Boon
an Episode Guide
by Martin Underwood
and John Lavalie
Last updated:
Thu, 25 Oct 2018 21:00
Boonan Episode Guide
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| aired from: Jan 1986 to: May 1995 | 93 eps | ITV | 60 min | stereo | closed captioned |
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Production Credits
Created by: Jim Hill, Bill Stair
Theme Song: Jim Diamond
Incidental Music: Barrington Pheloung [ 1 ]
Producers: Kenny McBain [ 1 ]
Harry retires from the fire brigade and Ken is invalided out after his lungs are damaged while rescuing a boy from a fire. Harry buys a seedy hotel, The Grand. Ken buys a caravan, The Ponderosa, and tries to make a living as a market gardener. Harry suggests that Ken should supplement his income by offering to do odd-jobs for people - he places an advert in the local paper. His first client is Barney Spitz, a pop music promoter who wants Ken to dress up in an old fireman's uniform and star in a pop video!
b: 14 Jan 86 w: Jim Hill & Bill Stair d: Laurence MoodyElena and Arturo Sandini (aka Helen and Arthur Sanders) run a circus lion-taming show. They ask Ken to recover their lion, Watson, which has been stolen by a group of animal-rights campaigners who want to use it to publicise their cause.
b: 28 Jan 86 w: Francis Megahy d: Laurence MoodyWhile sorting out unpaid bills at The Grand, Doreen find s one relating to a man who has since died. Ken, Harry and Doreen visit his widow, Meg Lucie, and find that she is coping very badly, both with looking after the garden and with the paying of the bills. Ken and Harry sort out the garden while Doreen sorts out Meg's bills. They decide not to tell Meg that they suspect her husband was having an affair while staying at The Grand. Harry falls for Meg but she decides to sell up and move away from the area. Harry employs a new barman, Lionel Blakey, but soon discovers that his racist comments are offending both Hanif and the Asian guests. After an argument, Blakey resigns, which prevents Harry having to decide how to sack him!
b: 4 Feb 86 w: Anthony Minghella d: Ian KnoxLaurie Langley, a has-been pop singer, employs Ken to look after her son after she suspects that her ex-husband, Geoff Greenaway, is trying to kidnap him.
b: 11 Feb 86 w: Guy Meredith d: Laurence MoodyPatsy, a young woman who is staying at The Grand, befriends Sidney Garbutt, another guest who has lost his memory. But what has caused Sidney to lose his memory in the first place?
b: 18 Feb 86 w: Paul Wheeler d: Ian KnoxKen is employed by a genial Irishman, Erroll McLaverty, to bring a canal boat back to Birmingham from near London. He takes Doreen and plans a romantic weekend. But two scruffy men, Appleby and Laing, are following the boat. Then Ken and Doreen hear strange sounds from the boat's cargo hold. They discover that an escaped convict, Alan Prendergast, is hiding in the boat - McLaverty had employed Ken to smuggle Alan back to his father, Walter Prendergast.
b: 25 Feb 86 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Laurence MoodyKen recovers the antiques that Philip Banks and Georgina Pemberton, a couple of corrupt antique dealers, have defrauded from an old man, Murdoch Johnstone. Harry is worried that Mr Dudley, an officious and demanding guest, might be a hotel inspector who will decide whether The Grand will be given a contract for housing homeless people.
b: 4 Mar 86 w: John Flanagan & Andrew McCulloch d: Graham TheakstonMajor Hopkinson, an old man who collects chiming clocks asks Ken for help after he is terrorised by some thugs to whom he owes money. But has he been completely honest with Ken?
b: 11 Mar 86 w: Geoff McQueen d: Brian MorganHarry is organising a charity football match between the firemen and the All Stars. Billy "The Kid" Buchan, an out-of-work Scottish footballer, has flown over from Hong Kong to play in the match. Harry organises a press conference at The Grand, where Billy will be staying. Billy is a notorious alcoholic, so his manager, Peter Grant, asks Ken to act as his minder and prevent him from drinking. This is particularly important because Wally Patterson, manager of the Saudi Arabian national team, and Abdul Ibrahim, one of the team's sponsors, are coming to the match. They want Billy to act as captain and coach for the Arabian team. Grant, who has an agreement to take 25% of Billy's takings, threatens him: "If you screw this up for me, I'll see you never play for another British club".
Ken collects Patterson and Ibrahim from the airport and takes them to the hotel, but meanwhile Billy has drunk a whole bottle of vodka and is in no state to meet them, particularly in view of the Saudis' disapproval of alcohol. Harry plays for time by pretending that Billy has gone out, while Ethel tries to sober him up - but to no avail. Since Patterson is also staying at The Grand, it is too risky for Billy to remain there in his present state in case Patterson sees him. So Ken takes him on the back of his bike to The Ponderosa.
They find that three young lads have been larking about in Ken's greenhouse. They have knocked over the trays of flowers, turned on the water and flooded the place. Ken has lost his entire winter stock. The boys have a whip-round and present Ken with the proceeds: just a few pence - "Not enough to buy a plant-pot", as Ken comments.
When Ken and Billy return to The Grand, a chirpy blonde Liverpudlian called Gloria is waiting for Billy. Patterson and Ibrahim catch them locked in passionate embrace, so Billy thinks quickly and introduces Gloria as his wife. However after a malicious phone call, Rhoma, Billy's real wife, comes down by train from Glasgow and interrupts dinner at The Grand, accusing billy of having yet another affair. Wally describes Billy as "just an alcoholic playboy". Grant disassociates himself from Billy. The deal between Billy and Ibrahim is off. Billy storms off on Ken's bike. Acting on a hunch, Ken follows Billy to The Ponderosa and finds him giving an impromptu football lesson to the lads who destroyed his greenhouse. Ken manages to convince Billy to turn up at the charity match. Back at The Grand, Ethel and Doreen persuade Rhoma to give Billy one more chance. It emerges that Patterson had phoned Gloria and said that Billy wanted to see her; he then tipped-off Rhoma. Ken accuses Patterson of trying to blacken Billy's name because he feels that his own position with the team is being threatened by the prospect of a younger and more talented coach. Ken takes Ibrahim to the match to watch Billy's performance and to judge his talents for himself. Ibrahim offers Billy the job as manager (having sacked Patterson), but Billy turns him down when Rhoma agrees to have him back.
b: 25 Mar 86 w: Peter Barwood d: Brian MorganKen falls off his bike while he is riding along a snowy country lane. The bike is damaged and needs a new rear suspension. Neighbour Ben Gibbs helps to recover the bike in his horsebox. After a lot of futile phoning around, Ken finds a motorbike repair shop, Alpha Bikes, which can get hold of the suspension unit. Alpha Bike is run Narain Singh and his nephew Ranjit. Narain offers Ken the use of his workshop. While working there one evening, Ken hears Ranjit and his wife Surinder arguing violently. Ranjit yells "You are my wife. You will do as I say." Surinder screams and runs away, pursued by Ranjit. She and Ken escape on one of Narain's bikes, and Harry reluctantly offers to put her up in a spare bedroom at The Grand.
When Ken returns the bike to Narain, he offers to bring Surinder back, although he tells Narain how his nephew has treated his wife. Narain resents the fact the Ken is "interfering". He says that Ken will only get his bike when he returns Surinder. Back at The Grand, Ken and Harry try to persuade Surinder to go back to Ranjit, but she is terrified of him: "He'll kill me". She locks herself in her room and later admits that she keeps being sick. She says Ranjit is very possessive and once locked her up because she had gone out without his permission. She is contemplating divorcing him but is torn between such liberated British ways and traditional Sihk ways such as an arranged marriage and being considered to be her husband's property. Narain and Ranjit come to the hotel to try to persuade Surinder to come out of her room. She refuses, so they stage a sit-in. Ken borrows Doreen's car and goes to Narain's shop at night. He tries to break in to recover his bike but sets the alarm off. As he is doing this, the car is stolen by joyriders. Later Ken borrows Harry's van and traces the car to a back street where it has been abandoned when it ran out of petrol.
Harry wants to evict Surinder from the hotel because he is losing money while the room out of action, but Doreen and Ken flatly refuse to allow him to do this. Ethel gives Surinder a good stern talking-to. Reluctantly Surinder confesses that she is pregnant and is scared that Ranjit will react badly to the news. Narain brings Surinder's parents and the two families argue. Doreen and Ken try to persuade Surinder and Ranjit to settle their differences. Eventually they get chance to talk, away from family pressures, and then proudly announce the pregnancy to their families. Narain pays for the room and returns Ken's bike.
Jack, Doreen's ex-husband, turns up unannounced and asks her to help one of his friends, Les Rickett, a builder who has got into financial difficulties and needs Doreen's accounting skills. Les thinks that she has been given the job because she has lost her job at The Grand and needs the money. Doreen is furious at Jack's distortion of the truth, especially when she learns that he has told Les that they are still married - clearly Jack won't face up to the fact that he and Doreen are irrevocably divorced.
b: 1 Apr 86 w: Frances Galleymore d: Graham TheakstonThe Karadia brothers run a carpet factory which has suffered more than its fair share of fires. The police, fire brigade and insurance company suspect arson. One of the carpets which is destroyed in the latest fire belongs to Harry - he has ordered it for The Grand and is worried because he has over-estimated its value on his insurance claim. Ken follows the suspected arsonist to a new hotel that Harry is about to buy and catches him in the act of setting a fire. Both Ken and the arsonist narrowly escape with their lives.
b: 8 Apr 86 w: Guy Meredith d: Laurence Moody| Back to TOP of Page |
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Harry has sold the Grand Hotel and bought a much more prestigious hotel, The Coaching Inn in Edgbaston. Doreen has moved to Spain and out of Ken's life. Harry is trying to raise some publicity for the grand opening that he has planned at The Coaching Inn, but the newspaper reporter isn't very interested. However Harry persuades them to print a photo if he can get it to the newspaper by their deadline. But who can perform the opening ceremony, now that the mayor isn't able to attend. By chance Emlyn Price Jones, a fiery red-haired Welsh MP, who is somewhat the worse for drink, is staying in the hotel so Harry gets him to do the honours. While Ken is taking the film of the grand opening to the newspaper office, he is ambushed by a gang of Hells Angels (see later).
Ken is starting up a motorcycle courier firm, Texas Rangers, which will operate out of the stables at the Coaching Inn, in which he has a financial stake. He is living in a flat above the stables. He has bought an ancient transceiver and some walkie-talkies from an Irishman, Flannery, so can keep in touch with his couriers. However the radio actually belonged to a rival firm, Romany Riders, which is run by Lomas and his son Mickey who operate a protection racket. Mickey and two of his biker friends, Des and Parrot, try to intimidate Ken into paying a percentage of his takings to Romany Riders. When this fails they tamper with the brakes on his bike, causing him to crash as he is leaving a car park. Ken escapes unscathed but the bike is damaged. He takes it to Greaves, an aging teddy boy who owns a motorcycle repair business and transport cafe. Rocky Cassidy, one of the Romany Riders couriers who is eating in the Greaves' cafe, had witnessed the accident. He now switches allegiance because he thinks that Lomas and Mickey have gone too far by breaking the Biker's Code: never attack another biker. Mickey gets a gang of his Hells Angels mates to chase Ken and to threaten to beat him up unless he shuts Texas Rangers down. Rocky rescues Ken from the ambush that the Hells Angels have planned in the suburban streets of Birmingham. Ken offers him a job as his first dispatch rider.
Debbie Yates, a chirpy Liverpudlian who is working as a chambermaid and waitress for Harry, is making it very clear that her heart is not in the job. After Emlyn Price Jones accosts her while she is cleaning his room, she hands in her notice. She jumps at the chance of working as Ken's dispatcher, taking calls from customers and directing the couriers.
b: 17 Feb 87 w: Guy Meredith d: Christopher KingHarry is thinking of extending the Coaching Inn and entertains a local councillor, James Petherbridge, to lunch in the hope that he will put in good word for Harry at the planning meeting. Unfortunately for Ken, the plans would involve the demolition of the stables used as Texas Rangers' office.
Petherbridge is being pursued by an over-ambitious TV journalist, Linda West, who is determined to prove that he is corrupt and is accepting gifts in exchange for ensuring that applicants' plans are passed. Things look bad when it is revealed that he has just returned from a holiday in Sardinia. Then he receives a package of pornographic books, unwittingly delivered by Ken. The police arrive as Ken hands over the package. Because Texas Rangers is implicated by delivering the package, Ken investigates- to clear his own name as well as Petherbridge's. He discovers that the pornographic magazines have come from a seedy club run by Sillitoe, a florid-faced, fruity-voiced man who reluctantly reveals that he was paid by a certain Roy Farmer.
Ken and Petherbridge decide to stitch up Linda West. Ken tells her he has evidence that Petherbridge has accepted a bribe from Harry and agrees to be interviewed live on TV. Petherbridge also offers to appear on the programme. On camera Ken denies his bribery claims and says Linda must have misunderstood. Petherbridge reads a letter from the owner of a sports centre which proves that one of their employees (Roy Farmer) had sent the pornography as a prank. Petherbridge freely admits that the sports centre owner had indeed tried to use the Sardinian holiday to bribe him into passing plans for a casino - but council records show that Petherbridge voted against the plans. Linda West is made to look very stupid - as her producer gleefully says "She got shafted. I always did believe in you, Fairy Godmother".
Rocky is fed up of being employed to deliver packages to a predatory seductress, Mrs Sefton, who has designs on his body!
Harry calls in the Environmental Health Officer to measure the noise that Texas Rangers' bikes make, but the officer reports that it is "not excessive". Also, much to Ken's relief, Harry discovers that the stables used by Texas Rangers have a preservation order and cannot be demolished.
b: 24 Feb 87 w: Paul Wheeler d: Bren SimsonDebbie thinks that Ken is getting very unfit so she takes him out jogging.
A spirited elderly woman, Irene Maplethorpe, is being victimised by pranks at Moat Farm where she lives. A dead sheep is found in a water-trough; cattle get loose; the farmyard is flooded; she gets anonymous phone calls and finally a barn is "accidentally" demolished by a JCB.
A consortium of unscrupulous property developers, Rathbone, Keen and Blackwater (RKB), has designs on the land where Moat Farm is situated. They are planning to build "luxury dwellings" there, even though they don't yet own the land. RKB put pressure on Irene's wimpish nephew, Philip Lainchbury, who runs a sawmill that is in financial difficulties, to get him to persuade Irene to move.
RKB offer Harry the chance to invest in the consortium and take him shooting on the land next to Moat Farm. Irene demands that they leave her alone - and shoots out the tyres of Rathbone's car to emphasise her point. Irene suspects that her nephew is involved in the pranks. He owns the farm and wants to sell it, although Irene has a right to live there as long as she wants. In fact the culprit is Philip's wife, Dierdre who wants the money to pay for her expensive tastes in cars and clothes. When challenged by Ken and Harry, she admits this and promises to leave Irene alone in future.
Harry spreads the word about RKB's tactics among his colleagues in the Chamber of Commerce and the Round Table. An investigative journalist is also planning to expose their tactics in a newspaper article.
b: 3 Mar 87 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Alex KirbyHarry is searching for a group to provide entertainment at the Coaching Inn. He approaches Frankie Bass, a theatrical agent, who recommends a Country and West band, Bronco Billy's Boys. Harry hires them privately, bypassing Frankie's agency fee.
Ken falls for Bebe McLintock, their raunchy blonde singer, after he has to rescue the band when they break down on their way to the Coaching Inn. Frankie Bass turns up and demands her share of the takings. Bronco and Bebe are forever arguing and Bebe is angry that she is not given sufficient chance to sing her own songs. She runs away from the band - and ends up in Ken's bed! She is on the point of leaving the band and living with Ken. However Ken's luck does not last: before long Bebe (who turns out to be Billy's wife) goes back to the band after Billy decides her needs her to stay. He is prepared to give her top billing and to let her sing her own songs.
When White Lightning (Ken's beloved bike) is stolen, it is another member of the band, P T Hudson, who notices it in a back-street garage run by a disreputable bike dealer, Arch Clanton. When Clanton refuses to hand back the bike (but offers to sell it to him), Ken takes matters into his own hands and "steals" the bike. Meanwhile Harry has secretly arranged with Arch to buy back the bike for Ken. Arch follows Ken back to the Coaching Inn, intent on repossessing it. Harry misinterprets the situation and pays Arch, as arranged - yet again his generosity exceeds his common sense!
b: 10 Mar 87 w: Jim Hill d: Robert TronsonAlbion Firetrucks, a local company which makes fire engines, has the computer plans for its new high-tech prototype stolen, when Ken is knocked off his bike while couriering them to the managing director. He is rescued by Shandy Tremblett, a platinum-blonde Page 3 girl who is staying at the Coaching Inn while trying to "improve her education".
When the prototype itself is stolen, Ken investigates. He uncovers a conspiracy between an American consortium, led by Ed Slatterley, and Albion's director, Sir Freddie Blackton MP. The intention is for Slatterley to buy Albion at a knockdown price (because the prototype and its plans are missing) and then, having asset-stripped the company, to close it down.
Ken finds the prototype hidden in a barn. Ken, wearing a brass fireman's helmet, and Shandy, dressed in a Union Jack robe, stage a publicity stunt on top of the fire engine to raise public awareness and to persuade the government to allow a management buy-out to take place. Sir Freddie Blackton loses his jobs, both as director of Albion and as an MP.
b: 17 Mar 87 w: John Fletcher d: Robert TronsonRocky has his bike stolen by an opportunist thief, Nick, while he is collecting a package from an office in the city centre... and being chatted up by the doe-eyed receptionist! To make matters worse, he has forgotten to renew the road tax and insurance on the bike.
Harry's 84-year-old Aunt Lill has had a stroke and is found lying on her hall floor. The ambulance drivers are on strike so her neighbours, Margaret and Sam Green, have to take her to hospital by car. Harry is furious at what he sees as the drivers' selfish attitude: "What's the world coming to when the unions can use a crippled old woman to bump up their pay packets?" he asks Ken. He vents his frustration on the casualty registrar, Dr Hamill, but she lectures him about the dire financial state of the Health Service and tells him how the ambulance strike is affecting deliveries of drugs and medical samples. Somewhat chastened, Harry offers Ken's services free of charge if the hospital needs any supplies collecting or delivering.
Harry has left Ken in charge of the hotel. A starchy middle-aged woman, Phyllis Nichols, is staying there and soon makes her presence felt by demanding a vegan diet and herbal tea. She is a well-known clairvoyant who wants conditions of absolute peace to write her autobiography. However word soon gets out that she is staying at the Coaching Inn. A certain Harold Beamish asks Ken to give her an umbrella from his dead nephew. He is followed by a large crowd, all bearing objects such as guitars, bird-cages and tennis racquets to give to her, in the hope that by handling the possessions she will be able to make contact with the dead owners.
