Duty Free

- Season 3

(1986)

Several months have passed. Amy is working, but David is still unemployed and lies to her that his doctor has told him he will have a nervous breakdown unless he takes a holiday. He claims to be off to Spain with his old mate Tommy Wright--but once there, he actually meets up with Linda for a romantic reunion. However, before they can sip champagne in her room as planned, both their spouses turn up.

David is caught out when Amy tells him that Tommy Wright has been dead for three years, and he and Linda adopt disguises to avoid each other's spouses as well as planning--unsuccessfully--to move to another hotel after pretending to find fault with the San Remo. Amy and Robert finally meet, but when Amy learns that Robert's presence is as unexpected as her own, she subjects David to her own brand of Deja Vu.

The crew of television holiday programme 'Wish You Were Here' is at the hotel with its presenter Judith Chalmers, who asks David and Amy to say a few words into the microphone about the resort, but David insists on Linda being included, as well as speaking in an affected accent, which provokes Amy into deliberately ruining their 15 minutes of fame. The Cochrans are invited to replace them, but Robert's rant against the Germans makes for equally unsuitable viewing.

Neither Amy nor Robert can stand the gormless, accident-prone Neville, so David and Linda decide to use him as a go-between and to keep their spouses at bay while Linda pretends she is teaching him to swim. As inept as a messenger as he is at everything else, Neville innocently leads Amy to the lovers' rendezvous, where she gets a shock and he gets a pleasant surprise that makes it his best holiday ever.

A mix-up lands David with a tartan hold-all identical to his own--except that it contains bundles of bank notes. He gives it to Linda to hide, and when Robert finds it, he assumes that David and Linda are planning to try to elope again. Meanwhile, two sinister men arrive at the Pearces' room: they want their bag back and they aren't above throwing David off the balcony if he doesn't disclose its whereabouts. Fortunately, Amy has done the right thing and handed the bag in to the police, but David has kept some notes back for himself. Suddenly it's raining money.

When David buys a raffle ticket in aid of Conservative funds, Labour supporter Amy is shocked and accuses him of selling out the socialist principles he embraced when they first met. However, after Amy's attempts to support the overworked, underpaid waiters results in Carlos getting sacked, it is not Amy's campaign, surprisingly supported by Linda, to get him reinstated that does the trick but David's stirring appeal to the other guests.

The hotel throws a party where the guests must arrive in costumes and perform on stage. The Germans heckle Robert's monologue; and Amy, dressed as a clown, turns David and Linda's romantic duet into a total farce--though the audience assumes it was meant to be funny. However, it's Amy's return to the stage in a totally different outfit that steals the show and seems to get David hankering after her.

David persuades a reluctant Amy to spend Christmas in Spain, though in a more up-market hotel than the San Remo. When Amy sees the Cochrans, who are the guests of the wealthy Stoneleigh-Jacksons, she regards the trip as more than a coincidence but busies herself getting into the Christmas spirit by putting up decorations, forcing David to play Santa Claus and exchanging the expensive presents he has bought for Linda with cheap rubbish. Unsurprisingly David and Linda attempt to sneak off upstairs for some forbidden moments but, more surprisingly, they are not the ...