“Why can’t you behave?
Oh, why can’t you behave?” – Kiss Me Kate
“There was a problem with the condom!” said Phoebe.
I felt like Eliza Doolittle’s dying aunt, who came to so sudden she bit the bowl off the spoon. The Archers has been going for 66 years and this is the first time anyone has said condom. Phoebe had spent the night with Constantin, a long-lashed Latvian strawberry picker. This is not unheard of in Ambridge, but no one has been this specific before.
We got a candid crash course in contraception (“I usually have the injection but I forgot”), the morning-after pill (“You have to take it in 72 hours. If you vomit, it won’t work”) and venereal disease (“Young Constantin’s been a busy boy this summer. You should get yourself checked out.”) It certainly blew the cobwebs off my knowledge of contraception, albeit a bit belatedly. Go on, ask me anything! I may become an agony aunt.
So now we have to wait a couple of days for Phoebe’s pregnancy test and a couple of weeks for the report from the sexual health clinic in Borchester. Hitherto sexual education in Ambridge has largely been in the hands of Joe and Bert doing their Rambling Syd Rumpo routine (“You ain’t seen my marrow, Joe. Lovely and firm it is.”)
The hope is, obviously, to attract a sparky young audience to our grizzled and thinning ranks. Like Phoebe, we shall see. What with housing the homeless and feeding the hungry (Jill is barely sane on the subject of cauliflower cheese) the Archers has become quite painfully strident and socially aware recently.
So thank heavens for an old-fashioned wedding. Justin and Lilian – make a note in your diary – are getting married in December. “Lower Loxley is the most magical place in winter” said Lilian. Apart from the plummeting bodies, that is. “Whatever you choose will be perfect” said Justin, who, being a tycoon, hasn’t watched a lot of soaps.
• A month in Ambridge returns on 12 September.
