Fans of ‘The Archers’ – the everyday story of country folk and the longest-running radio soap in the world – have always claimed that it is one of the most alert indicators of changes in British society. Now acupuncture has found its way into the fiftysomething-year old show. Helen, the troubled daughter of Tom and Pat Archer, has had many misfortunes in recent years – her brother’s death in a tractor accident, the suicide of her gamekeeper boyfriend – and when she stopped eating and started drinking heavily after being dumped by a callous boyfriend, listeners and her parents feared that she was heading for another crisis. After concerned prompting, she is visiting an acupuncturist as well as a counsellor – and is full of praise for both, and it looks as if she is on the way to recovery. Now it’s on The Archers, it will be impossible to deny that acupuncture is very much in the mainstream. In his regular Times Literary Supplement column ‘Freelance’ (02.03.2007), Bohemian Old Etonian poet Hugo Williams (born 1942) writes about his friendship with the Chinese exile and fellow-poet Liu Hongbin. When Williams is forced to turn down an invitation from Hongbin due to a bad foot, the Chinese poet insists on him coming over and his acupuncturist sister seeing him straight away. “I certainly felt a new admiration for Liu, converting his dinner party into an acupuncture clinic at the last moment”, Williams writes, giving an intrigued and intriguing description of his session.

Acupuncture has also been mentioned in the context of cricket, when Kevin Pietersen, the glamour boy of English cricket, had acupuncture after being forced off the pitch by cramp in his left arm after scoring a century in a Test Match last summer.

Meanwhile, Japanese baseball star Daisuke Matsuzaka has arrived to play for the Boston Red Sox with his personal acupuncturist in tow.