Phyllis warns Ken not to ride his motorbike because she can foresee a motorbike crash, a lot of blood, Ken on an operating table in hospital and a policeman arriving at the Coaching Inn, bearing bad news. Because all the other riders are out on jobs, Ken reluctantly agrees to do a delivery, despite Phyllis's warning. He is knocked off his bike by a speeding Ford Capri but escapes with a few bruises; the car buries itself in a load of crates of vegetables!
Later, while he is delivering some serum for the hospital, he is asked to give blood because there has been a serious road accident. The casualty turns out to be Nick, who stole Rocky's bike. This explain's Phyllis's predictions about lots of blood and Ken lying on an operating table (actually the blood donor couch).
Rocky's bike is recovered, miraculously undamaged. Phyllis's last prophesy comes true when a policeman arrives with bad news for Rocky - he wants to question him about having no insurance!
b: 24 Mar 87 w: Anthony Horowitz d: Geoff HussonKen makes a delivery to a house which is being used as a studio for the making of pornographic films. When Barry Drinkwater, the film director, hears about Ken's association with The Coaching Inn, he decides he wants to make a film there. Despite Ken's warnings, Harry persists in believing that it will be good publicity for the hotel!
Debbie's younger sister, Lindy, arrives unannounced from Liverpool - she has run away from home. Debbie tries to persuade her to go back home, but Lindy complains that there's nothing to go back for and that she is fed up of being treated as a child. Harry gives her a part-time job working behind the hotel bar, but Drinkwater entices her away to give her a part in one of his films. Ken and Debbie can guess exactly what this will involve Lindy doing! They track her down and take her away from the flat over a sex-shop where Drinkwater has taken her. But when Ken leaves the sex-shop, laden with "complementary goods" that Beryl, the assistant, has given him, he is arrested by Detective Sergeant Margaret Daly of the Vice Squad who has been trying in vain to gather evidence that will send Drinkwater to prison.
While on duty, Margaret comes across as a very severe, patronising woman, but when she realises that Ken is innocent she softens. Ken asks her out and they end up back at her house, where he is rather stunned to discover that she has a teenage daughter, a precocious red-head called Jo with a cut-glass voice and a habit of disdainfully tossing her head.
Margaret decides to entrap the Drinkwater. Jo, dressed to kill, goes to his night club and before long he is chatting her up. Ken has planted a tape recorder nearby and Margaret is taking photographs as Drinkwater starts to seduce Jo. Having gained her evidence (although by rather underhand means!), Margaret arrests him for "importuning a minor".
The combined efforts of Ken, Margaret, Jo and Debbie persuade Lindy to return to Liverpool.
b: 31 Mar 87 w: Billy Hamon d: Moira Armstrong| Back to TOP of Page |
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Ken and Rocky deliver packages containing chemicals to a couple of Irishmen, Norman and Barry, at a farm out in the country. After Rocky sees a warning in the paper about terrorists in Birmingham, he suspects that he is carrying raw materials for making bombs and that the Irishmen are IRA bombers. He calls the bomb squad who blow up one of his panniers (after Rocky has hastily retrieved his bike) and the street is showered with fake credit cards.
Harry has employed an artist, Davida Duff, to paint a picture of the Coaching Inn. Ken thinks there is something fishy about her but Harry won't listen. When he takes her out to dinner, she borrows his American Express card and forges it. Eventually Norman, Barry and Davida are arrested by the police who are investigating the credit card forgery.
Debbie falls madly in love with a French chef, Maurice, who has started working at the Coaching Inn. He asks her to marry him. However the police arrest him for bigamy with other girls in similar situations. And he isn't even French: his real name is Billy Clutterbuck and he comes from Wolverhampton!
When Harry unveils Davida's painting of the Coaching Inn, he is embarrassed to discover that all the people that she has painted at the windows are nude!
b: 27 Oct 87 w: Roy Mitchell d: Alex KirbyTrudy, an attractive blonde biker, comes to work for Texas Rangers. Rocky falls head over heels in love with her.
She is the daughter of Lord Alderley, an elderly widower living in a large mansion (Holmhead). In his younger days he had been a famous road-racer of motorbikes and also designed a major motorbike improvement ("The Lawson Front Fork") while working for Lawson's, the motorbike manufacturer. Lawson's, now owned by a Japanese firm, had never paid Lord Alderley for the design - and now that he is badly in debt and in danger of losing Holmhead, he needs the money. Trudy decides to take matters into her own hands by poisoning the men from the building society who have come to repossess the house.
Unfortunately the men are staying at the Coaching Inn and suspicions of food-poisoning at the hotel, with the Environmental Health Officers taking an interest, put paid to a Wine Festival that Harry is trying to arrange with the local council.
Trudy and Rocky kidnap Matthew Lawson and take him to Holmhead to try and persuade him that Lawson's has a moral if not a legal duty to Lord Alderley. When Ken realises what they have done, he follows them. Matthew Lawson sees the collection of motorbikes that Lord Alderley has in his cellar and arranges with the Japanese parent company that they will pay off Lord Alderley's debts in exchange for being able to set up a museum at the house to exhibit the bikes. With the repossession men outside, about to serve notice that the building society has foreclosed on the mortgage, this arrangement happens just in the nick of time.
b: 3 Nov 87 w: Matthew Bardsley d: Sarah HellingsAlison, Harry's mutton-dressed-as-lamb ex-wife, turns up in Birmingham, accompanied by her Spanish boyfriend, Luis Perez, who owes money to a wine dealer, Teddy Rawlingston. After Alison mislays the money that Luis brought across to pay Rawlingston, Harry offers to settle the debt on Alison's behalf, despite convincing himself that "That part of my life is over".
As a way of saving tax, Harry is negotiating with his financial advisor, Mr Marsden, to invest in buying a share of a forest, another of his many money-making schemes.
Ken and Rocky are trying to deliver a statue to a university lecturer, but suspect that it may contain drugs. After a car chase and an arrest in the hotel car-park, it transpires that they have uncovered a major jade-smuggling gang.
The holdall containing Luis's missing cash is found under the reception desk at the Coaching Inn. However before Harry can get his hands on it, it is accidentally loaded into a taxi with a guest's luggage and is lost.
b: 10 Nov 87 w: Gerald G. Moore d: Baz TaylorRocky falls madly in love with Guiseppina, the daughter of Giovanni, the Italian owner of a pizza parlour, after he is employed to deliver their pizzas. He becomes involved in a vicious war with a rival Italian restaurant owned by broken-nosed Vito Rossi.
Harry is planning to go to a Licensed Victuallers' conference in America and is trying to sell a spare ticket to anyone who will buy it and eventually sells it to two guests, Wyman and Franklyn, who are staying at the Coaching Inn. They ask Ken to run various errands for them, such as getting a new passport and visas. It turns out that Wyman has just escaped from prison and Ken is unwittingly helping him to obtain a new identity. When they realise that Ken has seen the false name on the passport (and thus could tip off the police) the two men break into Harry's safe and steal his passport. They then leave the country with Wyman travelling as Harry Crawford!
b: 17 Nov 87 w: Tony McHale d: Ken HannamHarry is hosting a large Irish gipsy wedding reception at the Coaching Inn. He is not best pleased when all the guests turn up in caravans and tents - they are causing a traffic jam and he has nowhere to park all their vehicles. Tempers flair when the bride's father, James McGillivray, discovers that the groom, Sean Jones, is a police sergeant.
When the wedding presents are stolen, the police immediately accuse two of the McGillivray brothers, Kevin and Rory, who have criminal records. This makes Sean even more unpopular. Ken investigates, but it is the wedding photographs which Rocky has taken which finally catch the real thief, Aaron Wilson, an odd-job man who was working at the Coaching Inn.
Linda thinks that two brothers, Martin and Christopher Turnover, who are staying in the hotel are indulging in wife-swapping and kinky sex, when she finds rubber suits and corsets in the bedroom that they are all sharing. However the real explanation is much less scandalous: there was a mix-up with the room bookings so all four agreed to share a room; Martin has a bad back, which explains the corsets and the Japanese futon on the floor; they are all keen divers, hence the wetsuits.
b: 24 Nov 87 w: Dougie Watkinson d: Sarah HellingsKen meets Margaret Daly again - at an aerobics class!
Harry is feeling very depressed with life and is planning to sell the Coaching Inn. He arranges a blind date, via the lonely hearts column in the local paper, and is shocked to discover that his date is Margaret, doing research into the male menopause for her psychology degree!
Ken accuses Harry of being a callous bastard for planning to sell the Coaching Inn without considering that it will mean that Texas Rangers (and Ken himself) will become homeless. However Harry goes ahead with the deal and makes a substantial profit.
An old friend from the Fire Brigade, Terry Brent, comes to stay at the Coaching Inn, claiming to be a successful pop-group manager. When Rocky happens to deliver a package to Glob, the lead singer of the group, he discovers that they have never heard of Terry Brent. Eventually Terry admits that he has really spent the last few years in a mental hospital, suffering from schizophrenia. He resents Ken and Harry because they have both made a success of their lives since leaving the brigade, so he holds them hostage at gunpoint in a hotel bedroom. The police, with marksmen, surround the hotel. A shot rings out. Against the orders of a senior police officer, Margaret rushes up the fire escape into the bedroom, to hear Harry yell dramatically (but also inaccurately!) "Ken's been shot. I think he's dead."
b: 1 Dec 87 w: Billy Hamon d: Ken Hannam| Back to TOP of Page |
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Debbie Yates has left Texas Rangers to get married. Harry has sold The Coaching Inn and bought a ballroom called the Plaza Suite in Edgbaston, taking Linda and Glynis with him. Ken, who was shot in "A Once Fluid Man", has now returned to work after convalescing. Texas Rangers has moved into a seedy office in Smethwick.
Richard Jay, Harry's first customer, organises a charity event at the Plaza Suite, compèred by real-life celebrity Matthew Kelly. But a journalist discovers that Jay and Harry are making a large profit out of the charity event. The Plaza Suite is besieged by television reporters and Harry is forced to admit that the reporter's allegations are true and that the money belongs, morally at least, to the charity. Worse than that, Jay has now absconded with all the money. Harry offers to pay out of his own pocket.
Ken meets Margaret again and learns that she has now left the police force. She had faced disciplinary action after rushing into The Coaching Inn to rescue Ken ("A Once Fluid Man"). She is now running an investigation agency but is finding it difficult to work from home. When Ken happens to meet her, she is entertaining a client, Jonathan Hillary.
Texas Rangers are employed to transport artwork for an advertising agency but then are suddenly sacked by the agency's managing director, Gerry Pascali, after being accused of stealing the agency's ideas and passing them to a rival. Because the reputation of Texas Rangers is being blackened, Ken is determined to find out what is behind these accusations. It is Rocky who unwittingly solves the mystery. In a private arrangement with the agency, not involving Texas Rangers, he is paid to transport some Beaujolais Nouveau to a restaurant for a publicity stunt. But when he turns up at the restaurant and gives it to Langford who employed him, it turns out that Langford, while apparently employed by Pascali's agency, is secretly working for the rival firm run by John Edwards and is passing Pascali's commercial secrets to Edwards.
b: 1 Nov 88 w: Tony McHale d: Baz TaylorRichard Jay has disappeared with the charity money, leaving Harry to carry the can. Because of all the bad publicity, the Plaza Suite is invaded by a group of homeless people whom the charity was due to benefit. Their spokesman, a fiery Glaswegian lady called Sheba, tells Harry that they will not move until he pays back what is owed to the charity. Ken eventually discovers that Richard Jay has bought a large Winnebago mobile home with his "winnings" and is now living at a fairground, under his real name of Dick Jowett, with his mother who runs one of the stalls. However when Ken and Harry corner Jowett/Jay after a chase through the fairground, they discover that he has already spent or gambled away most of the money - even the brand-new Winnebago is only rented.
Jonathan Hillary, Margaret's client, claims that he is being blackmailed over photographs of his wife and her lover. Margaret advises Hillary to pay the money and gets Ken and Rocky to follow the woman who collects it. They discover that she is none other than Hillary's wife, Lucinda, and that the photographs are of him and his lover. Lucinda says that she has extorted the money as a divorce settlement in lieu of an alimony agreement. Margaret closes the case as a "domestic".
Margaret persuades Ken that his success as a private investigator isn't just fortuitous. They decide to go into partnership, forming Boon-Daly Investigations (BDI, pronounced Beady Eye) and renting an office in The Plaza Suite.
b: 8 Nov 88 w: Tony McHale d: Baz TaylorHarry is hosting a Greek wedding reception at the Plaza Suite but has no idea how to make the Greek dishes such as kleftico, which the bride's mother insists upon.
Ken and Margaret are employed by Keith Filkin, a newspaper reporter, to act as minders for Dorothy North, a naive Scottish woman who has just been released from prison after serving 15 years (!) for passing on state secrets. A man from MI5 is waiting to talk to her as she emerges from prison, but Filkin gets to her first and drives her away. After rival newspapers get wind of the story, the Plaza Suite, where she takes refuge, is besieged by reporters. When Dorothy wants to terminate the contract with the paper, the newspaper starts to get very possessive and even threatens that if she breaks the contract she'll go back to prison. Rocky dresses up as Dorothy (!!) and runs out of the Plaza Suite to distract the reporters' attention while Ken and Dorothy make their escape. Ken hands her over to the MI5 man.
b: 15 Nov 88 w: Kieran Prendiville d: Baz TaylorHarry is having a new lighting system installed at the Plaza Suite, in preparation for an Australian Night organised by Ross Townsend of the Australian Tourist Board. He employs two lads, Roger and John, from a cowboy firm of electricians. They end up blowing the main fuse and Roger is electrocuted. Harry's first-aid training as a fireman saves Roger's life. But the Plaza Suite is now without electricity.
Rocky is trying to deliver a package to Alan Clarke on a windsurfing stand at a sailing exhibition at the NEC. However Cathy, the temporary dispatcher at Texas Rangers, has forgotten to ask which stand Clarke is on.
Ken and Margaret are approached by Anita Wilberforce, the wife of a video shop owner, Ray Wilberforce, who has just withdrawn all the money from their joint bank and building society accounts before leaving for a conference in Cannes. Anita wants Ken and Margaret to find Ray. Because she has no money, Ken offers to charge by results; this does not go down well with Margaret who thinks that Ken has only made this offer because Anita is pretty!
Alan Chambers, Ray's business partner at the video shop, confides that the Wilberforces' marriage is very shaky and that Ray is probably having an affair. He also suspects that Ray is stealing money from the firm. Ken and Margaret show the shop's customer database software to Brian, a computer expert that they know. He discovers that the software has been modified to allow some transactions to go unrecorded - straight into Wilberforce's pocket. When Anita discovers a duplicate set of till rolls that add up to a different total, fraud becomes a certainty.
Ironically, Ray Wilberforce turns up at the Australian night and tells Ken and Rocky that he is planning to emigrate to Australia. Unfortunately they have never seen a photograph of him so they don't recognise him.
b: 22 Nov 88 w: Jim Hawkins d: Alex KirbyAn unscrupulous businessman, Eddie Allen, who owns the Fast Eddie chain of fast-food restaurants, is exploiting his teenage staff. When they start picketing all his shops for better working conditions, Eddie calls in Ken to find out who is organising them. Ken infiltrates the protesters' gang but soon sides with them. He discovers that their leader is an elderly widow, Barbara Drake, whose husband was killed in an industrial accident at a waste-disposal plant that Eddie had run. Against Ken's advice, Barbara poisons Eddie's food to give his shops a bad reputation. There is a local epidemic of food poisoning. Barbara gives herself up to the police.
Harry is organising an American pageant and square dance at the Plaza Suite. He employs the Vortex Players, a troupe of actors and dancers. He is stunned to discover that one of them is Yvonne Higgins, "the first girl I ever proposed to". Harry realises that he still fancies her, but she admits to Margaret that she thinks of him "as a brother". Now married and called Yvonne Temple, she tells Harry that she is thinking of leaving her overbearing and bullying husband, Brian, who is always belittling her. Harry encourages her to confront Brian, thinking that if they split up, he might be in with a chance. Unfortunately when Yvonne does confront Brian, they end up closer together - not at all what Harry had planned! However Harry has the last laugh: before the Pageant, Brian had eaten a hamburger at Fast Eddies that Barbara had poisoned and in the middle of the performance he is violently sick.
b: 29 Nov 88 w: Harry Duffin d: Sarah Hellings
NOTE: The TV Times called this episode "Beef Encounter (Don't Bug Me)"Ken is trying to serve a writ on a wily rogue, Charles Henry Marquis, who runs a window-dressing business. Marquis keeps giving Ken the slip. Ken fails to catch him at a wedding-dress shop and when he is on his way to a fancy-dress party - dressed as a bear. Eventually, with a bit of subterfuge, Ken delivers the writ. In doing so, we learn Ken's middle name: Winstanley (!)
Margaret is installing a security system at a large house owned by Don Pettifer, a crook that she has had many dealings with during her time in the police. When she sees several other villains arriving at the house, she is sure that they are planning something. Two gardeners, Trevor and Ray, are working in the grounds. Ray goes to hand in his notice because he is fed up of being thumped by Pettifer's minder, Julian. He sees Pettifer handing round large amounts of cash. When he tells Margaret this, she becomes even more suspicious. Ray drives off - and is not seen again. Trevor becomes worried.
The police have been watching Pettifer's house for months. DC Pelham and DS Merrison ask Ken and Margaret for help: they want Margaret to plant a bug in the house. Margaret does this, but Pettifer sees her doing it, by watching one of the CCTV monitors that she has installed. Forewarned, Pettifer and his wife prattle on about innocuous subjects such as the local charity fete, with the police listening in vain for any incriminating evidence!
Without a van or any tools, Trevor cannot continue working in the garden, so he turns up at the Plaza Suite in response to a job that Harry has advertised. Harry is approached by "Happy" Jim Hargreaves, a lugubrious former colleague from the fire brigade. Hargreaves has "turned religious" and is organising a fund-raising event for the League of Absent Friends (LOAF). He wants to rent the Plaza Suite at a discounted rate. Thinking that it will be some sort of spiritualist event, Harry agrees.
However Hargreaves has more worldly plans - a boxing match. Trevor offers to help Hargreaves and sets up a date between his glamourous red-headed mother, Renata, and Harry, to get him away from the Plaza Suite for the evening. While Harry is with Renata, Ray comes round and Harry sees them locked in passionate embrace. Ray and Renata are planning to run away together, but don't know how to tell Trevor: "It's difficult to tell your best mate you're in love with his mum". Harry volunteers to break the news to Trevor, only to discover that Trevor already knows but doesn't know how to tell them that he knows.
b: 6 Dec 88 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Alex KirbyMargaret and Jo are on holiday. Harry is hosting a Success Through Confidence course at the Plaza Suite run by Denise Appleby. He decides to take part himself. Judging by the way that he confidently wipes the floor with the interviewer in a role-playing session, he needs no training. With his new-found confidence, he asks Denise out for dinner, but the course of true love does not run smoothly!
