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Lexie Patterson (Pepe Trevor)

Inducted as Alexis Jane Patterson on remand for larceny in (510), protesting her innocence. Considering that Lexie was probably intended as a replacement for Bobbie (who leaves shortly after she arrives), she lasts a remarkably long time. Am I the only person to feel that she has overstayed her welcome slightly by the time she eventually leaves?

Her friendship with Bobbie initially makes Marlene jealous - and it cannot help that Lexie starts out by conning Marlene out of money at cards (511). Bobbie sees that Lexie has scars on her back (512) and we are left to assume that Lexie has been cruelly treated as a child, though it is quite a while before the full story of Lexie’s origins is revealed.

While in the grounds for an exercise period, Lexie takes a bullet in the arm from the sniper aiming at the men from Woodridge (514), but shows commendable coolness about the whole incident. Lexie is returned to Wentworth after her trial on a six month sentence (523). She is the first to see through Mervin Pringle’s pretence at efficiency and worms out of him that he doctored his references to get the cook’s job (524) - a fact she will use against him later.

Joan Ferguson decides to take Lexie down a peg or two and when Lexie comes back to her cell looking for a pair of scissors, Joan uses them to chop off her Boy George dreadlocks (528). Lexie agrees to have sex with Frank Burke (530) if in return he will agree to fix Joan for her, which he does by pushing a bookcase on top of her.

After Marlene leaves, Lexie misses her for a while, but finds a new friend when women are transferred to Wentworth after a fire at Barnhurst and Julie Egbert is put in to share Lexie’s cell. Julie immediately demonstrates that card counting at poker really does work by beating Lexie comprehensively (538). Lexie and Nora are witnesses to Mervin having an epileptic fit, and he begs them not to say anything (557) as he concealed this on his application, but after Lexie fails to make an impression on the Parole Board (558), she blackmails Mervin into bringing clothes in for her to aid her escape (561). Nora forbids her to go ahead with her plan, so Lexie teams up with Lou to make a little money from a numbers racket. Against the wishes of the official editor Daphne, Lexie prints her own front page of the prison paper announcing the "wedding" of Joan and Terri (566). The temporary partnership with Lou comes to an end when Lou prints up duplicate numbers tickets and they are caught out selling them (574). Lexie finds an alternative source of income when Pippa Reynolds’ printing classes reveal her to have a talent for clothes design - and the willingness of the other women to help her when the T shirts get ripped makes her realise how selfish she has been (578)

Lexie astonishes the women by claiming to recognise her mother as Lady Brook-Giddings from a photo in the newspaper (580). When Jenny Hartley is released, Lexie asks her to visit her mother - unfortunately Lady Giddings merely assumes this is an extortion attempt and Jenny has to tell Lexie that her mother won’t visit her (585). The truth about Lexie’s origins is revealed when Lady Giddings visits Lexie's real mother in (590): she turns out to be the OAP prostitute Jessie Wyndham, who had given Lexie over to Lady Giddings - at that stage herself a prostitute before she married one of her titled clients - to bring up as her own child. Jessie gets herself imprisoned to check up on Lexie, but Lexie fails to recognise Jessie as her mother when she bumps into her with the laundry trolley (590). Jessie keeps their relationship a secret and is hurt when it turns out Lexie does even like Jessie much as a person.

When a series of notes apparently from a prisoner give the officers advance warning of the scams the women are planning, the search is on for the Phantom Lagger. Suspicion initially falls on Jessie, but Lou is convinced that Lexie must be responsible and threatens to kill her (593). Lou wires Lexie up to a faulty plug socket in the kitchen to electrocute her, but Jessie comes to her rescue. It is Jessie's idea to pretend that Lexie is pregnant as a way of getting Lou to lay off and Lexie is has sex with a garbage truck driver (596) to get pregnant in reality. When Lexie decides she must escape instead, Julie suggest that Lexie uses the same escape route as Nora Flynn, though she unfortunately doesn’t know that Nora has been tracked and killed by Harry Bassinger. After Lexie escapes (598), she goes to stay with Jessie’s friend Mabel (600) - Jessie comes to find her after she is also released and moves Lexie to her own house (602). Harry Bassinger nevertheless tracks Lexie down, gets inside the house and attacks her but she knocks him out with a vase. The police are called but refuse to believe that an ex-police officer could be responsible for Nora’s murder. Lexie is returned to Wentworth (603), where it becomes clear to her that she really is pregnant. [It must be said that the size of her bump fluctuates alarmingly, reducing drastically in (643) for instance]. When Lexie decides she wants an abortion, Jessie reveals who she really is to try to persuade her not to go ahead with it, but Lexie rejects both Jessie and her story (610) even after she has heard the truth from Lady Giddings.

After Lou Kelly is murdered in solitary, Lexie becomes a suspect (616) and is charged and sent to solitary (617), but she is cleared of both this and the assault on Harry Bassinger (620). Lexie becomes involved in the battle between Rita and Kath, and during a fight in the gym, she is punched in the stomach (626) [Believe it or not, but this "will she lose the baby or won’t she?" situation was actually thought to be good enough as a cliff-hanger at the end of the 1985 season] From this point onwards, Lexie’s pregnancy is pretty much the sum total of what she is given by the writers, though she is involved in conning the new officer Rodney Adams into giving her bottles of rum in return for a compromising video tape (637), but the tape he is given only shows Lexie and Roach insulting him. Lexie is reluctant to be transferred to maternity, and the scriptwriters oblige with an artificially induced crisis when there is an outbreak of a rare and unspellable disease in maternity (640). This allows Lexie to be still in her cell late at night when she goes into labour and Rita has to force Rodney to unlock the cells so that Lurch can use her animal husbandry skills to deliver the baby (648). Lexie is released shortly afterwards - her mates all do themselves up as Boy George for her farewell party (650). [Lexie makes up as Madonna before wiping it off and going as "herself", which is some indication of how long she has been in the series - from Boy George to Madonna!]


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Updated ~ 31 Mar 1997