EPISODE TEN: NO WEDDING PARTY
(AKA THE END OF THE AFFAIR )

by Edward Teach

Life takes a turn for the shambolic at Fawlty Rovers this week. Sybil is locked away going over all the outstanding bills and debts that have resulted from Basil's excesses. His gambling and expensive efforts to improve the quality at the hotel have all gone belly up leaving Sybil to count the cost and wrack her aching brain on ways to pay O'Reilly.

Meanwhile Basil rants and raves about how Terry the cockney chef's hotel is going to fail miserably, while his own continues to go to wrack and ruin. He has even sent his most promising young member of staff off to stay with his Aunt in the Forest of Dean where he can learn crochet and kick a ball against a wall for a month. The rest of the staff will continue to while away the last few weeks shambling around the green room like confused zombies and praying for a summer holiday.

The Doctor has decided his place would be best taken by a psychiatrist who can probe into the machinations of Basil and co. Sybil eyes the bills and considers the rich rewards offered from Manuel's possible departure to Mansfield with the type of relief she saves for the arrival of the psychiatrist. She hopes he will work out just what went wrong with Basil this year. Basil is preoccupied with Manuel's inability to grasp simple arithmetic and teaching him to count past 7 by hitting him repeatedly eight times with a spoon.

Meanwhile in a bid to raise some funds to pay off O'Reilly and his mounting gambling debts, Basil hangs a for sale sign around Polly's neck and the swan he found in the garden last summer. Polly is mortified that all her efforts to gain attention have backfired but the swan resigns itself to a fate considerably less worse than death.