The retirement party for Ron Blisset, a former colleague from the Fire Brigade, brings back painful memories for Ken of the fire in which his lungs were damaged, forcing him to leave the brigade. After the party, Ron's wife Maureen asks Ken to investigate her son, Pete, also a fireman. Pete's best friend Mack was badly injured in a fire and now Pete has left the brigade and disappeared. Ken talks to Mack and another friend, Paul, and begins to suspect that they are hiding something. Eventually he tracks down Pete, who confesses that he knew that Paul started the fire for the insurance. The thought of a fireman turned arsonist offends Ken and Harry, so Harry decides to trap Paul by employing him to set fire to the Plaza Suite. Mack shows Paul how to make a cheap but undetectable incendiary device. However as Paul is setting up the incendiary at the Plaza Suite, watched by a security camera that Ken has installed, he drops the device and sets fire to himself. It is left to Ken to rescue him...
b: 13 Dec 88 w: Richard LeParmentier and Paddy Fletcher d: Sarah HellingsKen and Margaret are employed to watch a husband, Ronnie Hains, who is suspected of having an affair. They follow him and his girlfriend to a boating lake and take a series of incriminating photographs of the couple, then Ken uses up the remainder of the film taking pictures of Margaret. It all looks like an open-and-shut case.
But a robbery has been committed nearby and the chief suspect, who is none other than Ronnie Hains, claims to the police that he was elsewhere at the time - Ken and Margaret's photographs and statements prove that he was on the lake. Ken and Margaret are questioned at length by two smug detectives, Joyman and Pelham, who are particularly hostile to Margaret because she used to be in the police herself. However when the BDI office at the Plaza Suite is broken into and only Ken's photos of Margaret are stolen, they and the police become suspicious. Close examination of the negatives reveal that, in the background, a friend has taken Ronnie's place at the crucial time, allowing Ronnie the opportunity to commit the robbery. To get conclusive proof, Ken and Margaret offer to sell the negatives to Ronnie and his wife. With the police recording every word, Ronnie eventually admits that the allegations of an affair were all a ploy to buy him the perfect alibi. He draws a gun but Margaret disarms him.
Meanwhile, Harry and a friend, Roger Evans, go for a gourmet weekend at a hotel owned by a restaurant critic, Gerald Neale. Roger used to own a restaurant, La Camargue, which went out of business after a series of very bad reviews by Neale. Now he runs a theme restaurant, Skool Mealz, which serves food that is reminiscent of school dinners and which employs waitresses in short skirts to scold and "punish" any punters who break the "school rules". It is a great success but it is not exactly in the same league as La Camargue.
At the hotel, a whodunit murder weekend is being staged and a fussy, over-enthusiastic woman called Rose is probing everywhere for clues. Harry eventually learns that she is really a journalist, looking for evidence that Neale is not what he seems. She discovers that he has been giving glowing reviews to his own restaurant, owned in his wife's maiden name. He is also caught red-handed passing off tinned food as his own creations. Neale is discredited ("He who lives by the tin will die by the tin") and Roger decides that he will try again to open a similar restaurant to La Camargue.
b: 20 Dec 88 w: Matthew Bardsley d: Bren SimsonAfter a violent argument with his girlfriend in a hotel, a loutish Heavy Metal rock star, "Bograt", disappears, just as he and his group The Necros are about to make a comeback. Bograt's agent, Lenny Bright, employs Margaret to find him. Rocky was a great fan of The Necros and is overjoyed to see a video of Bograt in his former venue, "The Ratpit", and to learn that Margaret is looking him. Margaret and Rocky go to see Bograt's girlfriend, Nikki. Another investigator, Bert Ostler, arrives: he has been hired by the record company to find Bograt. Margaret and Ostler take an instant dislike to each other but reluctantly agree to work together. Rocky goes to see Nikki again and as she is trying to seduce him, Bograt bursts in and accuses Rocky of being her new lover! After a violent argument, he storms off. Rocky eventually tracks him down to scaffolding outside The Ratpit. He is threatening to throw himself off because he feels that his life is a mess, but Rocky manages to talk him down. The mystery of Bograt's name is solved: his father was Polish and Bograt's real name is Bogdan Ratachinsky.
Ken is employed by Elaine Bache to find her ex-husband Derek who has defaulted on her maintenance payments. Ken tracks down Derek to a shooting club where he is a member. Ken and Harry pose as divorced husbands to gain Derek's confidence. Over a poker game with his mates, Derek confides that he is getting part of his salary (as the manager of a firm selling bathroom furniture) paid in cash to keep it out of his wife's clutches.
Harry is staging an event at The Plaza Suite for engineers from Utrecht. He tries to learn Dutch and plays "Tulips From Amsterdam" as they arrive, to make them feel at home. Their leader is a beautiful but humourless woman called Greta van de Murge who is bewildered by Harry's attempts: "But Amsterdam is many kilometres from Utrecht" she retorts.
Harry accidentally breaks Greta's bracelet. While he is getting it repaired at a jewellers, he sees Elaine Bache with a man whom he learns is a very rich jeweller. Evidently her claims to be starving to death are a pack of lies. Ken and Margaret have a big row because she wants him to act for Elaine whereas he wants to tell Derek about Elaine's lover. Being divorced himself, Harry can sympathise with Derek's plight. He phones Derek's firm, pretending to be Elaine's lover, and asks for a very expensive and tasteless bathroom to be fitted at the house (where Derek used to live as well). Consequently Derek realises that his wife is living with another man. He says that he will hire a private detective and get evidence of co-habitation so as to reduce the maintenance payments.
b: 27 Dec 88 w: Diane Culverhouse and Julian Spilsbury d: Bruce MacdonaldA bluff Cumbrian farmer, Lambert Sampson, employs Margaret to find out who is stealing his Banbury Blue sheep which he keeps for cheese-making. Rocky helps to keep watch but doesn't get off to a good start when he falls asleep on the job. The farm is being watched by a young couple, Tabitha and Winston Hammond. They appear to be up to no good. Rocky follows them and, after they take him prisoner, he discovers that they are using the Sampsons' cheeses to smuggle rare falcons' eggs abroad.
Harry is running afternoon tea-dances for pensioners at The Plaza Suite, with Linda romantically singing nostalgic songs such as "I Wonder Who's Kissing Him Now" and "Red Sails in the Sunset". Harry is less than complementary about her style of singing: "she makes 'Red Sails in the Sunset' sound like lace panties", "I'm running a Thé Dansant, not a bar in downtown Marseille" and "I asked for nostalgia, not Madonna with backache".
He is being plagued by an anonymous writer of love letters. He is embarrassed at the attention and terrified of hurting the letter-writer's feelings. He gets Ken to investigate. Reasoning that she is probably one of the dancers, Ken partners each woman in turn. Before long he discovers that it is Lambert's wife, Marigold, who is writing the letters. She is a compulsive writer and an aspiring novelist, and just wants a bit of excitement in her life.
b: 3 Jan 89 w: Ewart Alexander d: Geoff HusonAn American preacher, Rev Jedediah Marshall, is holding "Halleluiah, Praise the Lord" evangelical meetings at the Plaza Suite in which he heals members of the audience, apparently chosen at random. The sessions are sabotaged by hecklers and then by a strippergram. Jedediah wants Ken and Margaret to investigate who is behind the pranks. He says that he and another preacher are competing for a religious slot on a new cable TV channel and he thinks the other preacher may be staging a dirty-tricks campaign.
Harry invites his Aunt Delia, who suffers from severe arthritis, along to Jedediah's meetings. She is called up to the front and Jed prays for her, "curing" her of her pain - but only for a couple of days. The doctor says it's all down to her wanting to believe in the "treatment"... and endorphins, the body's natural painkillers.
Margaret learns that Jedediah was responsible for another preacher, Luke Hennessey, being fired from a religious TV show in America. Luke has come to England and is now living nearby. He is the prime suspect for the sabotage. Ken and Margaret go to talk to him and find Jolene, Jedediah's wife, with him. They deny that they are having an affair (they are "just good friends") and Luke also strenuously denies that he is responsible for the stripper.
Rocky tracks down the stripper, Helen, at a pub. She tells him that she was employed by "a couple of Welshmen". Ken discovers two men planting a stinkbomb at the Plaza Suite and chases them to a chapel run by a Welsh Baptist minister, Rev Cledwyn Pritchard. The sabotages are being carried out by Cledwyn's brothers, Gareth and Owen, without his knowledge.
During the next Halleluiah session at the Plaza Suite, Ken happens to be playing with a radio and hears Jedediah's assistant, Lee, briefing him via a hidden earpiece about people in the audience and their ailments, which Lee has discovered by talking to them as they were arriving for the session. Jedediah is thus exposed as a charlatan and Cledwyn wins the TV slot.
b: 10 Jan 89 w: Kieran Prendiville d: Laurence MoodyElspeth Bowman, an old lady who owns a local shop, asks Ken to keep an eye on her son, Cecil, who is about to be released from prison. Two friends of his, Mitchell and Kelloway, "from the Territorial Army", want to organise a welcome-home party for him at the Plaza Suite.
Cecil is a genial, long-haired, middle-aged man who suddenly has access to large amounts of money which he spends freely on new cars. Is it the proceeds of the robbery for which he was imprisoned. He never revealed the names of his accomplices but the police are almost certain that they are Mitchell and Kelloway. In fact Cecil's money is simply the result of a win on the premium bonds that he invested in a unit trust.
Cecil pretends to go along with a robbery that Mitchell and Kelloway tell him about during the party. They have already taken photographs of the outside of Stansfield Hall, a stately home, and Cecil goes on a guided tour of the inside during an open day, in order to memorise the location of any valuable antiques. In reality he is co-operating with the police so as to incriminate Mitchell and Kelloway in revenge for their letting him carry the can for the earlier robbery.
Rocky is feeling very depressed after he has been dumped by Anna McLeish, a girl that he has just met. He wants to be given more interesting and stimulating work by Ken and Margaret, so they set him a challenge to test his powers of observation: he must train himself to remember forty objects on a tray. After a lot of coaching from Margaret's daughter Jo, he eventually succeeds.
Harry has a problem with mice at the Plaza Suite: they are getting in the fridges and running across the floors. While the ballroom is closed for cleaning, Harry is approached by an effeminate white-suited man, rejoicing in the name Simon Dangerflower (!), who represents the Society of Beleagured Husbands. Amid strict secrecy he is laying out dominoes in the shape of the Society's logo. He plans to topple the dominoes in front of the TV cameras as a publicity stunt, but just as the cameramen are setting up their equipment, one of Harry's mice sets off all the dominoes prematurely.
b: 17 Jan 89 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Bruce MacdonaldHumphrey Pickles, representing a Trivial Pursuit society, hires the Plaza Suite for a Trivial Pursuit competition. Tempers flair amongst the contestants after they accuse one another of cheating. One of them, "Tiny" Richards, is a burly rugby player who is also skilled at judo (see later).
Ken and Margaret are called in by Johnson, a council officer, to investigate who is painting murals (or "muriels", as Johnson calls them) on the sides of houses in the neighbourhood. All that is known is that each painting has the signature "H Angel". Because there seems to be a Hells Angel link, Rocky makes some enquiries of the local bikers and arranges to meet the mysterious H Angel. He is gobsmacked to learn that she is a long-haired, streetwise young woman with a retinue of apprentices "who mix the paint and hold the ladders". He is supposed to get her started on painting a wall at the Texas Rangers office and then tip off Ken and Margaret. However he fancies her, so he chickens out and tells her how he was supposed to entrap her. She agrees to restrict her painting to places where she has been commissioned... with Rocky acting as her agent to drum up business.
Jo, Margaret's precocious teenage daughter, is working during her school holiday at a racing stable. She notices that Gerry Hannigan, one of the jockeys, seems to be under a lot of pressure. Gerry's wife, Charlie, tells Ken and Margaret that Sellaby, the owner of the horse that she is training and that Gerry will ride, wants Gerry to lose the race. When Gerry won't agree, Charlie is kidnapped. Gerry relents but Ken traces Charlie to one of Sellaby's stables. With the help of "Tiny" Richards, one of the Trivial Pursuit contestants (see above), he frees Charlie and takes her to the racecourse. Gerry sees her just as the race is about to start and, now that he knows she is safe, rides to win. Sellaby is arrested by the police.
Ken and Margaret are planning to move to America to start a new life and to start up a detective agency there. Ken is certain that an accumulator bet that he has placed on Hannigan's horse will pay out. However after a Stewards' Enquiry the bet fails to pay out and Ken abandons his plans.
b: 24 Jan 89 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Laurence Moody| Back to TOP of Page |
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Ken has moved to Nottingham and has set up Boon Investigations, operating out of a small office near the Castle. His first case involves him being employed by Gerry Anscomb, manager of a local radio station, Sherwood Sound. He wants Ken to act as minder for Eddie Cotton, "The Man You Love To Hate", a brash loud-mouthed young DJ who has a habit of turning up for work drunk... or not even turning up at all. They want to make sure he will not let them down at a Charity Telethon this coming weekend. Eddie gives Ken chance to plug Boon Investigations on the radio.
Ken and Eddie go to a snooker club where Eddie gives Ken the slip and picks up Donna Delaney, a leggy young woman who wears cowboy boots and has closely-cropped blonde hair. Eddie and Donna go to a night club where she drugs him. He makes something of a spectacle of himself and gets his photo printed in the gossip column of the local paper. He misses his show and a fellow DJ, Tony Lyons, has to stand in for him. He eventually turns up, severely hungover, and Bill Stone, the managing director, fires him on the spot.
But Ken suspects that Eddie was drugged. Because he is no longer retained by Sherwood Sound, he needs to enlist the help of Laura Marsh, the station's receptionist, to get back into the studios. To begin with, he suspects Tony Lyons, but then he discovers that Gerry Anscomb is leaving at the end of the month. He also finds out that Donna Delaney works for the radio station that Anscomb will shortly be joining. He and Laura decide to set up Anscomb and Donna. Laura passes on a message to her, apparently from Anscomb, asking her to meet him at the Telethon. Once Anscomb and Donna are seen together, the game is up and Anscomb admits that he deliberately set out to damage Eddie's reputation to get him sacked because he wanted Eddie to join him at the new station and knew he would not do so voluntarily. Such is friendship! Eddie gets his old job back and the Telethon is saved. Laura is not so lucky. She is sacked for letting Ken into the studios after he no longer had reason to be there. Ken offers her a job at Boon Investigations, working as his secretary and personal assistant.
Harry has gone into partnership with a widow, Helen Yeldham, to run Woodcote Park, a hotel and county club in the Nottinghamshire countryside. He has big ideas about setting it up as a venue for international sporting events such as golf and tennis tournaments. He plans to convert the nearby Trent Meadow into tennis courts and is negotiating to buy the field from Richard Gibbs, a neighbouring farmer. However Gibbs wants to turn his farm into a commune and to build accommodation in the Meadow. David Tredegar, an eccentric naturalist who was a friend of Helen's husband, Philip, has come to stay at Woodcote. He discovers that Trent Meadow is inhabited by a rare breed of Natterjack Toad which are a protected species. Consequently neither the tennis courts nor the commune can be built there.
b: 2 Oct 89 w: Guy Meredith d: Frank W. SmithKen is approached by Marion Kershaw who is looking for her missing husband, Geoff, who is in "the import/export business". Ken soon discovers that Geoff Kershaw owes money to the taxman. At the squash court that Kershaw uses, Ken finds a holdall containing a large amount of cash, a false passport and a gun.
The police tell him that Kershaw is wanted for running an antiques smuggling business, stealing antiques around the country and sending them abroad. Ken and Harry agree to stage a fake robbery at Woodcote Park so as to have some "stolen" antiques with which to tempt the smugglers. The local contact for them turns out to be Eric Beveridge, an antiques dealer who has just sold Helen some chairs for Woodcote Park.
Geoff and Marion meet up at a deserted quarry - the "missing person" story is evidently a cover. With Harry and the police tailing them, Beveridge takes Ken to the quarry where Marion recognises Ken. After a dramatic chase, Beveridge and the Kershaws are arrested. Helen catches Ken and Harry as they are replacing the "stolen" antiques.
Two men in a van turn up in the grounds of Woodcote Park. It looks as if they are planning to dig up Civil War relics. Harry challenges them and tells them to "pack up and bugger off". It turns out that the men are preparing for sheepdog trials, as they have done every year, since being invited by Helen's late husband. Harry's mood changes dramatically when he discovers that one of the men is a Viscount.
b: 9 Oct 89 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Frank W. Smith NOTE: Martin Clunes appears in this episode, but not with his Men Behaving Badly co-star-to-be Neil Morrissey.At the Magistrates Court, the renewal of a gaming licence for the Carrington Club run by Dick Vaughan, is postponed pending further enquiries after a punter in the public gallery alleges that he was cheated by Vaughan. Vaughan does not realise that the "punter" is really Rupert Cole, who runs a rival gambling club. Vaughan gets Ken to investigate - if any of his croupiers are cheating, he wants to know before the Gaming Board investigators call on him. Ken spends the evening at the Carrington but sees nothing unusual so he asks Helen to come with him the following night. She soon notices that Jackie, one of the blackjack croupiers, is cheating. Ken pretends to be a writer, researching a university psychology textbook on gambling, in order to gain Jackie's confidence. He challenges her and she admits that she has been persuaded by Cole to cheat and to make sure that she is caught, so that the Carrington will be blamed and will lose its gaming licence. Ken has one of his famous conflicts of loyalty: should he tell Vaughan (who is after all his client) about Jackie or should he help her. He takes pity on her after learning that she is a single mother and that Cole has a hold over her: she has a criminal record for shoplifting many years ago and would lose her job if he revealed this to Vaughan. He suggests that she should set up Cole. With Ken secretly recording the conversation, she confronts Cole in his casino and demands more money for doing the dirty deed on the Carrington. Having got the evidence of Cole's corrupt dealings, it is a foregone conclusion that he, not Vaughan, will lose his licence.
Matty King, a has-been comedian, is staying at Woodcote Park while appearing in Nottingham and gives Harry, Helen, Ken and Laura tickets to his show. Susan, one of the waitresses at the club where Matty is performing, seems to hate him and as he is about to go on stage she passes on a note which terrifies him. His act goes down very badly: he is simply not funny and the audience doesn't laugh. He collapses and is rushed to hospital suffering from nervous exhaustion. He eventually confesses to Harry that he is deeply in debt to Rupert Cole (see above) because he is a lousy card player, a compulsive gambler and a boozer. Many years ago, he used to be part of a double-act with Jimmy Jester, but he is very reluctant to say what became of Jester. However when Susan confronts him again, it becomes clear that she is Jester's daughter. She puts up "cancelled due to illness" banners on his advertising posters and then accuses him of deserting her father after he became terminally ill. However Matty reveals to her that far from not caring, he actually paid for Jester's hospital treatment on the condition that Jester must never tell his family where the money came from.
b: 16 Oct 89 w: Kieran Prendiville d: Graeme HarperA middle-aged couple, Terry and Gill Conroy, driving an expensive Jaguar, break down in a residential street, outside the house owned by George and Irene Boxall. The Boxalls offer them a cup of tea while the Conroys wait for the breakdown truck to arrive. In recompense, Terry Conroy invites the Boxalls to join them at a Tyrolean night.
