Hi-de-Hi!

- Season 9

(1988)

A bunch of fit Royal Marines are coming to the camp to give a display of gymnastics. Having seen off aspiring keyboard player Trevor, Peggy accompanies them on the organ but her poor playing confuses them and they are a laughing stock. Ted takes up the challenge from their sergeant that the Yellowcoats are as fit as his boys and a running race is organized. The camp's staff win by cheating as two of the Yellowcoat lads are twins and one takes the other's place near the winning post. The Maplin's staff win the cash prize, which Peggy gives to Trevor to send him to ...

Spike is no longer regarded as being funny and some campers complain about him. He is perhaps too preoccupied with his engagement to April and goes to see Gladys at night for big sisterly advice. Yvonne sees him and gets the wrong idea, feeling he is carrying on with her, something Clive tries to use to get out of marrying Gladys. An offended Gladys breaks off their engagement but Spike suddenly finds himself getting laughs again.

After a visit home to his parents, who have tried to espouse him to 'suitable' girls, Clive realises that he loves Gladys after all but, in view of his recent behaviour, he is not in her good books. Ted thinks up a plan whereby Clive can impress Gladys as being a hero. He devises a series of situations whereby Clive is seen to rescue Peggy from manufactured danger. Each one misfires and it is only when Clive has saved Gladys after she has genuinely fallen into quicksand that they get back together again.

With bookings down on last season Maplin wants the staff to devise something that will be an attention-grabber. They come up with a reenactment of the execution of Marie Antoinette by guillotine. A nervous Peggy is persuaded to play the unfortunate queen but when she sees what the apparently safe guillotine does to a courgette in rehearsal, she faints and Ted cancels the stunt. Alec Foster is visiting and, seeing a chance to get back at Ted, fires him, replacing him with a new comedian Jimmy Jasper. The crowd hate him and when he starts to insult them Foster has no ...

Clive is now only too happy to marry Gladys but fears his snobbish parents may try to halt the wedding and gets a special licence for the ceremony to take place quickly in the village church at Buxted Magna. Yvonne disapproves of Clive's secrecy and rings the parents who aim to stop the wedding, but Nora, the maid at Dempster Hall who likes Clive, tips him off. Ted and Clive put into effect a plan, changing the directions on the signposts to the village, so that when the Dempsters finally burst into the church the newly-married Gladys and Clive have long gone and they...

The holiday season is almost over and everybody is discussing their future plans, which, in several instances, involve not returning to Maplin's. Dawn, one of the Yellowcoat girls, is rushed to hospital with appendicitis and Peggy at last gets her wish to become a Yellowcoat when she is asked to replace Dawn. However, she is so enthusiastic that she also ends up in hospital, suffering from nervous exhaustion. But there is further bad news to come, as the staff learn that Maplin intends to turn the camp into a self-catering resort - with no Yellowcoats.