It Ain't Half Hot Mum

- Season 2

(1975)

Williams is irritated by the men's inability to correctly perform an evening ceremony whereby the flag is run down the mast and is delighted when an entertainments officer arrives from Delhi, with orders that the party performs in the jungle. He confirms that Parkin cannot go because he has a bad case of dandruff. However the Colonel orders that all of them, including himself and Ashford should go, and that includes Williams and Parkin.

The plane carrying the concert party crash lands in the jungle. The pilot is knocked unconscious but nobody is hurt. However the radio is damaged and the group have no idea where they are - possibly behind enemy lines. They send out a scouting group who capture some oriental-looking gentlemen. However they are Chinese waiters at a local restaurant and the men are only five miles away from the nearest town.

Not only has somebody written 'British Pigs Go Home' in stones but they have replaced the Union Jack with the flag of India and Williams is irate. He climbs onto the roof and pulls down the Indian flag, just as the new - native - district officer arrives. He too is irate and demands an apology from the sergeant major, though the men help Williams out by making it an apology in song.

Williams hatches a mean plan to get the men into trouble by arranging a gig with free food for them at the Kama Sutra Club, a disreputable local establishment which is out of bounds to the soldiers. To avoid detection they enter the club dressed as military policemen but the show goes down very badly and ultimately is raided because of the naughty goings-on upstairs. The men put on their military police uniforms in order to escape but Williams, who has also gone to the club to rescue Parkin, is left wearing a clown's outfit.

Williams evicts the Sadhu, a holy man, from the parade ground and bangs in the nails on his bed of nails with a hammer. The Sadhu puts a curse on him, saying he will not sleep without pain so the men trade on this by putting itching powder in his bed. Then Williams really seems to believe that he is cursed. The only way to lift the curse is to get another holy man to cancel it, but they all want paying, so Gloria dresses as a holy man and gets Williams to chant "Oh wata nass iam" to restore him to normal.

Colonel Reynolds is conducting an affair with the wife of a colleague, Daphne Waddilove-Evans, whose Chinese maid Ling Su is acting as a go-between for their correspondence. When Williams sees Ling Su he is very taken by her and arranges a date with her in the moonlight. The men hear of this and decide to follow and take a compromising photograph but, due to a series of accidents, Williams is photographed with Daphne instead. Solly clears things up by explaining it was all a rehearsal for a farce they were staging.

Whilst Williams is getting his smart new uniform Solly is auditioning snake charmers,one of whose cobras escapes and ends up under Williams's bed. Williams is urged to keep playing the snake charmer's flute and moving it about to stop the cobra attacking him. Rumzan joins him but unfortunately attracts another snake. The cobras have to be shot but this also involves putting bullet holes in Williams's new uniform.

Sheltering from monsoon rain in a temple once used by the Thugs, a murderous religious sect from the previous century, the group discover a statue of Devi, the sect's goddess, with rubies for eyes. Everybody makes their own efforts to steal the rubies but, come the morning, Rangi explains that the temple's curator will sell them for 500 rupees, which the men club together to raise. Rangi and the curator then split the money before putting two more fake rubies in the statue's eyes.