But all is not as it seems. When the Conroys never turn up at the Tyrolean night (which is being held at Woodcote Park), George and Irene become suspicious and ask Ken for help.
A mysterious young woman, Meryl Spicer, turns up at Woodcote Park, looking for Helen. She claims to be Helen's long-lost daughter whom Helen had given away for adoption (!)
It turns out that the Conroys used the Tyrolean invitation simply as an excuse to get the Boxalls out of their house, with Meryl at Woodcote Park to alert the Conroys as soon as the Boxalls leave to come home. The reason for this subterfuge is that Tom Vallance, a bank robber, had hidden some plans in the Boxalls' house some years ago when he owned the house. Having just been released from prison, he wants the plans back. When subterfuge fails, Vallance and Conroy break into the house, terrifying the Boxalls, and Vallance attacks the walls with a sledgehammer until he finds the plans. He then takes George and Irene to a deserted farm. The police surround the farm and Vallance tries to escape. Harry is forced to reverse at high speed along the farm track, pursued by Vallance's Land Rover, until the police can recapture Vallance.
b: 23 Oct 89 w: Douglas Watkinson d: Christopher BakerRobert Messener employs Ken to act as his bodyguard and chauffeur, and to run various errands associated with the sale of his house and his nightclub, in preparation for a hasty departure to Cyprus. Messener's previous minder, Freddy Tucker, had walked out on him after being beaten up.
Ken is suspicious. He wonders why Messener is leaving so suddenly and why everyone hates him. When Messener's dogs are shot, he tells Ken that he suspects Sammy Robinson, a "madman" who used to work for him but who is now in prison for manslaughter, for which he blames Messener. Ken traces Sammy's ex-wife, Natalie, who tells him that Sammy accused Messener of having an affair with her. Messener had got Sammy to beat up a rival night-club owner - who later died.
It is Sammy's brothers who are responsible for killing the dogs and for crushing Messener's car. Sammy is due out of prison in a few days and his brothers think he will want Messener disposed of.
Messener completes a deal with Douglas Cruikshank for the sale of his club and is due to leave by train. But Cruikshank tips off the Robinson brothers. Sammy is waiting for Messener and chases him through the station and onto the railway line, eventually cornering him in a disused tunnel. Messener cowers and grovels on the floor. But Sammy, whom everyone thinks of as "a psycho", is more angry with his brothers for taking matters into their own hands. He tells Messener that he forgives him and simply wants his share of the proceeds from the night-club sale - and never to see Messener again.
Harry has troubles of his own. Huge oily patches keep appearing on Woodcote Park's golf course and tennis courts. The hotel is beginning to smell of sewage. Harry eventually traces the source: leaking drums of pesticide from a neighbouring farm owned by Ditton, a belligerent farmer. Helen and Ken bring in the Health and Safety investigators. Ditton is to be prosecuted and will also face a large compensation claim for the damage that he has caused to Woodcote.
b: 30 Oct 89 w: Paddy Fletcher & Richard Le Parmentier d: Graeme HarperKen and Harry are guarding Tinkerbell, a greyhound, at Woodcote Park, before her big race. The owner, Mr Hancock, insists that Tinkerbell must be fed "Mr Marrow" dog food and a detailed record must be kept of how much of it she eats. Harry gets Rocky to feed and walk the dog, and it soon becomes clear that Tinkerbell hates "Mr Marrow". An attractive blonde woman turns up at Woodcote, delivering cases of wine in a Range Rover. While Harry and Rocky are helping to unload the wine, she drives off with Tinkerbell. Harry and Rocky try to trace the owner of the Ranger Rover. Then Rocky has an idea: there is going to be a charity event before the greyhound race - perhaps the dog thieves will be there. They locate the car and follow it back to an opulent house owned by a Mr and Mrs Hipkiss who claim to own Tinkerbell. Mr Hipkiss tells them that Hancock used to work for him but wasn't up to the job. Hipkiss believes that Hancock had stolen Tinkerbell in revenge for (as he sees it) being sacked by Hipkiss. When Tinkerbell wins the race, Hipkiss claims on television that she is always fed on "Mr Marrow", but Rocky knows from experience that she won't touch the stuff. Hancock is eventually traced. He tells Ken and Harry that Hipkiss owns the company that makes "Mr Marrow" and is using Tinkerbell as free publicity. Having worked for him, Hancock knows that top dogs won't touch "Mr Marrow" and wanted to use Harry's feeding record to prove it to the world.
Charlie Fowkes employs Ken to locate his son Ben who has deserted from the army and run away from home after Charlie refused to lend him the money to buy his way out of the army. Ben is a keen and talented boxer, but Peter Mortan, who trains him, hasn't seen him since he deserted. Ben's girlfriend, Alison Carter, says that she too hasn't seen him recently, but in reality she is hiding him. Ken learns that Ben is wanted both by the Military Police as a deserter and by the civilian police because they suspect him of stealing some plastic explosive from a quarry. Ben flees from Ken and both sets of policemen, but Ken eventually catches up with him and Alison. Mortan is planning an illegal unlicensed fight between Ben and an American professional boxer, Valdez. If Ben wins, his prize money will buy him out of the army. At the derelict warehouse where the fight is being staged, Harry overhears someone in the audience saying that Valdez has had his licence revoked because he has a blood clot on the brain and is not fit to fight. Ken warns Ben that if he hits Valdez, he will probably kill him. Ben fights defensively and never even lands a punch. Consequently he loses. But Alison has bet all her money on exactly this outcome because she knew that Ben wouldn't even try to fight once he knew of Valdez's condition. As the Military Police wait to arrest Ben, she reveals that with her winnings she can now buy him out of the army.
b: 6 Nov 89 w: Nick Whitby d: Christopher BakerKen is employed by the owners of a nursing home to investigate a series of petty thefts of patients' money. Because of pressure of work, he passes the case to Harry who goes to stay at the nursing home, posing as a businessman suffering from stress and a nervous breakdown. Laura also helps, posing as Harry's gushing and utterly spoilt daughter! After eliminating the cleaner and the gardener, Harry soon suspects Mary Foster, an eccentric old lady who is a long-term patient. He marks a wad of 5 notes and leaves them in his bedside drawer. They soon disappear and Harry finds them in Mary's handbag. He presents his findings to the Matron, telling her that he has traced the thief. Much to his surprise, the Matron herself confesses to the thefts. She has been taking the money to give to Mary, in order to perpetuate a white lie - Mary thinks that her son, living in New Zealand, is paying for little treats on her birthday, whereas in fact the son died two years ago and the Matron hasn't the heart to tell Mary. Harry agrees not to shop the Matron, as long as the thefts stop, and even offers to pays for Mary's birthday treats himself.
Helen is approached by her old friend Chris, a social worker, and asked to look after Judy Shelley and her two unruly sons, Lee and Simon. They need somewhere to stay in hiding until Judy can get an injunction against her Canadian husband Peter. Peter is a doctor and a respected member of the community, but Judy is alleging that he beats her up. Helen gets Rocky to keep an eye on the boys, but they play various pranks on him, culminating in him being stranded on the roof after Lee pretends to be stuck. While on the roof, Rocky sees a man watching Woodcote Park through binoculars. He suspects (correctly) that the man is working for Peter, trying to trace Judy's whereabouts. Although sworn to secrecy, Helen takes Ken into her confidence. He investigates the man, who has now checked into Woodcote as a guest called Patterson. To begin with he thinks that Patterson may be Shelley. Shelley contacts Ken and tells him his side of the story - that Judy is mentally ill and lives in a fantasy world. But Shelley and Patterson are plotting to "recover" (kidnap) the boys. They bundle Lee and Simon into Peter's car and make off down the drive, hotly pursued by Ken and Rocky. Helen blocks the gate with her car, forcing Judy and Peter to confront each other. Peter again tells his story about mental illness. Judy vehemently denies it and lifts her blouse to show that her body is bruised and that she has four broken ribs. Peter turns violent and has to be restrained. When he realises that he has lost both his children and his professional reputation, he drives away furiously, knocking Harry over as he arrives back from the nursing home. Harry's leg is injured and he finds himself back in a hospital bed.
b: 13 Nov 89 w: Jane Hollowood d: Brian LighthillMr and Mrs Sheridan, parents of Isobel, a university student studying Art History, ask Ken to investigate why their daughter has changed and why she suddenly seems to be suspiciously wealthy. Ken talks to her former boyfriend, Geoff, and learns that she used to be very keen on rowing but then suddenly gave it up a year ago and now has a new set of friends.
Laura and Rocky go undercover, posing as students. They see Isobel and a friend, Dominique, all dolled-up and getting into a brand new flashy convertible. They follow her to a hotel. When Rocky sees the women leaving a hotel bedroom after a little while, and an Italian man gratefully handing over money, he jumps to the obvious conclusion - that they are on the game! Then, outside Isobel's room, Laura finds syringes and a note referring to poppies - perhaps she is a drug dealer. What should Ken tell her parents?
Ken eventually discovers that Isobel is selling her essays to less able students - with the knowledge of her tutor, Dr Michael Harrison. However Ken is suspicious of Harrison's involvement. On closer inspection he finds out that he has been selling the essays world-wide, without Isobel knowing or getting any money. Isobel has just won a doctorate to Florence University. At the end-of-term party, Ken tells her what Harrison has been doing. She is furious but can't blow the whistle on him because he will reveal that she has been selling her essays to students. However in her acceptance speech she makes veiled hints about "other people being able to benefit from her work" and she asks Ken to keep all the evidence, in case Harrison tries the same trick again.
Ken and Harry become involved in a family feud. Two brothers, Andrew and Graham Barker, are squabbling over ownership of a classic car. Andrew approaches Ken and Harry, claiming that he had been left the car by their father and that Graham has stolen the body. He wants to sell the car and offers them a share in the selling price. But when they go to see Graham, he claims that the car was left to him and that Andrew has stolen the chassis and engine. Andrew and Graham's mother says differently: the car was left to both of them to share, but "cutting it in half" isn't playing fair by the terms of their father's will, so the car reverts to her. She wants it back and offers them 500 for helping. They take the body from Graham's workshop. Then, with Mrs Barker and her butler providing a diversion, they drive away in the chassis, with the brothers in hot pursuit. Harry starts to assemble the car and is considering buying it himself to use as a courtesy car for Woodcote Park, until Helen pours cold water on the idea. The brothers try to steal the car back but their mother tells them in no uncertain terms to stop squabbling. She arranges that they will all meet at a motorway junction where they will be "pleasantly surprised". The surprise is that she and her butler, William, have just got married and are going on their honeymoon in the car. She never pays Ken and Harry the 500 that she promised.
b: 20 Nov 89 w: Peter Mann d: John WoodsAs he is driving along a country lane towards Woodcote Park, Harry sees a racing cyclist being harassed by a souped-up car. The cyclist, Ian, turns out to be Helen's nephew. He is staying at Woodcote Park while he trains for a road-race through the centre of Nottingham. Greg Simpson, the manager of a racing team, is pressuring Ian to leave his present team and to join Greg's. He threatens to publish a letter which proves that Ian once conspired to fix the result of a race by letting a friend win. Harry uncovers proof that Greg's soignier (team doctor) is prescribing drugs to addicts; this would not go down too well with the sponsors of Greg's team, a health-food company. Faced with a clear case of stalemate, Greg realises that he cannot win and backs down.
Ken is asked to trace the author of love letters written to Barbara Lake. They are apparently from her husband, Ronnie, a bank robber - but he died in a plane crash six months ago... Either he is still alive or else the letters are cruel forgeries. Laura and Rocky study the newspaper articles and accident report describing the crash, while Ken discusses Ronnie Lake with an old friend, Sgt Hatchard. The more they discover, the more certain they are that Ronnie really did die in the crash. Hatchard tells Ken that Ronnie had been involved in a robbery just before he died; the money has not been found.
So who is writing the letters. Barbara's house is being watched. She receives a parcel, supposedly from Ronnie, containing a large amount of cash. Then she gets a letter saying that he wants to meet her in "our special place" - Room 324 in a hotel. Ken keeps Barbara company as she waits in the hotel bedroom. While he is investigating a noise that she hears on the fire escape outside, she quickly takes down a ceiling tile in the bathroom and removes a holdall - evidently this contains the proceeds of the robbery.
Just as Laura is complaining that Ken never gives her anything interesting to do, a suave man called Charlie Cochrane turns up at the office, wanting someone to do some research into his family history. Laura is only too pleased to help. Charlie asks her out and send her red roses. She is clearly besotted with him.
But Charlie Cochrane is not what he seems. It is he who has been watching Barbara's house, and now he searches the hotel bedroom. He then turns up at her house and threatens her with a gun unless she reveals where the money is hidden. Ken arrives but walks right into the trap. It is Rocky who saves the day by phoning the police and then creating a diversion which allows Ken to overpower Cochrane.
Laura is heartbroken at Cochrane's treachery, but Rocky buys her some flowers to cheer her up and to show her that he cares.
b: 27 Nov 89 w: Alan Clews d: Brian LighthillThe Bisons, a secret society similar to the Freemasons, is holding its meeting at Woodcote Park. Large amounts of alcohol are consumed. On the way home, one of the Bisons, Derek Donaghue, is stopped for drink-driving.
Helen asks Rocky to take some of her chairs to sell at an antique shop. Roxanne, the shop assistant, realises that he knows nothing about antiques and rips him off. He and Helen come up with a plan to get his own back. He invites Roxanne for a slap-up dinner at Woodcote, then disappears while pretending to book them a room for the night. Helen makes Roxanne pay the bill!
Ken receives a peremptory phone call to meet a potential client, Vincent Brack. Brack wants Ken to watch his wife, Nina. Ken follows Nina to a pub where she changes into a tarty dress and blonde wig, and leaves without Ken realising. The following day he is ready for her and follows her to a club where he discovers that she works as a hostess and singer, using the name Susie. Suspecting the worst, Ken gets chatting to her but she vehemently denies being a prostitute: "I don't do tricks," she protests, "That's not my department." She explains that she is desperately unhappy and that her husband regularly beats her up, thinking she is having an affair.
When Ken and Harry compare notes, they find that Vincent is a member of the Bisons, as well as being a policeman in the Vice Squad. After watching him they realise that he is tempting his fellow Bisons to get drunk and then tipping the police off so they will be caught as they drive home: he seems to be more concerned with making sure that they will be caught than with stopping them driving in the first place.
Ken confronts Nina, revealing that Vincent has hired him but that he is on her side. Nina tells him that she and Vincent once had a daughter but she was killed by a drunk driver - this explains Vincent's vindictive attitude to drunks. Nina also suspects that Vincent is corruptly accepting money from the club's owner, Laker, in exchange for protecting the club from Vice Squad raids.
Ken and Harry present evidence of Vincent's habits to the police; consequently he will be dismissed from the force and may face criminal charges. Nina decides to leave Vincent and return to London. Ken goes to the railway station and begs her to stay, but she refuses.
b: 4 Dec 89 w: Andy De La Tour d: John WoodsHelen is hosting a party for Argentinian polo players at Woodcote Park. She falls for Raoul Gomez, a suave Argentinian. Aiden Curtis, the husband of one of the English guests, asks Ken to watch his wife Merrily (!) who is "terribly easily influenced", meaning that he knows every man in the room fancies her and that he thinks she is having an affair. Ken follows her and uncovers a conspiracy between her, a local vet, David Rennet, and one of the Argentinian polo players, Celestino da Silva. Merrily's horse, Deauville Dancer, is infertile but Rennet has signed a certificate stating that it is in perfect health. She "sells" the horse to da Silva, thus establishing its value so that the insurance company will pay out when, six months from now, Rennet "has no choice" but to have it destroyed. She arranges to return da Silva's money when the insurance company pays up, but instead she leaves him as the owner of an infertile horse and disappears by plane with his money, accompanied by another (unknown) man.
Rocky's bike is in the garage so he has to suffer the ultimate indignity of riding around on a Honda 50 moped! He is asked to collect a valuable painting from an auctioneers for Thomas Kilverton, an irascible old man in a wheelchair. When he is stopped by the police (for speeding!), he is nonplussed to discover that his name is on the sales receipt, making him the legal owner! Later, he is knocked off his bike by a mysterious black car and the painting is stolen. Eventually he tracks down the "thief" - she is the ex-wife of Thomas Kilverton. Kilverton was trying to reduce the size of the alimony that he paid her by pretending to sell off all his assets. In thanks for recovering the painting and uncovering the scam, Mrs Kilverton gives Rocky a brand-new Yamaha 500 motorbike.
b: 11 Dec 89 w: Guy Meredith d: Graeme HarperKen is employed by Amelia Woods, a secretary at a local meat-processing factory, to investigate why various dictation tapes and letters go missing from the office and then re-appear a few days later. He soon learns from Bert and Joe, two of the drivers, that there is something very suspicious about the firm - strange late-night deliveries from Amsterdam that don't go through the books and are treated differently from the rest of the stock. And it seems that the owner, Mr Sandford, and his son-in-law, Trevor, are involved.
Helped by Laura and Rocky, Ken stages a road accident to hold up the lorry containing the special cargo and they take one of the boxes back to Woodcote. Having thawed it out, they discover, hidden underneath the bacon, pornographic magazines and videos. "Can you get that muck out of here. I find it extremely upsetting," Helen wails.
Meanwhile, Harry and Helen are invited to a jousting tournament by a local businessman, Ben Seymour, and become mixed up in a bout of rivalry between The Black Knight, The White Knight and the damsel that they are fighting for - in real life as well as in the tournament. Harry also goes on a quest to recover a talking parrot that he has bought for Helen but which Rocky has allowed to escape.
Rebecca Patterson, a Texan woman who is staying in a cottage nearby, asks Ken and Harry for help late one night when her fuses blow - and so begins passionate affair with Ken.
b: 18 Dec 89 w: Jane Hollowood d: Frank W. SmithHarry is making plans to sell his stake in Woodcote Park because it is losing money. He is thinking of buying "Hugo's", a nightclub and disco, but is warned off by a ruthless Scottish businessman, Vic Carpenter, who also wants to buy it. Eventually Harry and Helen sell Woodcote so it can be turned into timeshare apartments.
Ken is seriously considering moving to Texas with Rebecca Patterson. Rebecca reveals that she is over in England to divorce her estranged husband, Terry. Having stolen nearly 100 thousand from his family firm, Terry had fled to America and married Rebecca. However five years later he has now left her and returned to England. Although he has been hiding from his brother since then, Ken reasons that he will come to his father's funeral. Ken arranges to meets him at Sneinton Windmill late at night for him to sign the divorce papers. However Rebecca turns up and, shouting "Nobody walks out on me", shoots Terry... dead!
