The Archers #109: Pulp Fiction! Hammer Horror (Tracy), Carry On (Brian & Neil), Call the Midwife (Adam, Ian, Lexi) - but no political thrillers, Ambridge remains Brexit-free. Nitpick here!

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

Thank you, @PseudoBadger, for kicking off this long, long series of Archers threads.

All views on The Archers welcome here! New blood welcomed. We don't all agree on all points and most of us are posting tongue in cheek a lot of the time, so don't worry about revealing that you'd like to be Susan's best friend or other unusual views. grin

Spoilers: not on this thread, please. We don't wait for the omnibus to discuss the weeknight episodes, but we do try our best to avoid cross-contamination from www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3439443-keep-it-to-yourself-the-archers-spoilers-thread-4, where spoilers are positively welcomed!

For newer listeners, lurkers or those who just have no idea what we're talking about, @DadDadDad has created this useful thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/radio_addicts/3557323-For-Archers-fans-a-guide-to-acronyms-on-the-long-running-discussion-threads-and-any-other-meta-thread-questions-you-may-have BOOP point for him! (See thread for explanation.)

Thanks to Bucking Frolics and LillianGish for the title ideas, which I had to edit down a bit to get under the character limit.

I wonder if Lily will have gone back to Manchester by the time we've filled this thread.

What happened to Jason?

Ooh, Jack came from Stirchley and told everyone so at every opportunity when he first arrived. Hayley was another Brummie.

Jean-Paul turned out to have the same surname as the actor who played him, Yves Aubert. He arrived at Grey Gables in 1983 but didn't get his voice for a while.

I don't recall that we were ever told what happened to Jason. He just stopped appearing. Shame.

Maybe he realised that whenever he did any work in Ambridge he was going to have to employ Robert Snell to help him, and decided to go off to Elbury, Ramsbury and Churcham instead!

I am gobsmacked to learn that Jolene is not an Aussie.

Maybe I have just been swayed by her antipodean-sounding name.

I need her to make an appearance soon so I can listen with new ears,

Indeed hating, and they need not to be treated as commodities.

Doreen Amanda Rogers changed her name to Jolene for her career as a country-and-western singer, back when she was about sixteen. She does have red hair; I have no idea how accurate the rest of the description is.

Hold on a minute.

What's all this talk about a baby needing its mum, all of a sudden?

That baby is going to have two devoted dads.

What point are you making, exactly?

Not trying to be the thread police, but I think discussing the ethics of surrogacy might lead us to arguments, and might be better left to elsewhere.

The baby is going to have two devoted dads, yes, but there is a school of thought that a baby develops a close bond with the woman who carries her/him during the pregnancy and therefore that removing the child from that woman after birth is likely to be harmful to the baby.

I'm very uncomfortable with surrogacy as a concept. I wish the SWs hadn't gone down this route. It's a very complex area ethically and I can't see how they can do it justice in the programme. It's not realistic at all that nobody has expressed any reservations about it, other than Roy, who was obviously strongly influenced by his feelings for Lexi.

That baby is going to have two devoted dads.

One devoted dad in Ian, yes. I'm not so sure about Adam.

We are making points about the moral dilemmas of surrogacy, something which TA is utterly unable to do.

It seems that it is considered wonderful news.
Is it though? Adam is the reluctant father and is in his 50s and Ian is in his 40s.
Lexi is the birth mother isn't she, and from a country where surrogacy is not legal.
It is complicated, if nothing else.

Remind me please. Was it a donor egg or Lexi's own?

Lexi's

It was a donor egg. Lexi was very clear on that.

Oh. Ok.

At least the behbeh only has one grandmother.

Cooking a curry here (nobody eats the stuff in Ambridge, do they!) and I was just wondering what "all the trimmings" would have accompanied a beef wellington?
I've encountered the phrase in relation to a roast, especially at Xmas, but what on earth do you have with a bit of fillet in pastry. I've no idea how Alistair and Jazzer wouldn't have smelled the culinary masterpiece either.

Also, how is Helen getting on with her Borsetshire Blue? I know Clarrie and Susan didn't like it a few weeks ago (weren't they having it with pickle for some strange reason), but has Ian agreed to start ordering it again. He's off on 'Sprogwatch' shortly, I hear.

I agree with you entirely Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g. It's a highly contentious subject and no-one has expressed any concern about the ethics or psychological effects. It's just not believable that in a small community everyone would be so non judgemental.
Jennifer's reaction has been totally ludicrous.
No doubt if any nay-sayers pop up in the plot,they'll be branded small minded and reactionary. As well as stupid and uneducated.

But as long as Ian gets 'his' baby.
Adam's not showing much interest at all, much less devotion, but he's always terminally bored about everything.

Beef Wellington sides you'd need a couple of veg, potatoes, and gravy IMO. There's probably something more adventurous would go with it, but I think Jim will have stuck with the classics.

I was just wondering what "all the trimmings" would have accompanied a beef wellington?
My copy of Good Housekeeping has a picture of the beef wellington on a serving platter, cut to show its inner loveliness. In the foreground there is a plate with one slice of welly and just two asparagus spears. End of. As Jim would not say.
(Another cookbook does suggest garnishing with watercress.)

I'm very uncomfortable with surrogacy as a concept. I wish the SWs hadn't gone down this route. It's a very complex area ethically and I can't see how they can do it justice in the programme.

Same here.

Its an ethical mine field and its been treated as if Lexi is lending them her spare car rather than using her body to carry a child for them, purely in order to afford to spend time with her own daughters and despite coming from a country where it is illegal.

It was presented at one point as if they were doing her a favour 'paying" for her to be at home with her children and providing her with a "free" cottage.

I've just realised I don't know anything about Ian's parents.

What's the position there then?

Anyone know?

Ian's mother died when he was very young.
It's an Archers rule that incomers mustn't have many relatives. They complicate the plot.