The Forum, initiated over 30 years ago by Eric Reid of the University of Surrey, after whom the Forum is now named, is held in Guildford at the University of Surrey every 2 years. This year's forum was the 18th in the series. There were over 30 oral presentations and more than 20 posters, together with suppliers' exhibitions on Tuesday and Wednesday. At its inception, the title of Forum, maintained over the years, was chosen to emphasize the interactive nature of the meeting; somewhere that practical issues could be discussed and successes and failures, 'tricks' of the trade, surprises and problems where logic (initially) fails are shared. The on-campus format and evening social events provide plenty of opportunity to discuss unresolved problems in a 'convivial' atmosphere. There were three major themes to this year's Forum: interpreting and implementing 'metabolites in safety testing'; quantification of biologicals (proteins and peptides, whether they be drugs, antidrug antibodies or biomarkers) in biological matrices using LC-MS/MS; and the use of dried blood spots. Interspersed among these were the core topics of the Forum, case histories illustrating the problem-solving skills of the bioanalyst and their ability to cope with surprises.