For a while, Ken is accused by the police of being an accessory, until Sergeant Hatchard, an old friend, puts in a good word for him. The episode ends with Rebecca being brought to the police station to be charged with her husband's murder, and Ken feeling as if the world has collapsed around him.
b: 20 Dec 89 w: Richard Le Parmentier & Paddy Fletcher d: Christopher Baker| Back to TOP of Page |
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Harry has evidently gone up in the world since he sold Woodcote Park because he now drives a Jaguar XJ6. He is planning to start a security business from offices at a canal basin by the Trent but his bank manager, Mr Statter, refuses him a loan. Ken, Rocky and Laura have moved from Royal Hill and are temporarily working out of a very tacky caravan.
Ken is on horseback, investigating water pollution and dead fish at a quarry near Dornford Hall for his clients, the peremptory and patronising Dr Sinclair Lewis, and Simon, a member of an ecological pressure group. They believe that the pollution is due to the dumping of toxic waste, possibly solvents used in the production of ceramics. Suddenly an air-rifle pellet is fired at Ken's horse, throwing him off. A beautiful Polish woman, Irena Tadeusz, who lives at Dornford Hall, rescues him. She tells him about a friend, Brigadier Charles, who was beaten up in a robbery. She is very frightened, so Ken offers to do a free survey with a view to fitting an alarm - this will be an excuse for him to snoop around and may lead to a bit of business for Harry's new security company.
There are reports on the news of a spate of antique burglaries from country houses. It is also reported that Brigadier Charles has died from his injuries. When Ken goes back to do his survey he snoops round the house and finds the tape recorder that he was dictating into when he was thrown from his horse. As he is leaving, Irena gives him a present: a tin containing a cake. Much later he discovers, at the bottom of the tin, a wad of photographs of antiques that were stolen in the robberies. Having recognised the Brigadier's antiques in the photos, he realises that Irena is involved in the thefts. He searches the quarry and finds an underground smelting works, and shelves full of stolen antiques and innocent-looking ceramic pots containing silver ingots. Irena's boyfriend, Andrew, attacks Ken, but the police arrive in the nick of time. It turns out that Irena had been photographing houses in detail to help Andrew to carry out the thefts. However she was now desperately trying to stop him because he had begun to hurt people - and to enjoy it.
Laura is singing with a band in the local pub, The Drum. Angus, who manages the band, tries to get her to join them full-time. Laura is thinking seriously of leaving Ken and going to London to sing professionally. Angus and Laura take part in a talent contest. However the talent scout wants the band but not Laura.
Mr Statter, the bank manager, eventually changes his mind and gives Harry his loan. Harry and Ken decide to go into partnership, running Crawford Boon Security (CBS), with Ken running the investigation side of the business and Harry acting as a security consultant. Ken plans to live in a yacht moored in the canal basin next to the CBS office.
b: 25 Sep 90 w: Pete Barwood d: Anthony GarnerKen is asked to investigate the fiancée of Lawrence Varlish. He suspects that she might be having an affair with her hypnotherapist, Geoffrey Phillips. Harry goes to see Phillips, posing as an anxious patient, and soon discovers that Varlish is worrying over nothing.
Two suspicious-looking South African men are waiting in the car park of the newly-opened CBS offices. They are anxious to collect something from a boat on the river. Nearby a narrow-boat belonging to a certain Mrs Walters is commandeered at gunpoint by Hobson, a suave man with a painfully cultured accent, accompanied by a Scotsman called Dilkes. They urgently need transport because their own boat has broken down. That night, when Ken is asleep on his yacht, he is woken up by the sound of heavy objects being thrown in to the water. Still half asleep, he peers out of the window but can't see anything and soon goes back to sleep.
After advertising in the local paper, Ken and Harry are inundated with enquiries for missing persons etc. However one phone call comes from a woman (later identified as Mrs Walters) what wants to meet Ken outside a riverside pub, amid great secrecy. She asks him to deliver a letter for her. He does this, but John Losely, the letter's recipient, demands "where is the boat" which means very little to Ken. Later, Losely's heavies (the South Africans) sink Ken's yacht and threaten him again.
An unkempt private investigator, Don Speed, offers to help relieve Ken's workload, but suspicions are aroused when he is caught snooping through Ken's files. He turns out to be a CID detective, watching Losely. Ken remembers the strange incident of a few nights before when he was woken by the sound of objects being thrown into the water. Harry suggests he gets Phillips to hypnotise him to see if he can remember any further details. All he can recall is that there was a boat on the opposite bank with a name involving the word "Tramp". After a lot of searching along the river, it is Rocky who finds the boat, "Chaste Tramp". On board they find Mrs Walters. She is keeping Dilkes a prisoner!
The story emerges. Dilkes had told the police that he had been approached by "some shady characters" who wanted to rent his barge. He had agreed to let them use it to carry a load of stolen German silk which they were planning to land at Trent Wharf - the site of the CBS offices. However things had gone wrong when Dilkes' boat broke down and they had to commandeer Mrs Walters' boat. Hobson and Losely had kidnapped Roberts, her landlord who was just collecting the rent. They had left Dilkes guarding Mrs Walters, but she overpowered him and kept him prisoner.
Harry recovers the stolen silk from its hiding place on the riverbed. Mrs Walters contacts the thieves to arrange a swap: Roberts in exchange for the silk. When the thieves arrive, Losely produces a gun but Mrs Walters expertly disarms him! The police close in and catch the thieves red-handed. With the reward money for recovering the stolen silk, Ken buys "Chaste Tramp" from Mrs Walters. This will be his new home, now that Losely's heavies have sunk his yacht.
b: 2 Oct 90 w: Nick Whitby d: Christopher BakerHarry has a contract to guard the puppies that a pedigree Afghan hound is expecting. When the puppies are born, it turns out that the father was a mongrel! Because the puppies are not pedigrees, the contract falls through and Harry is left with a lot of surplus surveillance equipment.
A Scottish footballer from Dundalk, Willie Connolly, wants Ken to act as his minder. Shortly after moving down to play in a local Nottingham team, his car was vandalised by a gang of thugs. Ken is warned off by a Glaswegian who freely admits smashing up the car and tells Ken to pass on the message to Willie that "he's got twenty-four hours". Willie and his girlfriend, Belinda, are planning to buy a house nearby. While they are looking round the house before buying it, a woman arrives and catches Willie and Belinda kissing... she is Willie's wife, Moira! Willie was separated from Moira whom he had left in Scotland. The "mad Glaswegian bookie" who smashed up the car is Moira's father, Donny McGregor, who is determined to make sure that Willie will suffer for leaving Moira.
Ken suspects that Willie's manager, Bob Barnet, is not all that he seems. His suspicions are confirmed when he finds that Barnet's office, rented only a few weeks ago, is now empty again. Belinda had suggested that Willie should put the house in her name to stop Moira taking her half-share, but could there be a more sinister explanation. Ken suspects that Barnet and Belinda are planning something.
Smudger, the landlord of the local pub, asks Harry to organise the pub's football team for their match with a team from a nearby prison. Tom, the trainer of the prison team, is cocky and sure that they will beat Harry's team. Barry, the normal goalkeeper, injures his knee, so Harry gives the job to Rocky who proves to be singularly inept and realises that he will let everyone down.
On the day of the match, Willie is at the pub. When McGregor and his thugs arrive, Willie makes his escape by hiding on the coach being used by the pub team. He had arranged to meet Barnet and Belinda to sign the financial papers for the house, but once inside the prison walls, he cannot get out again until the end of the match. The pub team and the prison team are evenly matched and by full time there is no score. Consequently the game goes to penalty shoot-outs. When one of the pub players is injured, Harry has to go on as substitute. Willie gives Rocky some advice: to put his hat in the corner and then dive that way when saving the penalty. This bit of psychology pays off and Rocky saves the goal - and the game!
Back at the pub afterwards, Barnet and his solicitor, Mr Knight, are on the point of getting Willie to sign away the house when Ken walks in with (of all people) Brian Clough (real-life manager of Notts Forest). Brian Clough confirms that Barnet is a fraud and isn't managing any of the Forest players as he claims. Willie and Moira get back together.
b: 9 Oct 90 w: Tim Munro d: Bill HaysJustina Bradleigh is a beautiful but spoilt 18-year-old pupil at St Godwald's, a girls' public school. She is secretly going out with Perry, a cocky young man who is constructing the school's new swimming pool. She is very bitchy to Deborah, her father's new girlfriend.
Ken and Harry are employed to guard a fashion show and charity gala that the school will shortly be starting. The school receives a bomb threat, which the headmistress, Hester McCullock, says is just the latest in a long line of pranks which are starting to affect the reputation of the school. Hsster asks Ken to investigate before parents start threatening to take their girls away.
Harry is keen to join the local branch of the Conservative party, of which Simon Bradleigh is the chairman. Simon tells Harry that "the party takes a dim view of confirmed bachelors", so Harry is under pressure to find himself a wife! Simon tells him that he knows of "an exclusive introduction bureau" run by Davina Barclay. Harry is very sceptical but agrees to give it a try. Simon also asks Harry to keep an eye on Deborah to make sure that she is respectable - he has his political career to think of. Harry passes this job to Rocky. Harry plucks up his courage and goes to see Davina Barclay who arranges for him to meet his date, "Kate Fowler". Harry falls for her and invites her out for dinner, not realising that she is really Deborah! Rocky follows Deborah to the restaurant and is rather shocked to see that she is having dinner with Harry. Rocky manages to break the news discretely to Harry who challenges Deborah. She admits that she works for Davina and sometimes acts as a temporary escort until Davina finds a real client for her client. Harry agrees not to tell Simon, providing she agrees to give up working at the agency - and providing she gets Harry's money back from Davina!
Justina goes missing from school. Hester receives a long plait of Justina's hair through the post and suspects that she has been kidnapped. The envelope also contains a ransom demand: a valuable map that the school owns. Hester wants Justina found before Simon finds out; she agrees not to call the police for the sake of Justina, Simon and the school's. Ken questions Justina's room-mate, Monica, who says that she thinks Justina may be in on the kidnap: she had kept making cryptic remarks about Perry's "exciting plans". She suggests trying to trace the hairdresser who cut off her plait: Justina is so vain that she would not let "just anybody" cut her hair.
Justina, with a new haircut, is staying at Perry's flat. They are planning to run away together and Perry wants to keep her hidden until he has got hold of the picture. When she finds just one plane ticket, she starts to smell a rat. Rocky eventually finds the hairdresser who identifies Justina and Perry as his customers. While Perry is out, Ken and Monica go to Perry's flat and convince Justina that she is in serious trouble. They make her realise that Perry is just a con man and that, once he has the picture, he has no intention of taking her with him.
Perry has arranged to collect the map, wrapped round a stick of French bread, at the charity gala on Saturday. Ken consults his friend D S Hatchard who recommends that Hester should agree to Perry's plans; Ken and Hatchard will wait until Perry has incriminated himself before arresting him. The gala's star guest, real-life model Marie Helvin, arrives in an America limousine. During the fashion show, Perry retrieves the map and flees when Ken challenges him. The police arrive and cut off the escape routes, but Perry flees on foot through the crowd and the models on the catwalk. He tries to escape in one of Harry's CBS vans but the Alsatian guard dog in the back of the van keeps him "occupied" until the police arrive.
b: 16 Oct 90 w: Veronica Henry d: Christopher BakerHarry has just moved to the peaceful village of Upper Ridley and Rocky is lodging with him. They help Sylvia Clayborough, a young widow, who has taken over her husband's fishmongering business but is plagued by vandalism: the fish-van's tyres are let down and graffiti is sprayed over it. When Sylvia and another widow, Vivienne Blake, start to compete with each other to welcome Harry to the village, Harry begins to realise that he has uncovered a hotbed of rivalry, jealousy and frustrated passion. Harry and Rocky eventually track down the vandal: Vivienne's wayward nephew who is staying with her.
Thomas O'Rourke, an Irish builder, asks Ken to investigate a break-in and theft of cash at his office. He suspects Brian Jonson, another builder. He thinks it is a dispute between Catholic (himself) and Protestant (Jonson). O'Rourke tries to settle his score with Brian by demolishing his office with a JCB. However O'Rourke's daughter, Caitlin, thinks the real culprit is her elder sister, Bernadette, who "has gone a bit wild" and now sings in a band at an Irish pub.
At the pub where she is singing, Ken sees Bernadette flourishing large amounts of cash. He follows her to a derelict house where she is squatting with her boyfriend, Shane, and looking after a young baby. She tells Ken that O'Rourke kicked her out of the house when he found out she was pregnant and that Brian was the father. She hates her father for what he has done. She admits that she stole the money because he won't contribute to the upkeep of his grandchild. As usual, Ken has a conflict between his duty to his client and his conscience - he cares too much to shop Bernadette to her father.
Brian goes to the pub and is involved in a fight with Shane. Bernadette loves them both, but Shane's fiery temper gets the better of him and he doesn't want to have anything further to do with her when he discovers that she is still carrying a torch for Brian. Brian and Bernadette have a long heart-to-heart talk, during which they realise that each thought they had been dumped by the other. They are on the point of getting back together when Bernadette learns that her father had told Brian she no longer wanted to see him and had had an abortion.
This is the final straw. Incensed by her father's treachery, she sets fire to his office, not realising that he is asleep inside. Ken and Harry rescue him. Ken goes back to Bernadette's house and waits with her for the police to arrive and arrest her for arson. "Take it easy on her, please," he pleads as they take her away. "She didn't mean to hurt her father."
b: 23 Oct 90 w: Peter Mann s: Guy Meredith d: Gareth DaviesLorraine Simpson is a red-headed young teenager who has just been released from borstal after serving a sentence for arson. Why has she kept a newspaper cutting which announces Ken's transition from fireman to private detective?
Fiona Harper, a guest at a nearby hotel, wants Ken to get evidence that her husband, Dennis, is having an affair. She tells him a sob-story about how he has moved his girlfriend into their house after kicking her out in to the street with only the clothes she is wearing. Ken, who can never resist a pretty damsel in distress, falls for this story hook, line and sinker. In fact "Fiona" is none other than Lorraine Simpson, who works at the hotel as a chambermaid. But it is a long time before Ken discovers this!
Ken watches the Harpers' house and sees Harper with his "girlfriend" (who is really his wife, Sue). He agrees to help "Fiona" break into the house while the Harpers are out so she can reclaim her possessions. While there, she fakes evidence of a burglary and vandalises the house. Ken then takes her to the station. As she is about to catch her train, she gives him one of "her" necklaces that she took from the house, as a token of her appreciation for his help. Unknown to Ken, she gets straight off the train and, pretending to be a jeweller, tips off the police that a man has tried to sell her a necklace. Ken had been seen by a neighbour of the Harpers who described him to the police, so it is not long before he is arrested for the burglary. He has a hard time convincing them that "Fiona" even exists. He is just about to be charged when DS Hatchard, Ken's friend whose help Harry has enlisted, intervenes.
It turns out that Lorraine is Dennis Harper's daughter from a time before he married Sue when he was living with Liz Simpson. Five years earlier, in 1985, Harper's warehouse in Birmingham had caught fire. Ken helped to put out the fire but one of his friends, Andy Blake, was killed. The arsonist, whom Ken caught on the premises, was Lorraine. Sue doesn't even know that Lorraine exists or that the fire was arson. Now Lorraine is getting her own back, firstly on Ken whose evidence convicted her and secondly on the father that had deserted her and her mother without even giving them a share of his profits from the fire.
Harry is approached by an elderly man, Len Drumgold, who wants to rent some space in Harry's warehouse to store some furs for a few days. The "furs" turn out to be rabbits. When Harry challenges him about this, Drumgold claims that they are about to be shipped to Belgium for breeding. However Harry, Laura and Rocky discover that they are really destined for clinical trials and cosmetic testing. A neighbour calls the RSPCA so Harry impounds the rabbits and takes them to a children's farm.
b: 30 Oct 90 w: Andy De La Tour d: Robert ChetwynLaura is looking after Greg Willis, the ten-year-old son of Harry's friends who are away on holiday. Greg is very withdrawn and doesn't want to got to school. While waiting to collect him, Laura sees Greg's games teacher, Nick Fuller, bullying him. Laura and Rocky decide to give Nick a taste of his own medicine. Rocky arranges a rugby match, with his friends acting as players in both teams. Taking advantage of the fact that Nick fancies her, Laura invites him to the match, saying that a friend (Rocky) will be playing. Rocky claims he has just twisted his ankle and cannot play. A substitute is needed and Nick is the only person they have got. With Greg surreptitiously watching from the touch-line, Rocky's mates in the opposing team take great delight in tackling Nick as violently as possible and roughing him up at every opportunity, just to let him know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of bullying.
Ken and Harry are involved in a more serious case of bullying. Beth Benson, who works as a cleaner at The Drum (the local pub), asks Ken for help. She and her husband, Jack, are being plagued by a noisy neighbour who insists on playing loud music and who owns a ferocious Alsatian that is forever barking. Ken learns that Beth and Jack have been offered an alternative house by their landlord, but Jack, a keen gardener, refuses to move because it would mean leaving his beloved garden. Ken suspects that Geraldine Watters, the neighbour, is being used by the landlord, Charlie Luce, as a "winkler" to make the Bensons' life a misery so that they will move.
Meanwhile, Harry is approached by James Marian, a property developer who says that he is developing the nearby marina. Ever the optimist, Harry tries to win the security contract for the development. But Ken sees Marian visiting Luce's deserted office and suspects that they are working together. He makes further enquiries and discovers that Luce is doing time in Nottingham Prison. When Harry challenges Marian and reveals what he knows, Marian turns nasty and threatens Harry.
The Bensons' garden is vandalised. Jack suspects that Geraldine was responsible. She tearfully denies this, but she seems very frightened and clearly knows who the culprit is. Jack collapses in the garden and is taken to hospital. Ken goes to see Charlie Luce in prison. Luce strenuously denies that he has been getting Marian to harass his tenants. He is very angry to learn that Marian is trying to evict them so he can sell the houses. He remembers that Marian, who works as his financial advisor, had got him to sign a Power of Attorney, giving Marian the right to act on Luce's behalf in case quick decisions were needed while Luce was in jail. Clearly Marian is now abusing his power.
Geraldine, a mature student who is paying her own way through university, admits that Marian has been paying her to frighten the Bensons, but she thought she was acting on Luce's instructions. When she learns the true facts she changes sides. Harry gets a couple of his mates from the pub to kidnap Marian and take him to a car scrapyard that one of them owns. By threatening to crush the car that he is in, and with Harry and Geraldine watching, Ken "persuades" Marian to sign a release from the Power of Attorney and to resign. They cheekily give him a gold clock as a token farewell present! Luce agrees to pay for the Bensons' garden to be restored.
b: 6 Nov 90 w: Bernard Dempsey & Kevin Sperring d: Brian LighthillCBS are looking after security at the Theatre Royal for a charity gala. One of the ballet dancers, Jan Melzer, is quite obviously scared stiff of her agent, Eckford, and Kelp, a thug who is working for him. At the party after the performance, Jan tells Laura that she and her fellow dancer Peter Sorreno desperately need help to escape from Eckford and Kelp.
