years, the wayward girl who had an illegitimate child (frightfully risque in those days) has turned into a snobby know-all, self-appointed queen of Ambridge society, a woman whose puddings are universally deemed the sine qua non of Borsetshire cuisine. How curious, therefore, that all these years later, here she is leading a life uncannily similar to that of her fictional alter ego, living in a 17th or 18th-century farm house, with four Labradors, cats, chickens, ducks and geese, albeit on the borders of Essex and Suffolk rather than west of Birmingham, where the series is set. And just like Jennifer her kitchen (complete with Aga) is the centre of family life. Home is very much the centre of Angela Piper's life.
And a good thing too. The setup with the Archers sounds far from perfect. There are no contracts. Performers are simply booked (and paid) for each episode, as and when they are needed. And their voices are so familiar to so many that it can be hard for them to find other work. ("At one time I used to do Points Of View but they would get these letters saying "Brian isn't giving Jenny enough housekeeping.") Hence, Angela's need for another pie to put her energetic fingers in. "I love cooking and I love my home. I care very much about creating a home and part of it is all about the smell of scones cooking." Once again, it could be Jennifer talking - but I doubt that even Jennifer, who for some time was a reporter on the Borsetshire Echo, could have improved on The Archers' Pantry. Angela has written this cookbook in the name and "voice" of Jennifer Aldridge. As well as being a splendid compilation of stand-by and larder recipes, it is as witty an introduction to the characters of the BBC's longest running soap as you could wish.
Although the dialogue for the programmes is written by script-writers, with no input at all from the performers, the book is entirely Angela Piper's work. As an actress, writing in the character of Jennifer came easily to her. "It's such fun. Writing in character you can get away with murder. Because Jennifer is such a cow and such a snob and so wonderfully patronising. You can pass all sort of social comments." Although the final text had to be agreed with the BBC, which owns the rights to the Archers concept, they made no changes. Indeed, it is hard to imagine anyone working there now who would have Angela Piper's encyclopaedic knowledge of the characters who have passed through Ambridge's meandering lanes. (Remember Elsie Catcher, the school headmistress? I don't.) Not to mention characters who exist in name, but whose voices have never been heard: Mabel Larkin's Cowslip Wine, Lord Netherbourne's Iced Brie, Freda Fry's Pumpkin Pie with Walnut Crust, Auntie Pru's Cinnamonspiced apricots. Each recipe is accompanied by a splendid thumbnail sketch of its supposed owner: Nelson's Naughty But Nice 'n' Creamy Flan ("Smooth and seductive with just the merest hint of alcohol.") Betty's Bring And Buy Brownies: ("When you need help, ask a busy woman, they say, and that's Betty Tucker.") Throughout it all, Jennifer's winning mix of simpering whimsy - Poor Person's caviar: ("Imagine the sound of goats' bells") - and spot-on social observation and bitchiness - Mrs Pemberton's Provencal Pie: ("Caroline Pemberton, nee Bone, seemingly a descendant of British aristocracy, descended yet again to find herself managing Grey Gables Country Club with disarming efficiency.") Mary Pound's Cock-a-Leekie Pie: ("Clad in winter woollies and tucked away in a little brick bungalow . . . her gravelly voice can still be heard grumbling over the fence.")
Angela Piper has collected old cookery books for as long as she can remember. The recipes in this collection can be divided between those gleaned from old family scrapbooks belonging to her mother and grandmother; longtime family favourites and her own "concoctions", all tried and tested on her family (a son and daughter now in their twenties) before being tried and tested by a home economist to ensure that quantities and timings and heat settings were right. ("With an Aga you just shove it in and hope for the best.") In stark contrast to Jennifer, Angela is modesty itself when it comes to her culinary skills. "I'm not that brilliant a cook. I'm all for easy cooking. I cannot be doing with arty farty things that need a lot of fiddling about it. All jolly straightforward and don't need 101 ingredients." Angela Piper admits that cooking at home is one thing. But when her first cook book, Jennifer Aldridge's Archers Cookbook, was published the BBC arranged for her to do a demonstration, in character, on a set they built at the Good Food Show, she was terrified. "I felt such a fraud, in as much as I'm really just a simple housewife. But in the end it worked terribly well and gave me a lot of confidence." The criteria for the recipes in the new book were that they should all be ingredients that "could be bought in Borchester", with the emphasis on wholesome and natural flavours. (The success of the first book led Jennifer - sorry, Angela - to launch a range of organic marmalades and jams, though the whole process of obtaining a licence from the BBC sounds as much of an obstacle race as the Netherbourne Point-to-Point.) However popular The Archers might be, however, Angela Piper knew that it made no sense unless the book worked well in its own right. "I think The Archers has got so much humour, and this is what I wanted to do. I hope it might woo people who aren't Archers fans to give it a try."