You Rang, M'Lord?

- Season 4

(1993)

Cissy organizes a soup kitchen in the East End, helped by the staff and her father though she asks him to stay away as she believes the recipients will feel patronized by his presence. He is hurt but the situation is taken out of their hands when the starving poor decamp to the Salvation Army hostel instead where they are serving meat and dumplings. In order to dissuade Madge from marrying Teddy, Alf arranges for the five maids he impregnated - and had to be paid off by George - to come to the house with their babies, causing chaos below stairs. However the plan fails...

A reluctant Teddy is fitted for his tropical kit as George decides to send him to oversee the family rubber plantation in Malaya. Lady Lavender's parrot dies and, at her insistence, is buried with full military honours. Alf volunteers James's services as a stud to ensure the Earl of Swaffham's family line continues, but he is turned down as his eyes are too close together. Thanks to Ivy, though, everybody remembers his birthday for the first time ever.

When George fails to recognize Mabel, Cissy tells him he should take more interest in staff welfare so, after asking them if their rooms are all right, he invites them to a ball where the employers wait on the servants. Teddy is reunited with his true love Rose, sacked by Madge for her involvement with him, and Alf ensures not only that Mabel is invited but that she is rewarded for an act of honesty, giving a thieving butler his come-uppance in the process.

At a British Legion reunion, Alf gets drunk with Ralph's butler Selfridge, and divulges that George is not impotent at all. Still drunk, Selfridge gets the sack, but tells Ralph all about George and Agatha. Ralph invites the Meldrums and their staff to a weekend house party where he makes two attempts to kill George though he finally breaks down, admitting that he cannot do it.

After Ralph puts a curse on George by sticking pins in an effigy, bad things happen. James is run over, the family's American assets plummet in the Wall Street Crash and beetles attack the rubber plantation, so that sub-standard rubber results, making balls that fail to bounce. George has to close the factory but asks the staff to stay on at reduced wages. Poppy agrees to marry Jerry, a dopey admirer, but Teddy is over the moon as the destruction of the rubber plantation frees him from going to Malaya. Furthermore, Madge's father has also lost his money in the crash ...

The factory is saved, thanks to Lady Lavender selling her jewels to finance efficient new machinery and Cissy forms a workers' cooperative to run it fairly. Teddy marries Rose and becomes a successful car salesman. George reduces his staff with Mabel taking over as cook when Mrs. Lipton marries P. C. Wilson and they retire to the country. Henry becomes the new butler when Alf returns to the music halls and Ivy, after a brief stint alongside him, joins James as his partner running a boarding house.