Harry is captivated by Enrica Montanini, an opera singer at the gala. He persuades her to give an impromptu performance at the party to distract Eckford's attention. Acting as decoys, Rocky and Laura dress up as Peter and Jan, and Eckford chases them through the empty auditorium. Meanwhile Peter and Jan escape to Ken's boat.
Jan tells Ken that Eckford is threatening to reveal that Peter was arrested for drugs offences when he was younger - unless she co-operates with him. She says that the only person who might be able to help is her uncle, Tony Margiotta, who fled from America to Britain after a family argument. Ken traces him to a theological college. As Ken approaches him, Tony panics and runs off, screaming "don't shoot" - he thinks that Ken is a hit man. The story comes out: Tony was running an import/export business in America but fell foul of Eckford. Tony's business partner was murdered.
Jan confesses to Peter that she has betrayed her uncle: Eckford was using her to lead him to Tony. Eckford and Kelp have followed Jan and Peter to the boat and kidnap them, keeping them in their hotel rooms. Ken manages to get a message to Peter which he inexpertly attempts to pass to Jan. Eckford intercepts the note, in which Tony says he will meet Jan in the Robin Hood dark-ride exhibition. However it is all a set-up: after Eckford and Kelp scramble amongst the models of Robin Hood, waiting to shoot Tony, they discover that it is Ken sitting in the dark-ride car and that the police are waiting outside.
b: 13 Nov 90 w: Peter Mann s: Bernard McKenna d: Robert ChetwynLaura and Rocky have been given the task of tailing Victor Howells, a young man who has just been released from prison. He is described by Ken's client, Mr Pollock, as "a vindictive and disturbed man" and is expected to try to attack Mr Pollock's client who wants to remain anonymous. Pollock won't even reveal his client's exact address but wants 24-hour surveillance so he will know if Howells goes anywhere in the same district. Howells sees Laura and Rocky, so, with their cover blown, they try the direct approach and talk to him, telling him that they have no idea why they have been asked to follow him. Howells tells them that he was imprisoned for stealing watches from a jeweller, Mr Sinton, although he claims that Sinton framed him for the theft. The three of them plan to flush Sinton into the open by warning Pollock that Howells has given them the slip. They soon discover that Pollock and Sinton are one and the same! They lure him to a deserted boathouse where Howells confronts Sinton. Laura and Rocky record Sinton's confession.
Gabby McKintosh, the owner of a motorbike shop, enlists Ken's help to recover an 8500 BMW motorbike that he sold to a customer who has given him a fake name and bank details, and has now defaulted on the loan payments. The bike has been seen outside a bikers' cafe. Ken dresses up in leathers and an ear-ring, and goes undercover, posing as a Hells Angel. He says that he wants to sell his bike in a hurry. He meets Joe, Mo and Lolita who run a bike business out of workshops in a railway arch. He admits that the bike is stolen, reasoning that anyone who wants to buy a distinctive bike like his, knowing that it is stolen, must have ways of making false plates and documentation. He tells them that he'd rather keep the bike than sell it, but he must have a new ID for it.
Joe introduces Ken to Steve McLaughlin who can arrange false documentation. By noting the mileage on Joe's bike, Ken traces McLaughlin to a disused army camp. Ken and Harry break in and find Gabby's bike. However they also uncover a major operation printing forged tax disks and vehicle registration documents. Ken repossesses the bike, with McLaughlin in pursuit. Back at Gabby's garage, McLaughlin bursts in and buys the bike back - evidently the bike is worth more than mere money. Ken suspects that something is hidden in its fuel tank. He returns to the army camp and overhears McLaughlin briefing Joe, Mo, Lolita and several other bikers: evidently he is planning to take the stolen bikes out of the country. While McLaughlin is out of the shed, Ken tells the bikers that they are being used as couriers for forged currency that McLaughlin is printing. They confront McLaughlin when he returns, at which point the police arrive. McLaughlin escapes in his American sports car but is soon re-captured.
b: 20 Nov 90 w: Nick Whitby d: Graeme HarperKen and Harry are guarding Upper Ridley Hall, near where Harry lives, and where a big Society wedding will be taking place between Sir Alan and Lady Tessa Bolton's daughter, Kate, and Rupert de Borchgrave, a Belgian Count.
Sir Alan asks Ken to keep a discrete watch on one of his houseguests, Johnny Hunter, a suave gentleman who drives an Austin Healey sports car. Ken senses a tension in the house: why is Hunter nosing around the house and taking such an interest in Kate, and why is Lady Tessa so evasive about him. Why is Kate secretly making furtive phone calls and who is the man who she meets late at night?
While patrolling the grounds, Harry spots two men behaving very suspiciously and stalking one of Sir Alan's stags. He reports this to Philip Braithwaite, Sir Alan's Estate Manager, who doesn't seem to take the matter seriously. Harry suspects that Braithwaite himself might be involved in the stag poaching. He follows one of the estate vans to a ruined chapel which he discovers the poachers are using as a storeroom.
Ken sees Lady Tessa wrapping some of the family's paintings in a brown paper and later hears Johnny threatening her and walking away with the same brown paper package. Realising that there is something seriously wrong, he challenges Lady Tessa. At first she denies everything but after Ken tells her that he has seen Hunter selling the paintings at an antique shop she admits that he is blackmailing her: he is Kate's father and is threatening to tell Sir Alan. Ken witnesses Hunter blackmailing Lady Tessa and threatens to hand over his evidence to the police unless Hunter leaves the family alone. But Hunter has one final trick up his sleeve: he tries to blackmail de Borchgrave, threatening to tell Sir Alan who will cancel the wedding and stop de Borchgrave getting his hands on Kate's money. However de Borchgrave, a homosexual who was only marrying Kate for her money, cancels the wedding when he learns that Kate will no longer inherit Sir Alan's money.
Laura and Rocky take Kate to have her wedding dress fitted but on the way back she tricks Rocky into coming with her to the ruined chapel. Here, on the night before the big day, she gets him to "officiate" at a mock wedding between her and Philip Braithwaite with whom she has been having an affair. But Ken and Harry are also watching the chapel, waiting for the stag poachers to return.
Kate and Philip elope in her Morris Traveller. When Hunter turns up to make his big revelation, Sir Alan admits that he has always known that he was not Kate's father but he still intends to leave his house and money to her.
b: 27 Nov 90 w: Jane Hollowood d: Nicholas LaughlandCBS has been given the contract to guard a building site - a derelict church which is due to be demolished and replaced with luxury flats by a local builder, Donald Bannerman. During a violent thunderstorm, there is an earth movement and some ancient statues are uncovered. Dr Freda Butler, an archeologist at the university, insists on being given access, saying that the statues date back to the time when there was a Cistercian monastery on the site. Bannerman refuses, but Ken decides to let her have a quick look at the statues while Bannerman isn't there.
During the night, one of Bannerman's JCBs is sabotaged when sand is poured in the fuel tank. Freda and her students are blamed. Bannerman threatens to hand over the security contract for guarding all his sites to Jack Fentiman, one of Harry's rivals. Harry wants to sack Frank, the security guard who was on duty at the site. However Ken feels sorry for Frank, who is the rather simple brother of another CBS guard, Bertie, and insists on giving Frank a second chance. But then the following night the church is flooded when Frank turns on a water valve. Who is paying him to sabotage the site.
Bannerman carries out his threat and sacks CBS. The reputation of CBS is at stake and other clients start to cancel their contracts. Ken reluctantly sacks Frank, but suspects that he is being paid by Fentiman. He follows Frank to a pub where he sees him with DS McKinley, a local policeman and Fentiman's security consultant. He overhears Frank asking McKinley for more money and later finds that Frank has been beaten up. Frank admits that he is responsible for the sabotage and that Fentiman and McKinley were threatening to reveal to Harry that he had been sacked from his previous job for running amok with a fork-lift truck.
Harry and Ken and determined to prove Fentiman's and McKinley's guilt and to restore the reputation of CBS. After consulting DS Hatchard, Ken's friend on the police force, they decide to try a bit of entrapment. Bertie offers to tip off Fentiman that CBS will go out of business if anything else happens to damage their reputation and to suggest that Fentiman and McKinley plant a consignment of stolen VCRs in the CBS warehouse. That night, Bertie lets Fentiman and McKinley into the warehouse. The police storm the building and arrest Fentiman but McKinley escapes.
Feeling very foolish for being taken in by Fentiman, Bannerman gives CBS back the contract and also agrees to delay work on the church site for three months to let Freda complete her archeological investigations. McKinley goes to the church, seeking revenge, but Frank turns up and knocks him out. Ken and Harry give him his job back.
Rocky has fallen in love with Trisha Downey, a chirpy young snooker player from Lancashire. She makes herself unpopular in the local snooker hall when she challenges other players to play for money: she plays badly to tempt them to raise their stakes, then when the stakes are high she beats them, taking all the money. Rocky persuades her to enter a local competition and makes sure that Mickey Tucker, a local talent-scout and manager, will be present. Tucker is duly impressed and signs up Trisha.
b: 4 Dec 90 w: Richard Le Parmentier and Paddy Fletcher d: Matthew EvansMargery Keeverton is looking after the estate of her uncle, Geoffrey Keeverton, who has just died. He had made a considerable amount of money from a fairground amusement arcade and has now left it all to her. While staying at her late uncle's house, she starts to receive nuisance phone calls which make it clear that she is being followed and which referred to an unpaid debt. Ken and Harry are asked to help. Because Harry rather fancies Margery, he is keen to help and even takes a week off work. Margery's solicitor, Peter Haymon, has very little confidence in Ken's abilities as an investigator. Harry takes Margery to the races but they happen to meet Haymon, spoiling Harry's plans for a romantic day out. A friend tells Harry that Haymon is "one of the shiftiest lawyers in the Midlands".
Ken and Harry keep watch on the house each night and their patience is eventually rewarded when they see a shady figure prowling round in the garden. They give chase but the man escapes, after giving Harry a black eye. However he leaves his coat behind. In the pocket Ken finds a plastic .22 bullet. He soon discovers that these bullets are used in fairground rifle-ranges, so he visits the local fairground and meets an elderly woman, Pat Goran, who runs the shooting stall and comes from a long line of showmen. Her grandson Ian wants to buy into a slot-machine stall. Ken suspects that Ian is the mysterious visitor to Margery's house. He challenges Ian who admits that he had attacked Harry but claims that Keeverton's house rightfully belongs to him because Geoffrey was his father! Pat tells Ken the whole story: Geoffrey had been married to Pat's daughter. They separated but Geoffrey paid maintenance for Ian because he was "a fair main - very generous".
Ken suspects that Margery is trying to discredit Ian so that she won't have to share her inheritance with him. He also learns that she has been buying up arcades all over the place, enlarging the family empire. However he realises that she is innocent when she produces some notebooks that she has just found which list many payments to Pat Goran, whom she assumes is a man. When Ken and Harry mention Pat Goran's name to Haymon, he immediately refers to her as "her" - how does he know. They decide to set up Haymon by tipping him off that they are close to locating Pat. When he rushes round to the fairground and threatens Ian, Ken is watching. By stranding Haymon at the top of the Big Wheel, Ken extracts a confession from him: once he had persuaded Margery to expand the estate, he was planning to introduce Ian as the rightful heir, thereby claiming a larger amount of commission from Ian for restoring a larger estate. Haymon is discredited and Margery gladly agrees to share her inheritance 50:50 with Ian.
CBS are approached by a father and son, Joe and Calum Trevellyan, who are larger-than-life Northumbrian farmers with very strong (and rather unconvincing) Northumbrian accents to prove it. They want help in recovering their trial-winning sheepdog, Clara Bow, who has been stolen from a sheepdog trial in Haltwhistle by a farmer from Nottinghamshire. Ken gives the job to Rocky. Rocky and Calum raid the farm and steal the dog. Calum escapes but Rocky is left behind to face the music. After a few hours Calum returns the dog to the farmer. But when Rocky sees him later, he still has a sheepdog. Calum confesses to Rocky that he has operated a little scam: the dog that he had stolen was not Clara Bow but a champion stud dog which he had "borrowed" to father Clara Bow's pups.
b: 11 Dec 90 w: Bernard Dempsey d: Anthony GarnerIn the weeks leading up to Christmas, Lawrence Drake, a rich ex-racing driver, asks Ken to watch his wife, Pamela, whom he suspects is having an affair. Lawrence feels that he has nothing to offer Pamela because he is now crippled after an accident on the racetrack.
Pamela and her boyfriend, Alex Cavendish, are robbed at gunpoint while driving home from a restaurant late at night. Pamela's jewellery is stolen and she receives a blackmail request: "pay up and you'll get the jewels back". She starts to gamble heavily and tries to borrow money from loan sharks in order to raise the blackmail money.
Ken follows Pamela and sees her with her lover. He then gets Laura to visit Alex, posing as "Briony Carling", a magazine researcher, and soon learns his name and that he is a wine importer. Later, Pamela sees Ken while he is following her again. She pleads with him not to tell Lawrence about Alex or the jewellery because she doesn't want to hurt him.
Alex is in league with the thieves. At a wine-tasting, Harry and Laura discover that he is also selling off his wine stock very cheaply. When Pamela tells him that she intends to leave Lawrence and move in with him, he panics, realising that she will probably tell Lawrence everything, making him call the police. The jewel thieves break into the CBS offices, beat up Ken and warn him off. Ken reports back to Lawrence who admits that he knew all about Alex and the robbery, but wanted to convince Pamela what sort of man Alex really was and how easily he could be tempted to steal.
Pandora, a chirpy Liverpudlian teenager, asks Ken to trace her father who left her mother before she (Pandora) was born. All she has is a photograph of her father and her pregnant mother, clad in sheepskin coats. Rocky helps Pandora trace her grandmother, Mrs Whitfield, who she has never met before. Mrs Whitfield takes Pandora to see her father who is now Managing Director of a frozen chicken company. He offers her a house, a job with the company and a holiday in Barbados, but she rejects him as being too middle-class and "a raging materialist". She decides to go live with her grandmother.
Smudger, the landlord of The Drum (Ken and Harry's local pub) is organising a Christmas party but Harry thinks that the plans are tasteless. He decides to organise his own party but then wonders if anyone apart from the CBS staff will come to it. Harry and Laura dress up in fur-lined Santa suits and Ken gets into the festive mood by donning a red nose. However none of Harry's friends have turned up and the party is lifeless. He assumes that they are all at Smudger's rival event, a Tarts and Vicars party. But out of the blue Smudger and his party turn up - they have taken pity on Harry.
b: 18 Dec 90 w: Veronica Henry d: John Woods| Back to TOP of Page |
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Ken is in the process of moving into a derelict house in the village of Upper Ridley. He has arranged with the owner that he will live there rent-free in exchange for renovating it.
John Pritchard approaches Harry and wants CBS to provide security guards for the launch of his new health club. He wants the guards to wear tracksuits, which he will provide, so they will blend in with the punters. Harry promotes Rocky to "executive" and gives him the task of employing suitable college students: no mean feat when all the tracksuits are extra small! One of the students, Vicky "Mouthpiece", gives Rocky a hard time, quoting the Factory and Sex Discrimination Acts as she attempts to do as little work as possible. However Rocky soon puts her in her place.
John Dewar, the owner of a dairy, suspects that his wife, Melissa, may be having an affair and asks Ken to investigate. Ken is reluctant to do so, firstly because he wants to get on with moving into his new house and secondly because he hates working on "hanky panky cases". He watches Dewar's house, "Harmony House", but Melissa soon spots him waiting outside in Harry's Jaguar, and invites him in for a cup of tea and a chat. She seems to be a respectable woman who spends most of her time doing charity work for the parish, but Ken suspects that she is very lonely.
Ken and Harry follow her to a park where she seems to be innocently whiling away the afternoon listening to a brass band in the bandstand. However they eventually see her going off with a man. Ken follows him to a hotel and learns that his name is Paul Lyle. By conning his way into Lyle's hotel room, he finds (and copies) a map of the countryside to the south-west of Nottingham on which routes, timings and locations are marked. Lyle seems to be planning with two friends, Milne and Preston, to abduct Melissa. He has also been keeping a close watch on Dewar at the dairy.
Harry and Rocky watch an innocuous van arrive at Harmony House. When they go to investigate, posing as stranded motorists, they are forced at gunpoint to go into the living room where Melissa is being held. Lyle arrives at the dairy and abducts Dewar and the staff wages, under threat of killing Melissa. Milne and Preston take Melissa to a deserted farmhouse, as arranged, and leave her there. Lyle eventually releases Dewar in the middle of a wood and drives off, but not before Dewar has caught sight of a plane ticket in Lyle's car. After walking across the fields for only a few minutes, Dewar arrives at a country police station and reports the abduction. The police arrest Milne and Preston as they are about to catch a flight from East Midlands airport, but realise that the "accidental" clue of the plane ticket and the fact that there was a convenient police station nearby is no accident - Lyle has set up his accomplices.
Ken rescues Harry and Rocky, who are still tied up at Harmony House. He and Harry visit all the places marked on Lyle's map and soon find Lyle and Melissa at the deserted farm. Lyle and Melissa make their escape by helicopter, with Melissa keeping Ken at bay by threatening to shoot him. However Harry has already retrieved the briefcase containing Dewar's money from the helicopter.
b: 24 Sep 91 w: Bernard Dempsey and Kevin Sperring d: Matthew EvansKen and Harry call in on the spur of the moment to check Don Jakes, the security guard that they have employed at a safety deposit company, Unicorn Deposit Ltd. While searching for him, they walk into the vault. The door swings shut and an unknown person locks it behind them, trapping them inside. Ken and Harry see that the vault has been ransacked and that the cable for the security camera has been cut. They realise that they will probably be trapped all weekend. They think that Don might have been attacked, which is why he can't rescue them.
Don leaves the vault and meets his Scottish girlfriend, Billie. They have stolen the contents of the vault and are planning to run away together to Argentina.
Ken had arranged to meet Laura, who is getting obscene phone calls at home. When he doesn't turn up and she can't contact either him or Harry, she gets very worried. She and Rocky start to investigate.
Don's wife, Jeanette, becomes suspicious when she sees Don with Billie, who is her hairdresser. She tips off the police who arrest Don and Billie on the way to the airport and recover some of the stolen property.
Although Don Jakes appeared to be completely reputable, with good army references, Ken and Harry are beginning to suspect that he could be guilty. Ken suggests looking for food in the safety deposit boxes. They find some tins of caviare and some bottle of vodka. Harry has a sudden attack of conscience and thinks that it would be stealing to eat the caviare, but Ken persuades him that they must eat and drink to survive. They gorge themselves and consume large amounts of vodka. Before long they are both very drunk and start rambling on about life in the fire brigade and their ambitions for the future.
