Curry & Chips

- Season 1

(1969)

Kevin O'Grady goes for a job at the Lillicrap Novelty Company and is the subject of bigotry among the workers - not because he is Irish but because he is a Pakistani with an Irish father. The token black man at the firm does not like Pakistanis and the two Scousers are extremely colour prejudiced but Arthur Blenkinsop, the liberal foreman takes him on and fixes him up with lodgings with Mrs Barok. He also buys Kevin a pint of Guinness but because it is black it is not well-received.

Having sampled the delight of curry and chips from Mrs Bartok - a dish Arthur cannot stomach - Kevin settles into his first day at Lillicraps. However he is a worker and quickly falls foul of his indolent colleagues' attitude and union bound response to not working too hard, a situation which Arthur has to save to avoid losing staff.

When Kevin comes up with eight score draws on his football pools coupon and it looks as if he has won two hundred and fifty thousand pounds attitudes towards him suddenly change with special meals and free drinks all round. Everybody wants to be his friend. But has he really won a quarter of a million?

Kevin is on his way to confession to safeguard himself in the after life should he get killed in a riot at a football match. Unfortunately he walks straight into a race riot and gets arrested, ending up with a black eye. On his release it turns out that he is both a Muslim and a Catholic, just to ensure that he goes to some kind of heaven.

Word comes from above that, as the company is losing money, one of the work-force must go. Norman, the shop steward, instantly calls a strike but to no apparent avail. As the only black - as opposed to Irish-Pakistani, worker on the shop floor Kenny feels that his job is also at risk due to bigotry. Fortunately common sense - eventually - prevails.

As the workers decorate the office for Christmas, Smelly laments the lack of a televised Queen's Speach this year and Norman dismisses Christmas as nothing more than a commercial racket for capitalists, though he is challenged by Kevin and a heated debate follows. However at the Christmas party everybody drunkenly performs their party piece, in Kevin's case a song involving Cockney rhyming slang, and all animosity is forgotten.