Dinner for Yvonne (audio story)

Dinner for Yvonne
Main character(s):	Yvonne, Ianto, Tommy
Main enemy:	Xylophron plasma
Main setting:	London, 2000s
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writers:	James Goss (from a story by James Goss and Joseph Lidster)
Director:	Scott Handcock
Producer:	James Goss
Music:	Blair Mowat
Sound:	Naomi Clarke
Cover by:	Sean Longmore
Release details
Number of parts:	1
Release number:	5.1
Part of:	I Hate Mondays
Release date:	8 May 2024
Format:	1 CD Download 3rd of 3 stories
Production code:	BFPTWONE05CD
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-80240-401-2 (physical) ISBN 978-1-80240-402-9 (digital)
Torchwood One
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Next →	By Royal Appointment

Dinner for Yvonne was the first audio story in I Hate Mondays.

Publisher's summary

A cloud of psychic plasma is sweeping over Salisbury Plain towards London. Unfortunately, it's Yvonne's night off and she's throwing a dinner party. Will London perish before she can serve the artisanal cheese board?

Plot

On Yvonne's night off, Ianto arrives at her house as she prepares for a dinner party with her Monday Supper Club and informs her that the Xylophron plasma that Torchwood One sent to Porton Down to be locked away has escaped. However, she is determined to go ahead with her dinner on account of her having missed her last three turns because of her job and demands that he leave, only to be forced to hide him in the kitchen when Ken and Diane arrive. Gerry and Kiki soon follow and Yvonne ushers them in before Tommy can reach the house, but he instead climbs in through the kitchen window. The army intend on bombarding the Xylophron and inadvertently making it stronger, so Yvonne gives Tommy permission to set up an operation room in her kitchen and send everyone available to deal with it.

Tommy boils Yvonne's chilled pea soup and she returns to the kitchen when he knocks things over whilst trying to set up his computer, learning that the Xylophron has destroyed three RAF aeroplanes. She advises Ianto and Tommy to raise a cordon to slow the Xylophron's advance and gets them to help her with her cooking, but she ruins her roast when she burns her hands taking her pork out of the oven and sends Ianto out as a butler to serve the food after washing it. Tommy makes a quick sauce with his wife's recipe and joins the dinner table to get Yvonne to return to Ianto in the kitchen. There, Ianto tells her that the Xylophron has taken over the Torchwood agents and her soufflés are in danger, so she announces to her guests that the country is in danger from poison gas.

Gerry tries to call his personal assistant to check on his crew's filming, Diane the management team of her charity as they might be needed and Ken the warehouse manager to check on his equipment for his music festivals, but Tommy has cut the mobile signal and finishes making the crème brûlée. Over dessert, Yvonne tells the guests about Torchwood and, frustrated by them, reveals that she knows that Gerry is covering up his lead actor's sex crimes, Diane's charity spends very little on actual charity, Ken's sound system has been impounded and Gerry and Diane are having an affair. Tommy convinces her to take control of the Xylophron situation, so she has Ianto access their phones to send Ken's impounded speakers to the Xylophron on a Sopworth Camel being used in Gerry's filming and get all of Diane's subscribers to turn on their microwaves to make a disruption field.

Yvonne reveals that she knows that Kiki is a telepath and that the crystals she sells release waves which Ken's speakers amplify, shattering the psychic gestalt. The plan succeeds as the Xylophron reaches London and the guests depart. Yvonne, Ianto and Tommy finish off the cheese and Ianto gets a call from the hospital informing him that his father has died.

Cast

• Yvonne Hartman - Tracy-Ann Oberman
• Ianto Jones - Gareth David-Lloyd
• Tommy Pierce - Timothy Bentinck
• Ken - Ed White
• Diane - Anniwaa Buachie
• Gerry - Ian Abeysekera
• Kiki - Lesley Ewen

Worldbuilding

• Yvonne cooks vol-au-vents.
• Yvonne lights candles.
• Yvonne serves sourdough.
• Torchwood One sent Xylophron plasma to Porton Down to be locked away for ten thousand years.
• Selena Gomez works at Torchwood One.
• Ianto has tickets for the cinema.
• Diane works for a charity which asks for people to sponsor goats in Sudan.
• Ken organises music festivals in Woking.
• Yvonne asks for the guests' mobile phones to be left in a bowl.
• DIY Divorce is a television show which Gerry sold to more than twelve territories.
• Kiki runs Kiki's Little Knicky-Knackies. They sell babygrows made of hemp.
• Yvonne has spent ten days preventing an ambush by a Krynoid war bush.
• Yvonne serves soup.
• Kiki believes that microwaves interfere with auras.
• Yvonne uses the Meadow Barn Cookbook.
• Brothers in Blood and Coal is a film Gerry is working on.
• Gerry claims that Vivienne Westwood might play Margaret Thatcher in Brothers in Blood and Coal, Diane claims that she sponsors a goat with her charity, Kiki claims that she visited her boutique and Ken claims that she is making clothes for his festival elves.
• Ken believes that Yvonne works for the DVLA.
• Tommy bins Yvonne's heritage carrots and heirloom tomatoes. She washes them clean.
• Sandra Pierce was a good cook.
• Tommy makes a sauce from mustard, garlic and cream.
• Gerry's film crew are filming a Sopwith Camel.
• Tommy tests death rays at work.
• Ianto has a source at UNIT.
• Ianto suggests setting up a mobile HQ at Stockbridge.
• Yvonne sends a containment team to the Antebellum Warehouse in Croydon.
• Tommy enjoyed drinking cough syrup when it contained cocaine and morphine.
• Gerry tried to make a pilot with Twiggy.
• Yvonne saved Sudan from grasshoppers in 2003.
• Yvonne shut down Gerry's television series about junior doctors because somebody was eating human organs.
• Yvonne had the Watermelon Pips shot because they were Quaverform Soul Harvesters.
• Gerry has a friend in MI5 who is working for the Russians.
• Gerry asks Yvonne if she would like to meet Lulu and suggests Noel Edmonds as the narrator for a show about Torchwood.
• Ken claims that his speakers are so finely calibrated that they made Jean-Michel Jarre cry.
• Ken says that he should divorce Diane.

Notes

• Dinner for Yvonne was recorded in August 2023.

Continuity

• Ianto is informed of his father's death. He attends the funeral shortly before AUDIO: Disco ^[+]Loading...["Disco (audio story)"].

External links

• Official Dinner for Yvonne page at bigfinish.com