Ted Hatchard, Ken's policeman friend, tips off Laura and Rocky that Don has a criminal record. They go back to Unicorn, together with the manager who eventually manages to get the vault door open. Ken and Harry are lying drunk and incapable on the floor with sheepish grins on their faces!
b: 1 Oct 91 w: Peter Palliser d: Nicholas LaughlandKen and Harry are involved in a court case, giving evidence against a landlord, Michael Roach who is accused of terrorising his tenants into leaving his houses.
Some time ago, Ken had been employed by George and May Jenkins, and Aziz Hussain, Roach's tenants who live on a run-down estate. Jimmy Craven, one of Roach's thugs, had forced his way into the Jenkins' flat and vandalised the furniture, with the George and Mabel looking on in horror. When their neighbour, Aziz Hussain, had tried to intervene, he was beaten up. Roach was clearly behind the attacks: he wanted to redevelop the land on which the flats stood and had resorted to violent tactics after the more subtle approach (eg refusing to carry out repairs) had failed to work. The Jenkins and Hussains wanted Ken to gather evidence that Roach was paying Jimmy Craven.
Ken and Rocky waited outside a pub that Craven was known to frequent, and photographed Roach handing over a large envelope of cash. But they were spotted and Craven and his mates gave chase and smashed Rocky's camera. Tempers flared when Ken blamed Rocky for this fiasco.
Ken visited Roach at his large mansion, as a pretext to try and gather some incriminating evidence. Roach appeared to be model landlord and denied that he was involved in the vandalism or wanted to evict his tenants. But while Ken was alone in Roach's sitting room, he saw a letter from Roach to a property development company, Emerald Life. Later that night he went to retrieve the letter from Roach's dustbin but was caught by Roach's assistant, a giant of a man called Eric Wetherby. Roach denied that he had handed over the money that Rocky had photographed and demanded, via a solicitor's letter, that Ken stop harrassing him - which made Ken very unpopular with Harry.
Working on his own, Rocky followed Roach to a studio called Rock City where a photographer, Simon Perfect, was taking pictures of a local band. While he was there, he saw Jimmy Craven and Eric Wetherby together, and later saw Jimmy talking to an unknown woman. But Wetherby attacked Rocky before he could investigate further.
Then it looked as if Ken's luck had changed, when (of all people) Roach's wife, Kathleen, contacted him and offered to help. In strictest confidence, and with the stipulation that Ken must not take notes or even tell Harry, she tipped Ken off that Roach was in the middle of a deal and was about to sign some papers. Rocky posed as a courier to collect the papers from Emerald Life, and Ken photocopied them before Rocky delivered them to Roach. The documents showed that Roach did indeed plan to redevelop the site, as Aziz Hussain had suspected. Kathleen Roach also told Ken that her husband was due to have a "business meeting" early the following morning. This time Ken managed to take incriminating photographs of Roach handing over wads of cash to Craven.
But all that was in the past. Now in court, Diane Fawley, Roach's barrister, rips Ken's evidence to shreds. When Ken describes the logo on the document that he had intercepted, she proves that this was Roach's new logo which was first used after the date on the documents. She therefore alleges that they are forgeries. She also casts doubt on the techniques that Ken has used to gather his evidence. Roach has a perfectly innocent explanation for giving money to Craven.
Things look very black, both for the Jenkins and the Hussains, and for Ken's professional reputation. It looks as if Ken has been set up by Kathleen Roach and that she is not on his side as she had claimed. Aziz feels that Ken has let him down by "one cockup after another".
Then Rocky sees Mrs Roach in court and recognises her bracelet and shoes as the ones worn by the mystery woman at Rock City, at a time when Roach claims that he was at home with her. Roach denies that his wife has ever even met Jimmy Craven. Rocky races from court, tracks down the photographer, Simon Perfect, and eventually finds a photograph which shows her and Craven in the background. He makes a dramatic entry into court, brandishing his new evidence. Suddenly Ken's story is believed and Roach is branded a liar. The case against him is proved and he is sent to jail.
b: 8 Oct 91 w: Matthew Faulk & Mark Skeet d: Laurence MoodyKen makes a start on renovating Orchard Cottage. Pam Strong, one of his neighbours and the widow of a fireman, tentatively asks him for help because her son John has changed suddenly: he has dropped out of college, become sullen and uncommunicative and has started locking himself in his room. She also suspects that he may be stealing from her. Something is wrong - could it be drugs, Pam wonders. John has become friendly with another teenager called Mark who rents room at a nearby farm.
Mark and John steal a car and drive around, terrifying the locals. The car hits a man and woman on a bridge, but Mark drives on, dumping the car in a quarry and swearing John to silence. But John later recognises the man that was knocked down as a local doctor, James Harlon. It was Harlon who got John his part-time job as a porter at the hospital.
Ken visits Dr Harlon, not realising that connection with John and the accident. Dr Harlon describes John as quiet and a bit of a loner, but not the sort to be a drug addict. Clearly his present behaviour is very out-of-character.
Ken visits Rooks Farm where Mark lodges. Both Mark and his landlord William deny knowing John, but Ken becomes suspicious when he sees drug-taking syringes at the farm. He thinks that John will probably talk to someone of his own age, so he gets Rocky to follow him. Rocky is staying with Laura, and her flatmate Hilary is a nurse at the hospital, so he asks her to point out John to him. Rocky sees Mark bullying John into giving him money. It also transpires that John is stealing drugs for Mark from the hospital. Rocky follows them to the bridge and sees them peering over the parapet. Later, he and Ken search the bridge. Maybe this is where Mark and John's supplier leaves the drugs for them to collect, suggests Rocky. They find fragments of glass and a key by the bridge. Ken snoops round the Rooks Farm, but the key doesn't fit any of the locks. On the off-chance, he investigates a cottage just across the field from the bridge. The key fits the front door. When Ken sees the owner, Ann Fielding, he notices that she has a large cut on her forehead: he has found the woman.
At the hospital, Laura over hears John asking for details of a woman who was brought in last Friday after "an accident". Laura learns from Hilary that the only woman who came in after an accident was brought in by Dr Harlon. Why did he insist that he didn't want anything about the woman to be put on the hospital records. Pretending to be from the hospital records department, Laura visits Mrs Harlon, who is mystified. Evidently she was not the woman who was injured. Mrs Harlon becomes very suspicious and challenges her husband about the accident: she has evidently suspected for some time that he is having an affair. James Harlon and Ann Fielding are very worried that their secret will soon become known. Ann wants to go public about the affair, but this is that last thing that Harlon wants. He storms off back to his wife.
Harry is due to entertain some visitors from Norway that evening and has been practising his Norwegian from a Linguaphone tape - with little success! He goes to collect Ken from Orchard Cottage, but he finds that it has been vandalised... by Mark, who is furious that Ken has been snooping around. While Harry is inside the cottage looking for Ken, Mark steals Harry's Jaguar, bundles John into the car and zig-zags off down the road.
Ken and Harry go to Rooks Farm. They find William and Mark, but there is no sign of John. They find him hiding in Harry's car at the quarry, terrified that he will be taken away by the police for being involved in the hit-and-run accident. By this stage, Laura has arrived with Pam. Ken reassures John and Pam that Ann was not badly hurt and that it is unlikely the police will become involved as neither Dr Harlon nor Ann Fielding are likely to want the publicity that they would get if they pressed charges. But he has reckoned without Ann: incensed at being nearly killed for the sake of a man who has now deserted her and returned to his wife, she has decided to cut her losses and call the police. Mark and John are arrested.
b: 15 Oct 91 w: Jane Hollowood d: Matthew EvansA mother and daughter, Jean and Isabella di Cesare, are staging a fashion show on board a boat and taking money for the dresses that they are exhibiting. But they have no intention of delivering - it is all a scam. They are also planning to stitch up Ken.
CBS are proving the security at a charity antiques auction at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. Ken is expecting Jean to arrive soon. Jean is one of Ken's old flames: Harry's ex-wife had once described them as "the Siamese twins - joined at the lips". However Jean left Ken ten years ago and later married an Italian Count, Vincenzo di Cesare.
Jean and Isabella are being followed by a scruffy man in an even scruffier car. Jean tells Ken that she has recently left the Count because he was beating her up. She bought her sports car with the money that she took when she left the Count, but now he is claiming that the car belongs to him. He wants it back and is threatening to get violent. Isabella is also being followed by Enzo, a "lovesick Italian baker" whom she met through a dating agency that Jean used to run.
Jean goes to stay with Ken and they are soon re-kindling their former passion, as typified by the scene where they make toast while miming along to music from Carmen!
When Harry suggests that Jean might have ulterior motives for contacting Ken, he refuses to listen. However he wants Harry to keep an eye on Isabella, in case the Count tries to harm her. Harry follows her to the bank, where Enzo roughly bundles her into the car and drives her back to the hotel. He evidently has some hold over her. The scruffy man is still snooping around and trying to break into Jean and Isabella's car. When Harry challenges him, he learns that the man's name is Jerry Owens and that he works for a debt-collecting agency, repossessing the car for the company that they hired it from. Jerry also tells Harry that Jean and Isabella are known to be con-artists and have been credit-blacklisted under thirty different aliases.
Harry breaks the news to Ken, who is gutted but steadfastly refuses to believe that it might be true. Jean is beginning to have second thoughts about conning any money out of Ken. After a change of heart, she refuses to go through with the scheme that she and Isabella had planned. She goes back to Ken and confesses to him. She says she wants to put her dishonest past behind her and live with him. Ken gets all maudlin and admits that he always messes up his relationships with women. They end up in bed. It looks as if they are going to get back together permanently.
Back at the hotel, Enzo and Isabella are making plans to elope. However when Ken and Jean return, she quickly bundles him out of the room and then pretends that he is working for the Count and is threatening to turn violent unless she gives him £5000. Without Jean knowing, Ken offers to get the money for Isabella. This is all part of her cunning plan which she alone is responsible for, now that Jean has backed out.
Ken reluctantly asks Rocky to sell his beloved 'White Lighting' motorbike to raise the cash, which Rocky describes as "like the Lone Ranger selling Tonto". Harry and Rocky hide the bike and Harry withdraws the money from his bank account. Ken gives it to Isabella. Jean feels disgusted with the way she has treated Ken and knows that he would never be able to trust her again. After several attempts to write a farewell note to him, she leaves a poignant message on his answerphone. Now that Jean has jilted Ken and Isabella has jilted Enzo, they drive off from the hotel. They are stopped by Harry and Jerry Owens. Harry demands the money from Isabella (which Jean knew nothing about) and Jerry repossesses the car.
Ken is feeling very sorry for himself back at his house, when Harry turns up with a trailer containing... 'White Lightning'.
b: 22 Oct 91 w: Helen Slavin d: Nicholas LaughlandCBS have been employed to guard the pheasants in a wood owned by Lord Melverley of Whitley Hall, in preparation for the annual Shoot on the day of the Feast of Mortimer. Lord Melverley is worried about hunt saboteurs.
When Ken is on his way to join Rocky and Laura in the wood, he discovers an old Morris Minor Traveller van parked nearby, with a shotgun in the back. Could it belong to the saboteurs. The following day, his bike breaks down outside the church. The vicar, Rev Peter Bradshaw, is a keen bike enthusiast and mechanic, and gets the bike going again. He happens to mention that he also maintains the van, a Morris Traveller, belonging to Ralph Cotterell, the former gamekeeper. Lord Melverley sacked Cotterell recently after twenty-five years and Cotterell is now reduced to working as part-time groundsman for a nearby school. Ken talks to Cotterell who is indeed very bitter about the way that he was sacked, in connection with an incident when sheep belonging to a neighbour, Chris Shepley, were poisoned. Ken thinks this sounds like grounds for a feud, especially when he breaks up a fight at Whitley Hall between Chris Shepley and Lord Melverley.
Lord Melverley is very scathing of the villagers: "treat them like bluebottles - leave them and they go away". He also believes that all the local land and property belongs to his estate: "everything reverts to its rightful owner". Clearly there is no love lost between Melverley and the villagers.
In the middle of the night, Ken, Rocky and Laura discover an intruder in the woods. She is Amanda Shepley, Chris's wife. She says that she is looking for buried treasure. In the Shepleys' house, Dove Cottage, there is a carved wooden plaque with an inscription referring to "rings of silver" and "the brightest of stars". For many years there have been rumours in the village about buried treasure. The Shepleys are now desperate for money and need any money that they can lay their hands on. Rocky is intrigued by the story of the treasure and looks up the local parish registers. He finds references to a certain Louisa May Dunham who died in the seventeenth century on the day of the Feast of Mortimer. She was due to be married and it is rumoured that her father, an ancestor of Amanda, hid her dowry. Rocky also finds two further plaques - one on a church pew and another on a lectern - which seem to give further clues to the whereabouts of the treasure. There are pictures of stars and of the wooden stocks in the wood. Could the treasure be hidden under the stocks?
Ken is still very suspicious of the Shepleys and Ralph Cotterell. He follows Cotterell to the Hall and catches him snooping around. Lord Melverley seems to be very unconcerned and orders Ken to concentrate on guarding the wood. Talking again to Rev Bradshaw, Ken learns more details about the Shepleys. Lord Melverley had fenced-off land which had previously been used as common grazing land. Chris Shepley had cut the fences and grazed his sheep there. But Lord Melverley had laid poison on the land and all the sheep died. Ralph Cotterell spoke up for Chris in court, but to no avail: the sheep should not have been on the land so Lord Melverley was not liable to pay any compensation. And Lord Melverley sacked Cotterell for backing the Shepleys in their dispute.
The full story gradually emerges. Amanda's father had been butler to Lord Melverley's father and was a very close friend of Ralph Cotterell. The old Lord Melverley left Dove Cottage to Amanda's father but the deeds were never handed over. Now his son, the present Lord Melverley, is running short of money. Having sold off many of the family heirlooms he is now trying to raise some cash by holding shooting events on his land and by trying to regain Dove Cottage and all its farmland. Unless Amanda is able to raise the money by the day of the Feast, the cottage will revert to Melverley. There is the added complication that when Amanda was eighteen, and long before she met Chris, she had an affair with Lord Melverley. She has kept this a secret from Chris.
Ken and Ralph need to get hold of the deeds that should rightfully have been handed over to Amanda's father when he was given the cottage, But they need Lord Melverley out of the way. Fortunately the story of the buried treasure comes in handy. Rocky has finally solved the mystery of the treasure: the references to "rings of silver", "brightest of stars" and the stocks are allusions to the patches of moonlight which shine through the arm- and neck-holes in the stocks; the position of the largest patch of light on the day of the Feast marks the spot where the treasure is buried. Ken gets Harry to tell Lord Melverley that the Shepleys are about to dig up the treasure and relies on his natural greed! With Lord Melverley safely out of the way, Ken and Ralph can retrieve the deeds: without them, Melverley has no claim to the cottage.
In the middle of the night, Lord Melverley comes crashing through the wood in his Range Rover, just as Rocky, Laura and the Shepleys have dug up the casket. He shoots the lock off, only to find that the "treasure" is nothing more than a couple of carved wooden doves. And after making all the noise in the wood, Melverley has scared all the pheasants away. He has to cancel the Shoot and goes into hiding, leaving many angry guests who have paid good money for the event.
b: 29 Oct 91 w: Tim Firth d: John StricklandA riding stables owned by Helen Davison is vandalised. Vincent Batten, who owns most of the horses in the stables, wants CBS to provide security cover to satisfy his insurance company. Then Sultan, one of Vincent's stud stallions, is stolen while Rocky is watching the stables. CBS are made to look like amateurs. Harry offers to do a free security survey of Vincent's house by way of recompense and volunteers Ken's services to investigate the vandalism and the theft of the horse. While Harry is doing the survey, he sees Jordan, Vincent's business manager, loading up the Land Rover with water and horse feed. Harry and Laura follow Jordan to a derelict cottage where is secretly meeting Vincent's wife, Greta: they are having an affair and Greta knows that Vincent would divorce her if he ever found out.
Ken is suspicious of Meia, one of the stable girls who lives with a group of gipsies nearby. Bull, Meia's father and leader of the travellers, resents the fact that whenever any crime is committed, the gipsies are always the first to be accused. In the middle of the night, Rocky is patrolling the stables and catches Meia prowling around. He locks her in a stable but she escapes through the roof... straight into the arms of the police. Ken and Rocky find a bottle of medicine in Bull's caravan. At the police station, Meia vigorously denies stealing Sultan. She says that Helen gave her the medicine for her own horse, Nell, which has gone lame. The police charge Meia with the theft of the horse. To clear her name, Rocky and Bull search the surrounding countryside, looking for the horse.
Harry and Laura find Jordan and Greta plotting to run off with Vincent's money. Greta hands Jordan a document, "our little insurance policy", which he hides in the stove of the derelict house. Later, Harry retrieves it and discovers that it is a report from a horse racing forensic laboratory. The report describes how a horse that Helen was training a few years ago had tested positive for drugs; the owner took most of the flak but Helen had to give up training for a while.
It emerges that Sultan has become impotent, and Helen and Vincent are working together to defraud his insurance company by pretending that the horse has been stolen. Helen was forced to "steal" the horse, under threat that Vincent would reveal the contents of the forensic report. She was supposed to kill the horse but she tells Vincent that she couldn't bring herself to do this. Helen takes Ken to a derelict barn where she had hidden the horse... but it has gone! Has Vincent taken it already?
The insurance loss-adjuster arrives, but to everyone's surprise the horse is back in its stable - Rocky and Bull had found it in the derelict barn and returned it. Vincent and Helen are arrested for fraud. Helen vows to Ken that she'll tell the truth from now on. Meia is released.
b: 5 Nov 91 w: Paul Mari d: Laurence MoodyHarry is employed by a lawyer, Caroline Mortlake, to protect her and her 16-year-old daughter Emma. Caroline and Emma are being pestered by a main in a raincoat. He is a reporter, Bill Webster, who works for the local newspaper. Bill's boss, Eddie Morgan, is determined to "get that woman".
Harry gets Rocky to look after Emma, ferrying her around on his motorbike. Emma takes an instant fancy to Rocky and tries every trick in the book to get him into compromising situations. However he is rather embarrassed by her attentions. He asks Laura to help him fend off Emma by pretending to be his girlfriend. Laura has a quiet word with Emma who immediately leaves Rocky alone. The real reason for this only emerges much later.
Bill is watching outside Caroline's office, determined to get his story. His car has been sabotaged by having its brake pipes cut. He storms off to CBS, accusing Ken of being responsible. Ken and Harry confront Caroline and ask her why exactly she is being pursued by Bill. She tells them that she recently brought a successful libel action against Eddie Morgan and the newspaper on behalf of a client, Steve Reeves, and won him £40,000 damages. Now the paper is out for revenge. Reeves is a local entrepreneur and radio DJ. Ken goes to see Reeves and learns that the paper had alleged that he was sleeping with under-age fans and admirers. He sued for the publicity that it would bring him.
