Playing Phil Archer in The Archers for more than 50 years gave Norman Painting an entry in Guinness World Records as the actor who held the world record for a continuous performance in the same role. He was in the programme from the beginning, appearing in the first episode broadcast at Whitsun in 1950.

That was in the Midland Region of the BBC and the programme was first heard nationally on January 1, 1951. Painting, an occasional actor but then working for the BBC more as a writer and presenter, was recruited for The Archers by Godfrey Baseley, who created the “everyday story of country folk”, and was its first editor.

Phil was a key character, the son of Dan and Doris Archer of Brookfield Farm, whose farming exploits and extended family provided the core of the programme for its first two decades. But Baseley was initially so unimpressed with Painting’s acting that he declared: “Phil Archer should have had a bullet through his head long ago.” Painting was deeply hurt by the remark but waited until Baseley’s death in 1997 before he made his feelings public.

All the same, he and Phil survived. Not so Phil’s first wife, Grace Fairbrother. In the edition broadcast on September 22, 1955, the scriptwriters did the unthinkable for a soap opera in those days and killed one of their most popular characters. Grace’s death in a stable fire while trying to rescue a horse happened on the night when ITV first went on the air and brought accusations that the BBC had deliberately set out to undermine its rival.

In fact, the demise of Grace had been planned some months earlier and technical problems probably spoilt ITV’s opening night more than The Archers. In any case ITV was initially seen by only a few hundred thousand viewers in the London area while The Archers then had a national audience of many millions. For years afterwards Painting and Ysanne Churchman, who played Grace, met for lunch on the anniversary of the character’s death.

Grace had married Phil only a few months before. The wedding was recorded in a real church, at Hanbury in Worcestershire, and, tipped off by newspaper reports, large crowds gathered. In his own words, “short, bespectacled and a bit of a podge”, Painting admitted that he often disappointed listeners when they saw him in the flesh. One greeted him by saying what small hands he had for a farmer.

Phil remarried and had four children. His second wife, Jill, was played by Patricia Greene who joined The Archers on a six-week contract and stayed for more than 40 years. Their son, David, eventually became the leading Archer character, as Phil tried to ease into retirement but became embroiled in an unseemly family squabble over the future of Brookfield Farm.

Painting was inevitably asked whether he got bored with The Archers, to which his reply was that recording the 15-minute episodes took up only six days in a month. As for Phil

“I put him on when I go into the studio and sling him on the hook when I leave.” The other three weeks of the month he spent on what he called “a satisfying but undistinguished career” writing radio plays, features and children’s plays.

He was also, from 1966 to 1982, part of The Archers’ writing team, contributing nearly 1,200 scripts under the pseudonym of Bruno Milna. He deliberately avoided listening to radio’s other long-running soap opera, Mrs Dale’s Diary, in case he unwittingly stole its plots. But he said that his income from The Archers always went down on his tax return as “incidental earnings”. His only regret was that unlike television soap stars, the programme had not made him rich.

Norman Painting was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, in 1924. He was forced to leave his grammar school at 15 because his father, a railway signalman, could no longer afford to support him. He worked as a librarian for three years and saved enough money to put himself through Birmingham University.

His contemporaries included the future conductors Edward Downes and Brian Priestman, with whom he later founded Opera da Camera. He got his first taste of acting in the university dramatic society, and though a previous commitment ruled out a part in Kenneth Tynan’s Hamlet he played King Lear in a production he also directed.