The name of the odd footballer may mean something to me, but not his WAG. And in the peccadilloes of the stars of TV soaps, I am doubly lost, for I've heard of neither the actor nor his or her screen personality.

That does not mean to say that I am not a slave to soap. Because I am, only it's not a TV series, it's The Archers, on Radio 4, from which addiction there is no recovery. Non-Archers listeners should stop reading this column now, for it will mean as much to them as the News of the World does to me.

My addiction goes back a long way. I remember when the unmarried Jennifer Archer got pregnant, in the days when pregnancies of single girls were shocking. The identity of the father kept the storyline going for months until he was unmasked as her grandfather's dairyman.

I even remember, dimly, the death of Grace Archer in the fire at the stables, nobly but stupidly dashing into the flames to rescue a favourite horse. Ah yes, I remember, too, how quickly the bereaved Phil found consolation with Jill, once he'd spotted her demonstrating scone-making for the Milk Marketing Board.

If you listen to two Archerholics talking, you won't know if they're discussing events in their own community or in Ambridge.

The knight and I were once returning from a trip away and were sitting at an airport when a text appeared on my mobile from my friend Janice: "Emma's baby born. It's a boy, but who's the father?" Emma? Who did we know called Emma? We sat, puzzled, for a few minutes before I shouted out, to the knight's embarrassment: "It's Emma Carter, in The Archers!"

Small wonder then that when, wondrously, we got the chance to go Birmingham to sit in on a recording of The Archers, Janice and I took up the invitation eagerly. It came about through one of the scriptwriters, Tim Stimpson.

I have always thought that must be one of the very best jobs in the whole world. I mean, it's a bit like playing God. You decide on how John Archer is going to die (though his death was self-inflicted, as the actor wanted to get out of the series) and the sex of Hayley and Roy's baby.

"I think that baby may turn out to have special needs," I said to Tim over dinner the night before the studio visit. "She was very premature, and she cries an awful lot. There hasn't been a special needs child in The Archers. It needs one."

So there you are. If baby Abigail does indeed turn out to have some as yet undiagnosed condition, you read it here first.

Tim told us how the writing of the scripts is done. There are about a dozen writers altogether. They all meet together with the editors twice a year for long-term planning of the storylines. Then a smaller number meet each month and those there are given the stories for a week's scripts to write.

They are determined partly by which actors are available, for only those playing Ruth and David are under full contracts, and the others go off and take other jobs in radio, film, TV and theatre.