Ken sees Morgan having lunch with Caroline. Ken challenges him later and learns that Morgan had hired Caroline after being impressed by her performance in court when she acted against him in the libel case. Now he has been gazumped by Reeves in a business deal that she was handling for him. He suspects that she was responsible for tipping off Reeves and he wants to see her struck off.
Bill follows Caroline to a housing estate where she watches the house that Reeves shares with his secretary, Penny. Reeves and Caroline had been lovers and Morgan wants to get evidence that their relationship is continuing, so he can use this as evidence to strengthen his case against her.
Bill is beaten up and Ken suspects that Reeves was responsible. Reeves visits Caroline and beats her up too. Tearfully she tells Ken the whole story. After acting for him in the libel case, Reeves had started sleeping with her for one reason only: so as to sneak a look at Morgan's file, discover what price he is offering and then to better it himself.
Caroline confronts Penny, showing her the black eyes and bruises that Reeves had given her. Penny agrees to help put Reeves behind bars. Ken and Harry visit the studio, pretending to be journalists who want to interview Reeves. They pretend to confront Penny about Reeves, while he listens on the studio intercom. Once Reeves thinks Ken and Harry have left, he threatens Penny and confesses that he did beat up Bill to prevent him printing the story that would ruin his business deals. In fact Ken and Harry are in the other studio, recording every word of Reeves' confessions. Bill gets his story under the headline "Housewives' Hearthrob is Arrested for GBH".
Rocky is very embarrassed when he eventually discovers how Laura had discouraged Emma's unwelcome attentions: she had told Emma that he was gay!
b: 12 Nov 91 w: Susan Wilkins d: Anthony Garnerb: 19 Nov 91 w: Peter Mann d: Michael Winterbottom
b: 3 Dec 91 w: Robin Mukherjee d: Graeme Harper
b: 10 Dec 91 w: Bernard Dempsey d: Tom Clegg
b: 17 Dec 91 w: Helen Slavin d: Nicholas Laughland
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Harry falls for Jo Beckett (Jill Gascoine), "The Woman Of My Life", who owns a jazz club, "Smoky Jo's". He plans to marry Jo (he buys her a 2500 engagement ring) and to invest in the club. He even makes preparations to sell his share of CBS to a rival security firm.
b: 24 Dec 91 w: Peter Palliser d: John Woods NOTE: This episode is dedicated to series co-creator Bill Stair who died in May.| Back to TOP of Page |
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Laura has left CBS: according to Rocky this is because she felt that Harry was taking her for granted. Charlie Hardiman is having to answer the phone and act as secretary. Harry is desperate to find a permanent replacement but all the girls that he has interviewed so far are proving to be singularly useless.
Robert MacGuffin, a hardware designer who works for a computer company, Pictel, believes that his former secretary, Alexandra Wilton, is stealing the design for the company's latest transputer. He wants Ken and Harry to watch her. He suspects her of industrial espionage because she has just resigned for no apparent reason (or so he says) and she already has a prison record for cheque fraud. Ken and Rocky set up their cameras and binoculars in a disused warehouse opposite the studio flat where she lives. Rocky follows Alex to the ice rink where she meets her boyfriend, Jim Parham.
When Ken sees a middle-aged man arrive at Alex's flat and offer her a cheque which she refuses, he tries to get closer to find out what is happening. Could this be the man that she is selling the computer design to. (In fact he later turns out to be her father!) Ken shins up a convenient fire escape outside her window and hears and argument: Alex tells the man "I don't want it" and the man calls her "an ungrateful bitch". But as the man is leaving, Alex sees Ken half-way up the building. Thinking on his feet, he claims to be suicidal and about to jump. She invites him into the flat to "tell her all about it". Ken's cover is well and truly blown.
Alex applies for the secretarial job which Harry has advertised, causing him a certain amount of consternation. However he quickly realises that by offering her the job he will have the perfect excuse to keep an eye on her. Ken takes some convincing on this point. As Rocky is showing her round the office he has to surreptitiously remove the file containing their case-notes on her!
When MacGuffin comes to the warehouse where Ken and Rocky are watching Alex's flat, he sees their photographs of her boyfriend, Jim Parham, and tells them that Jim works for Wyatt Corporation, a rival electronics firm. Later he phones Ken to arrange a meeting at his office. However once Ken has set off, MacGuffin goes to Alex's flat, lets himself in with a duplicate key and hides the transputer circuit board in her toilet cistern. That night, purely by chance, Parham finds it when the toilet won't flush properly. In the middle of the night he unsolders all the chips and sneaks away with the design. Ken sees Jim leave in a hurry and decides to confront Alex about him. She is rather horrified when she finds out that Ken is the would-be suicidal jumper, but he explains that MacGuffin has asked CBS to watch her... and why. When Alex sees the remains of the circuit board, she realises that her former boss has planted it, Her suspicions are confirmed when MacGuffin asks Ken to search the house - obviously he wants Ken to find the "stolen" circuit board. Angry at the way MacGuffin has deceived her and for the way that he sacked her without any explanation, she suggests that they put back the transputer in his safe to thwart his claim that it has been stolen.
It turns out that MacGuffin has offered Pictel's confidential design to Jim Parham and his boss Henry Maple. When they realise what he has done, they decide to tell Pictel. Jim admits that he only started going out with Alex to find out some background information about MacGuffin; discovering the transputer was an unexpected find.
Ken, Harry, Rocky and Alex gatecrash a party at Pictel. Alex does a quick change into a slinky black cocktail dress and hides in MacGuffin's office. She connects a lap-top PC to the electronic lock on his safe and starts to search for the combination. Meanwhile Parham and Maple tell Liz Kennedy, MacGuffin's boss, that he has offered the transputer to them. MacGuffin denies everything because he fully expects Ken and Harry to report that they have found it at Alex's flat. When Liz demands to see inside his safe, MacGuffin is gobsmacked to find the transputer (or what is left of it) still there. She fires him immediately but decides not to involve the police because neither Pictel nor Wyatt want any adverse publicity. Liz offers to take Alex back and give her a job "in promotions" but Alex takes great delight in telling her that she already has a job - in "the security business".
b: 8 Sep 92 w: Peter Palliser d: Nicholas LaughlandAt a Rotary Club dinner, Harry meets Joe Green, a local businessman. Joe is at the centre of a hate campaign: his car has been repeatedly sabotaged, he has received a newspaper cutting about himself with a red dagger drawn across it and someone pretending to be his secretary has cancelled the caterers at a Chamber of Commerce dinner that he was organising. He suspects that someone is trying to prevent him going ahead with a business deal to buy a restaurant, "Maximillians" in Derby. He asks Harry to investigate. He also wants Harry to invest in the restaurant deal, along with another businessman, Charles Hastings, and promises him a seat in the Star Chamber if this deal goes ahead.
Harry persuades Ken to act as Joe's bodyguard. At Joe's house, Ken meets Joe's wife Sheila who seems unexpectedly worried that Joe has engaged a bodyguard. Joe is extremely arrogant and peremptory to Ken, treats him like dirt and can't even be bothered to get his first name right. Ken takes an instant dislike to Joe. As they are leaving the house in Joe's Bentley, a leather-clad motorcyclist on a Harley Davidson is seen to be watching the house. As soon as Joe and Ken have driven away, the motorcyclist rides up to the house. It is Karen Verdi, an old friend of Sheila's. They are afraid of what Ken might discover about Joe if he decides to investigate him. From their conversation over a glass of wine and a game of chess, it is clear that they are the ones who have been sabotaging Joe's car. Karen offers to find out what Ken knows about Joe. Late one night outside the CBS offices, she slashes her bike tyre to stage a puncture. Spotting a fellow biker - and a very attractive woman, at that - Ken is only too keen to help. Karen flirts shamelessly with him and pumps him for information.
Joe has organised a twin-town dinner between his local town and a German town. The German guests are very embarrassed to find that the entertainment is being provided by a troop of men in Austrian lederhosen and women in black shirts who have been made up to look like Hitler; they are playing "Colonel Bogey". But the Germans' embarrassment is nothing compared with Joe's anger at having yet another public occasion sabotaged. He blames Ken and Harry for failing to prevent this fiasco - as so often, the reputation of CBS is at stake. Ken brings Joe back home in a very drunken state and he and Sheila put Joe to bed. Afterwards, Sheila invites Ken to stay for supper and, when she discovers that he is not married, tries unsuccessfully to seduce him and to persuade him to stay the night with her. Clearly there is no love lost between Joe and Sheila.
Harry is due to take a "package" to the Isle of Man for Joe. He doesn't realise that it is the money for the restaurant deal that Joe wants to pay into an illegal offshore bank account for the previous owner, a certain Mr Verdi. But Sheila and Karen know what Harry will be carrying and they plan to steal the money. By now, Ken suspects Sheila and goes to her house to confront her. Karen is there but makes sure that Ken doesn't see her. As she is about to set off to steal the money, the "puncture" that Ken repaired ruptures, forcing her to change her plans. She puts false plates on Ken's bike and rides off on it, while Sheila keeps Ken occupied inside. Karen ambushes Harry's car and steals the briefcase containing the money. But by the time she returns Ken's bike, he is about to leave so she doesn't have enough time to put back his original number plate. Hoping that he won't notice the false plates, she follows him to CBS office and tries again but accidentally drops Ken's number plate down a drain.
Joe accuses Harry and Ken of staging the robbery, and searches Harry's car and his home. Things look bad for Harry's reputation - he is terrified of being caught up in all the "fraud and scandal". However it is Alex who makes the connection between Joe Green and "Mr Verdi" when she realises that "Verdi" is Italian for "Green" and therefore that Joe already owns the restaurant: the sale is a sham. When Ken discovers that the false plates on his bike match those that Harry saw on the bike that stole the money, he immediately realises that Sheila is involved, since the only place that he has left his bike unattended is at her house. He borrows Rocky's bike and goes to confront her. Meanwhile Joe and his sidekick Guy arrive at CBS and find Rocky trying to cover up the plates on Ken's bike. However he escapes after putting into practice the unarmed combat lessons that Alex has been giving him, by throwing Guy over his shoulder as she has shown him.
By this stage, Charles Hastings has discovered that he is sole owner of the restaurant: Joe's name does not appear on any documentation. On further investigation, he is appalled to find a survey report which suggests that the restaurant was only being sold cheaply because it was built over an old mine-shaft and is about to fall down.
Karen and Sheila realise that things have got completely out of hand. Karen tells Ken that Joe is Italian by birth - his original name is Guiseppe Verdi - and that she is his first wife. Sheila married him two years later by which time he had anglicised his name to Joe Green. But he and Karen were never divorced, so Sheila is married bigamously to Joe. Joe returns home to find Charles, Harry and Ken waiting for him. Sheila and Karen tell him that the restaurant is in perfectly good condition: they faked the building survey so that he would sell off the restaurant cheaply. This and the sabotage attempts were all part of a campaign by them to extract maximum revenge for his bigamy.
Charles is so pleased to find himself the owner of a perfectly good restaurant bought at a knock-down price that he guarantees Harry's place in the Star Chamber.
b: 15 Sep 92 w: Helen Slavin d: Nick HurranMrs Van Bueren, a middle-aged widow, arrives home to find that she has been burgled. Fortunately the thieves have not taken her jewels. She enlists Ken's help to guard them. Ken takes away the jewellery box, full of tiaras and necklaces, to store it in CBS' safe. Meanwhile, Mr Fraser, a rep from a security firm, is showing Harry his company's products - a mugger-proof briefcase and a safe alar. Harry is not impressed and sends Fraser away with a flea in his ear... but not before he has seen Mrs Van Bueren's jewellery.
Rocky is behaving very strangely: his heart isn't in his work any more and he hasn't turned up for work. He has started wearing aftershave and he has bought a clapped-out Ford Capri with a musical horn and a noisy exhaust. All this is because he has fallen madly in love with Melanie King, a demure cashier at his bank. Harry has noticed that Rocky isn't really concentrating and is "on another planet", so he gives him an easy job: guarding a sculpture exhibition consisting of piles of bin-bags arranged "artistically" in the grounds of an old house!
When Alex goes to the office late one night to phone her friend in Australia from the office phone, she happens to see Rocky leaving, carrying a bag. The following morning Ken discovers that Mrs Van Bueren's jewelry is missing from the safe. Harry wonders where Rocky has got the money from for the car and to take Melanie to expensive restaurants. Things look black when Alex happens to mention seeing Rocky the night before. Ken doesn't want to believe that Rocky could have taken the jewels and tactfully questions him, but all the time Harry wants to be less subtle and tries to accuse Rocky straight out. Harry follows Rocky and sees him go into a jewelers to enquire about lockets.
Rocky arranges to meet Melanie for lunch but she is waiting at the wrong restaurant. Rocky thinks she has stood him up. Very dejected, he goes to drown his sorrows at "The Drum". When he eventually gets back to work, Harry reads the riot act: he complains that Rocky has been absent when he should have been at work, he's drunk, he's been seen leaving the office at dead of night just before the jewels were stolen and then visiting a jeweller's. Rocky is furious when Harry accuses him of being a thief, and a heated argument ensue. Rocky resigns... but Harry tells him that he is sacked. Alex overhears all this. Rocky storms off in his car, nearly knocking Ken off his bike in the process. Ken talks to Smudger at "The Drum" and learns that Rocky had been in there earlier on, drinking heavily and complaining that "everything's gone wrong". He finds an expensive golden locket in Rocky's car. Meanwhile Harry learns that Rocky has serious money problems: he has run up a 300 overdraft, he hasn't paid his poll tax, he is trying to sell his motor bike and his landlady is about to evict him because he owes two months' rent.
Alex tells Charlie and Bernie, two of the CBS guards what Harry had done to Rocky. When they confront him and he denies that he has sacked Rocky, she decides to take matters into her own hands and organises a walkout to protest his innocence. After hearing what she has to say, all the CBS guards decide unanimously to go on strike, leaving Harry in charge of "Jaws", the company's fierce alsatian guard dog!
Harry's troubles are only just beginning. Mrs Van Bueren is livid when she hears that the jewels have been stolen while CBS were supposed to be looking after them and Harry has to promise that Ken will investigate the theft as she does not want to involve the police. With all the staff on strike and a large backlog of cases, Harry reluctantly decides to subcontract all his work to a rival firm run by Mr Holden. He is horrified to discover that Mr Potts, Holden's chief investigator, is the man who claimed to be a security rep called Mr Fraser! Potts reveals that he broke into Harry's safe by recording the clicks that the lock had made when Harry was opening it to demonstrate the safe alarm. Holden's are acting for their client, Mr Van Bueren! It turns out that Mrs Van Bueren is not a "poor defenceless widow" but is in fact Mr Van Bueren's ex-wife. Her claim to Ken that the jewellery had belonged to her mother is a lie: in fact it has been in Mr Van Bueren's family for many generations. Harry decides that he will tell Mrs Van Bueren that CBS can no longer undertake to find her jewellery and that she should contact Holden's.
Harry is feeling very guilty that he accused Rocky of the theft unjustly and then sacked him. He keeps trying to write him a letter of apology and leaves the final, half-finished attempt in Alex's typewriter. Rather late in the day, he finally realises that finding Rocky and giving him his job back is more important than Van Bueren, Holden and the guarding of the bin-bag sculptures. He and Ken talk to Melanie's father and learn that she has gone off with Rocky, possibly to Sowerton where the family used to go for holidays. Harry and Ken do indeed find them in a tent by the side of a lake and overhear Melanie nagging Rocky. On the journey back, she continues to moan about Rocky's failings and starts trying to run his life. "Get me out of this," Rocky begs Harry. Back at the office, Ken lectures Alex, telling her how irresponsible she has been in getting involved when he and Harry could have sorted everything out without her interference. She apologies very contritely. Despite Ken's anger with Alex, it looks as if secretly he rather respects her loyalty to Rocky.
At the sculpture park, the organiser, Mr Fenton, is preparing the welcome the press, the critics and the mayor. But while no-one was on guard, someone has vandalised the site - there are bin-bags everywhere. Ken and Charlie hastily rearrange the bags into "artistic" shapes such as a smiling face and a ship. Mr Fenton and the artist, Don Kellet, are horrified but the critics love it. Much to Ken's amusement, Fenton spouts a load of pseudo-artistic clap-trap about symbolism and inner meanings of the shapes!
Harry offers Rocky his job back, pays his outstanding rent and agrees to put him up until he can find somewhere else to live. He also offers to pay off his overdraft. Alex finds Harry's half-finished letter of apology and shows it to Rocky, much to Harry's embarrassment.
b: 22 Sep 92 w: Jane Hollowood d: John Stroudb: 29 Sep 92 w: Tony Etchells d: Derek Banham
b: 13 Oct 92 w: Harry Holmes s: Matthew W. Faulk & Mark Skeet d: Nick Hurran
b: 3 Nov 92 w: Peter Palliser d: Anthony Garner
b: 10 Nov 92 w: Alan Whiting d: Derek Banham
b: 17 Nov 92 w: Tony Etchells d: Nick Hurran
b: 24 Nov 92 w: Helen Slavin d: Anya Camilleri
CBS are employed to go undercover in order to solve a jewellery theft from a hotel strongroom. Max Cone, the fiancé of the owner's daughter, was imprisoned for the theft. However the daughter, Claire Walters, and her father, Jeremy Walters, are convinced of his innocence and suspect the hotel's manager, Bruce Aurit and the head of security, Mike Puckett.
Ken and Harry "sack" all the staff of CBS and put the office up for "sale". They then use Lennie, one of the disgruntled "sacked" employees, to inform Bruce and Mike that the company is in a very dodgy financial state and that Ken and Harry are planning to raid the safe. Alex and Rocky go to work at the hotel: Alex becomes 'Julia', a chambermaid, and Rocky becomes 'Sandy', a porter. Ken and Harry check in to the hotel as 'Kenneth Smith' and 'Henry Jones' (!), businessmen who want to organise a conference.
Ken and Harry drug Bruce to give Alex chance to steal his key to the safe (in doing so, she displays another of her many talents: cat burglary). Alex then befriends Mike in an attempt to steal his key. Mike catches Ken and Harry searching his room and demands to be included in the plan as the price of his silence. Bruce and Mike each try to outsmart the other so as to make off with all the money. After calling the police and advising Ken and Harry to escape while they can, Bruce steals the contents of the safe but is recorded doing so by the strongroom security cameras. Mike challenges Bruce, and demands his share of both this and the previous robbery. The two men are caught red-handed trying to hide the jewels in the office safe until the police have gone. Detective Inspector Lytell remarks: "Hell of a way to prove your point, Ken!"
The case of the Claire's fiancé, Max, is reopened and the episode ends with everyone celebrating over dinner.
b: 1 May 95 w: Peter Palliser d: Anthony Garner NOTE: This episode was made in 1992.| Back to TOP of Page |
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