But now I want the marriages & deaths as well!
Best schoolfriend's parents had nice unusual names, and I'm nosy!

They're meant to be on the way soon, Phoenix (though of course they're on ancestry already). Also marriages from 1930 onwards are on The Genealogist, apparently.

Oh dear, I hate to say this, because I was so impressed by the standard of transcription on the ones I'd looked at so far, but I can see a big problem for when you're trying to solve one of those difficult problems - "Please enter a last name".
Not going to be very useful if you're searching using first name only!

Mmmm

That's where Ancestry wins then. Have you tried wild cards? I wonder if it excepts them.

Ah, so you can go "round the houses" then, like on the 1911 census search, trying A*, B*, and so on all the way through the alphabet, for the surname.