I was on tenterhooks.

Weren't we all? Ambridge was about to be shaken to the core. I was in the car when Sunday night's 60th anniversary episode of The Archers started. I'd reached home by the time pregnant Helen was rushed to hospital and had to calculate whether to stay put or risk missing something vital in the two minutes it would take to get inside and switch on the kitchen radio.

Well, as you know I needn't have fretted. Helen's baby arrived safely. The fall guy was Nigel Pargetter. The toffiest toff in all of toffydom fell off his own roof. He'll be little missed.

He'd already raised suspicions by being far too good to be true of late. First he organised a surprise romantic dinner complete with harpist for his wife Elizabeth. (Nauseating.) Then he found an old brooch of Mummy's and drove to Felphersham to have it mended in time for New Year. She was wearing it when his brother-in-law, known around here as Droning David, persuaded Nigel to climb on to the roof of his stately home to untie a banner on a dark, frosty, windy night. Nigel's fall was a fitting end for one so high and mighty.

One down, how many more to go I wondered? However, dum-te-dum te-dum te-dum ... it was all over not with a bang but an aaaargh!

Ambridge "shaken to the core" by Nigel's loss? I think editor Vanessa Whitburn could be reported to Trading Standards for false advertising.

What the 60th anniversary episode did reveal was the grasp this fictional village has on the nation. I'd always regarded my (mild) addiction as a character flaw. It was my guilty secret.

I knew the programme had five million listeners but imagined them as the massed ranks of the WI. Now look who has come out of the closet. I heard Ian Rankin in the run up to the 60th anniversary edition expressing a preference for the character of Joe Grundy. According to Rankin, he is an anarchic fellow who steals every scene he is in.

The right wing columnist Peter Hitchens tried to predict the possible outcome – erroneously. And the intellectual AN Wilson declared the anniversary episode less a cliff hanger more a roof hanger. The fictional fate of its fictional characters was even debated on the Today programme.

I'm surprised any of them knew what The Archers was, never mind understanding the intricacies of the plot.

I mean it's hardly Beckett. Joe Grundy may steal every scene but he's a caricature, as is Jazzer, the token and clichéd Scot who eats out of a deep fat fryer, has never seen a vegetable and probably washes his hair in Daz – if he washes it at all.

In fact most of the characters are caricatures. Above a certain income level they speak received pronunciation. Below it they have the sorts of accents that wear a smock, carry a pitch fork and have a wisp of hay between their teeth – think Clarrie Grundy and Ruth Archer.

The regular listener is subjected to Pravda-like lessons on environmentalism and social responsibility. We're schooled in bovine inoculations, the virtues of reed bed filters and the benefits of a community shop. The plot remains timeless in giving Brian Aldridge a mistress and when she dies, having his wife Jenny bring up his love child.

It has their daughter Alice marrying the local farrier Chris Carter, who has been treating us to the twin horrors of Jenny's snobbery about the match and Susan Carter's social aspiration.

We've weathered the storm of Adam Aldridge coming out and have grown fond of Ian, his civil partner. And now the emergency surrounding the arrival of Helen Archer's sperm-donor baby has put paid to her father's disapproval.

All human life is there from the vicar's Indian wife and her Hindu faith to Shula's husband's gambling addiction and Matt Crawford's prison term. And yet it is set within a world where – despite the upheavals of 21st century morality – there is a sense of order, security, continuity, family.

Until Nigel's skid off the slates on Sunday night, the rich man was in his castle, the poor man at his gate, God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

For as long as I have lived The Archers has been as certain as death and taxes. My mother switched allegiance to it from Mrs Dale's diary, so from the cradle it's been as much of a fixture in my life as the tea pot.

I left home, studied, married, moved house and shifted countries. Throughout it all I knew that every day I could tune in and catch up on the goings on in Ambridge.

I could be faithless for weeks, months, years even – yet within a few days I'd have patched together the plot. It's like going back to your parents for a Christmas visit, hearing about erstwhile friends and neighbours and being filled in on the new blood in the neighbourhood.

Ambridge is a parallel universe familiar to us all. It's a place where we can listen to others confront life's challenges. In listening to them work their way through difficulties we have an opportunity to reflect on our own responses. It's like a dry run for the day that death, dementia or delinquent teenagers enter our own realm.

When we think about popular culture our minds switch to the huge viewing figures for Eastenders and Coronation Street. They have two, three, even four times the Archers audience. But I would argue the drip-drip effect of the Archers, day in and day out for 60 years has had as great an influence on UK society.

Some characters we love and some we love to hate. I hope Kate succumbs to dengue fever in Africa just as many others hoped that Helen would die in childbirth on Sunday night. But I would hate the programme to disappear.

As our own societies fragment, as more people live alone, it offers a virtual community. When our lives are good it brings a little lift. When they are rocky it's an anchor.

Stock markets may plunge, companies downsize, snow can empty supermarket shelves and VAT can rise. But every day we can shut out the world, put on the kettle and eavesdrop on planet Ambridge. There we are privy to everything and responsible for naught.

Can the same be said of Droning David? Will he be blamed for encouraging Nigel to an untimely end? We'll soon find out … Dum-te-dum te-dum te-dum…