He's behind you! Rob's not the messiah - he's a very naughty boy! Watch The Archers pantomime here.

[PseudoBadger]

Oh no he isn't! Oh yes he is!

That was badly phrased but hopefully it makes sense. Anything that might trigger Helen's tiger mum instinct.

Scan. i knew with both of mine.

De-lurking for the spreadshit. I started listening in a Sainsburys car park during the episode where Roof was almost leaving with Sam the Cowman, she was dreary then too. But like so many others I can't listen at the moment, it's too aggravating. Love this thread though.

Based on NorthernLurker's calculation (which is in line with dipankrisp's comment above), Helen's due date is 19 May, so she is just over 16 weeks in.

I am a lurker too, but refuse to read most of this thread as I am an Omnibus person. Have to catch up on sunday

Is the early scan and confirmation of a boy going to be upset when she goes for the 20 week scan and the sonographer announces it's a girl?

dfw I hope so

I had scans with all of mine and they were all correct. However the sonographer said that girls can be harder to determine than boys. One of my friends was told she was having a boy with her first baby and it turned out to be a girl.
Sometimes I think the SW look at these threads and just do the opposite of what we really hope will happen. i have a horror that the says boy, that he is born all perfect and that the whole SL will just drag on and on and on.....

Judy Bennett (Shula) used to do children's voices in lots of R4 dramas, including TA. However, that hasn't happened for a long, long time now - 30+ years I've been listening and I don't think it's been a feature in all that time. Nowadays they find some child with the right accent (some closer than others - I gather they never found a child with the right sort of Dublin accent for Ruairi and of course he clung onto an Irish accent long beyond the point when that was credible). Then they record the child's dialogue separately (in the child's home, possibly?) and edit it in. I think there was an interview recently where Louiza Patzikas (Helen) said she'd never met 'Henry'.

I think it was Shula who used to do the kids' voices but that was years back when the characters weren't cast until they were old enough to be involved in actual plots.

I'm wondering who was the first child character to make an appearance. Will Grundy maybe?

X-post with Gasp0de

There was an omnibus a while back where the children's voices didn't make it in to the broadcast! Resulted in Will having a bizarre one-sided conversation with "George". I'd heard the episode during the week, with the dialogue in place so was very and then at the cock-up!

ARRRGGHH no !! Why why why,

It's the most perfect news....

I can't BEAR it!!! Have just LA'd. Haven't had a chance to catch up with the thread, but had to vent my spleen. My hatred for him has reached new heights. I bloody KNEW this would happen

Sorry just read everyone's response on the previous page !

Speaking of the omnibus being slightly different, I was listening to the dum tee dum podcast and it was mentioned that Sundays episode contained some dialogue between Helen and Rob about Peggy's money. I was over infested curious so I downloaded both and LA. It was the episode where the scan letter arrived, Tuesday of last week, when Rob told Helen that he had turned down the job. In the omnibus, there is a whole segment after Helen says what about the money, where they discuss Peggy's money, and Helen says it was meant for a house and Rob says Peggy wouldn't want it to sit there, but be put to good use or something like that. In the Tuesday broadcast it skipped straight to him saying that it wasn't a 9-5 job. Weird huh? It's about 22 mins into the omnibus if anyone wants to listen.

If they really want to spin out the RobnHell storyline (God forbid) they could have several years of Rob plotting to do Henry down because he will regard anything that Pat and Phil spend on Henry, and anything they leave to him, as being a direct theft from Knobspawn.

that's so weird dfw! I understand them taking dialogue out of the omnibus but not putting it in! Will LA :o

Also off to listen again.

I was also wondering why Rob wasn't even remotely My Son, My Son when Jess was pursuing him over paternity. Was it because even if Ethan had turned out to be his son, Rob wouldn't have had the control over him he wanted/needed? Or over his mother either?

I think that's exactly it, Toomuchtea. It's all about control.

Interesting that Helen has kicked up a bit about the money even if the dialogue has been cut. Interesting too that she has her sights on a house of their own. I bet he's planning to move into Peggy's when she SOTMC - but didn't Peggy change her will and leave everything to Tony?

I listened to this afternoon's and thought Helen was distinctly disappointed that the sex is now known. She sees only too clearly how obsessed he's going to be.
And she didn't like him bamboozling the MW about her driving - or rather, she suspected that he was lying when he said the MW had agreed that she should stop.

I can't stand the Fairbrethren.

It's also interesting that they have savings, according to the bit that was cut. I wonder whose savings?

You're right, Peggy did change her will and leave some to Tony. I can't remember whether she split it equally between her children or not.

Goodness! That was well spotted DFM!

How extraordinary to have extra conversation in the omnibus (rather than in the daily episode). And most weeks I catch at least some of Sunday morning but I completely missed that one.

Hmm ... What's their reasoning? Is this a way to get the entire listenership rushing to the film, for fear of missing something, so they can then cut down to just an hour on Sundays mornings with nothing during the week? It's a bit worrying, given that every possible thing even remotely connected to TA is bruited all over the BBC website and Twitter etc. Why not mention this?

Bridge Farm finances continue to be completely baffling!
Did the money from the sale of the shop clear the debts of the shop? If so, did Helen pocket any proceeds or did these go to the Farm? (There was a family board meeting about the sale so I assume the latter.) Do Tom and Helen get a dividend from the business?

Perhaps Helen had some savings from the time when she and Henry lived with Pat'n'Tone and she was presumably earning a wage from the shop. But she didn't appear to have any savings last Christmas when she needed a hand-out from Pat.

Does Rob have savings? He's not paying maintenance or alimony to Jess as far as we know. He lives in a rented house but has I suppose been in work for a couple of decades. But last year he was shilly shallying about whether she should give up work at the shop. First he was worried about their income if she had no wage and she felt guilty about that then he was desperate for her to give up work altogether.

As I have said before. Robs job was advertised internationally. His salary must have been large. He spent nothing- no holidays, no flash car, no shopping (no-one in ambridge buys anything ever). Cheap rented property.

He must have money in the bank.

I wonder if it's in the joint account!