The Archers has raised eyebrows with a sexual health storyline. After an incident with a fruit picker and a split condom, Oxford University student Phoebe Aldridge needed to visit the Borsetshire STI clinic. The character has shared her predicament with listeners in sufficient detail for the episode to seem like a sexual health lesson. Aldridge is 19; the average age of the Archers listener is 56. How inappropriate, some say. Others have intuited that the show is trying to attract a younger audience.

But the storyline can also be read as a clever sleight of hand. Sexual health education is overwhelmingly the preserve of young people, but the number of diagnoses of sexually transmitted diseases in people aged between 50 and 70 rose by a third over the past decade, and, according to Public Health England, there were 30,000 new STI diagnoses in the over-45s last year. This is a demographic that is not easily reached with a letter from the headmaster or a charity information leaflet (although the Family Planning Association has produced one).

The storyline is good news, says Dr Wayne Cottrell, who has a sexual health clinic in London. Because “reaching the over-50s is difficult ... They tend to come from a generation where these things weren’t discussed. They may not be as knowledgeable about the different types of risk that are out there. They don’t tend to feel comfortable coming for testing.”

Combine this reticence with the rise in the marriage and divorce rates for the over-65s and the attendant change in dating patterns, and it is easy to see why The Archers scriptwriters might feel they have found fruitful territory. “Anyone who thinks STIs are limited to young people is deluded,” says Laura Waters, a trustee of Terrence Higgins Trust. “The concern is that this [the over-50s] is a group of people that don’t perceive themselves to be at risk.” And there is little in the way of advocacy. “You don’t get people over 50 with genital warts standing up and saying the service should be better.”