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Listening to The Archers is something of a busmanÂ’s holiday for Cambridge graduate student Andrew Titman. For the last eighteen months this statistics specialist has been compiling a spreadsheet, recording some of the minutest details of the programme, from the appearance of individual characters to the number of times Ruth has said "Oh no"!

Information from the spreadsheet is much in demand on The Archers message board, where Andrew is known by the elegant pseudonym Cornelius Vermuyden - in reality the Dutch engineer who drained the Cambridgeshire fens in the seventeenth century.

The Archers was part of the background soundtrack when Andrew was growing up in the fenland village of Deeping St James, near Peterborough, but it was only when he went to university that he started to follow the programme in earnest. "I like the many-layered nature of The Archers, and the little details in it." While Archers listening is not a majority pastime with Cambridge undergraduates, he was surprised to find how many of his fellow students were also devotees of the programme.

Andrew started recording information about character appearances as a personal project - nothing to do with his maths studies. Over the past eighteen months heÂ’s added mentions of silent characters and recorded the weeks written by individual scriptwriters. Catchphrases caught in his net include RuthÂ’s famous "oh no", and the less celebrated "youÂ’re joking", along with "what are you doing here?" (used by many characters), "hello you two" (popular with Shula, apparently) and JenniferÂ’s use of "darling" - itÂ’s not for nothing the character is known on the message board as "JD" (Jenny Darling).

Cornelius has also started logging unusual locations such as Fawcett Magna and the use of profanity in the programme: "There was a lot more of that than usual when Clive Horrobin was around", he says.

As a result of this endeavour, "Cornelius" has become something of a sage on the message board, there with an informed response when someone muses that itÂ’s been a while since theyÂ’ve heard from a certain character. "I like being able to answer the questions", he enthuses "and if I donÂ’t have the information already, I can often get it from the episode synopses on the website."

When not tied to his radio and computer, Andrew has been researching his family history, and enjoys competitive cycling. Once heÂ’s gained his masterÂ’s degree, he has his sights set on a career - unsurprisingly - in statistics.

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