Studio bed helps make Archers sex scenes more convincing

FANS of the show might never see what’s going on – but a writer for The Archers has revealed that keeping a bed in the studio is essential for realistic sex scenes.

Veteran scriptwriter for the Radio 4 drama, Keri Davies, said that having a divan to hand is vital to make post-coital conversations sound convincing.

Speaking during an Afternoon Tea With The Archers event at the weekend, Mr Davies said: ‘Sex is even harder, as it were. We do have a bed in the studio because your voice sounds different when you are lying down.

‘There will be a sound engineer in a Led Zeppelin T-shirt rattling the duvet!’

He added that parties in the fictional Ambridge are limited to nine attendees because of budgets. ‘Sometimes you will hear two people saying “oh we saw Barry

‘Voice different lying down’

the other day”, and that’s because we couldn’t afford Barry,’ he told the audience at Chipping Norton Literary Festival.

‘We can only have 39 actor bookings in a week, which is roughly six or seven in an episode. If you have a big party you will have eight or nine, so it is up to us to decide with all of those restrictions how we are going to tell the tales.’

Actor Charles Collingwood, who joined the programme in 1975 as Brian Aldridge, also defended the show’s editor Sean O’Connor who has been criticised for ‘sexing up’ the traditional radio serial.

He said: ‘Sean has taken some stick over some of the casting and storylines but I will defend him as he is a storyteller. He is bringing in really exciting stories for you to latch onto.

‘I salute Sean for bringing in new ideas.’

When asked whether actors challenge the scriptwriters on lines they believe their characters would not say, Mr Collingwood replied: ‘ Oh yes, that does happen.

‘It is not said in a grand way, we just say, I just don’t think he or she would say it that way.’