Duty Free

- Season 2

(1984)

As Amy sent all his clothes to the cleaners', David looks doomed to spend the rest of his holiday in drag. He gets no sympathy from his wife or the Cochrans, but he does get chatted up by the waiter, who lends him a uniform--and he ends up serving drinks to Amy and Linda, who both reject him. However, after wrongly assuming that he tried to drown himself, everybody feels ashamed and are only too happy to see him again.

David goes to the casino where, meeting the Cochrans, he hopes Linda will bring him luck as he puts his winning system into play. In fact, novice Amy saves the day for him, raking in the chips, but he is boastful and ungenerous, declaring that he has a winning streak. The same thing happens on the next visit to the casino, but this time Amy is determined to get her fair share of the winnings.

A young English couple arrive at the hotel and Amy and Linda assume that they are newlyweds because they are so evidently in love. In fact they have been together for some years but play the newlywed game to keep their marriage fresh. When they see Linda and David snatching an amorous moment together, they assume that they are another husband and wife playing the newlywed game and innocently spill the beans to Amy.

Linda is delighted when her heartthrob, soap actor Frazer Hines, books into the hotel--but he only has eyes for Amy. She is initially unimpressed, but following some withering remarks from David, she goes on a date with him. Ultimately both she and Linda end up hiding from their husbands in Frazer's room, and each is discovered by the other's spouse.

Returning from a boat trip to Tangiers, Amy is approached by a shifty-looking Spaniard who asks her to deliver a box allegedly containing the ashes of his dead friend Pepe to his widowed mother. Guessing correctly that Amy is being used to smuggle drugs, David empties the box over their balcony--which leads to Robert and Linda getting stoned off their heads.

David is less than happy to find that the obnoxious Kev Wilson, a man who has always done better than him and let him know it since childhood, is staying at the hotel and, as ever, worming his way into people's affections. Furthermore, he keeps taking photographs--including one of David kissing Linda, which he gives to Amy. Amy might not like Linda, but she positively detests Kev, and she turns the tables on him by playing on Robert's jealousy.

The last night of the holiday finds both couples packing, but David and Linda decide to slip away and meet one last time, away from the hotel. They go to Pedro's Bar, where Linda gets pestered by a drunk and Amy turns up unexpectedly, closely followed by Robert. The Cochrans leave, but Amy is still suspicious and David must improvise as to why he is there. More improvisation is necessary when Amy leaves him with no money to pay the bill, which might account for his black eye on the plane home.