Jill returns to where she first met Phil Archer

Volunteering at the pop-up Happy Friends Café has extra significance for Jill because it is on the site of Mitchells, the Borchester department store where she met her future husband.

While the audio of the episode in which they met hasn’t survived, we can be sure that Jill isn't mis-remembering because their meeting is recorded on Jill's first archive index card. The card also tells us that while Mitchells was where Jill first laid eyes on Phil it wasn’t where Phil first saw Jill.

Patricia Greene’s first words as Jill, which appeared in the same episode, were, “and now I’ll show you the fifteenth use to which this very versatile little household gadget can be put…”

While in Mitchells with his sister Christine, Phil recognised the household gadget demonstrator. Remembering her from the church fete where he had caught her on his cine camera a few days before, he went over and struck up conversation. Jill refused to have lunch with him but “half-heartedly” agreed to see him at the Borchester Show.

Initially, Jill told Phil she could never see herself marrying a farmer. But Phil persevered – ringing her boss to ask for her address! About a month after they had met he asked her to marry him. Jill told him it was much too sudden but promised to think it over.

She came back to Borchester to get to know Phil better and after some time she agreed to marry him. They would be no engagement and the wedding would be as soon as possible. Phil’s mother, Doris, was rather wary of the match. Nevertheless, the couple were married in a quiet ceremony in a church in Crudley (where Jill was raised) on 16 November 1957.