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1-58 of 58
- 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.
- Hugo Buxton, Jeff's former head of department, comes to the camp to try and persuade him to go back to Cambridge. His visit coincides with the preparation of the Maplin float for the town carnival which features Gladys as Joan of Arc. Things go very awry when the fire on the float gets out of hand and it has to be pulled into the swimming pool. Hugo cannot understand why Jeff prefers such chaos to the academic life, but Jeff replies that he has met real people who are now his friends.
- Joe Maplin announces that he has opened a new holiday camp in the Bahamas and that Jeff is likely to be its entertainment manager. A competition will be held to find the most popular female staff member and she too can go to work there. When the final result is a tie between Gladys and Sylvia, Jeff surprises everybody by nominating Sylvia. Gladys is unhappy but he explains that he failed to get the job after all and could not bear to be parted from her. Then comes the news that the camp got destroyed in a hurricane.
- Gladys is sent a bottle of champagne by an admirer, which she shares with Jeff. Later that evening, in order to be civil, Jeff agrees to have a few beers with Bert, a rather loud football fan. As a consequence he gets rather tipsy and Gladys has to escort him back to his chalet. Hearing Jeff telling Gladys to 'let him go' Barry and Yvonne, the snooty dance demonstrators, feel that there is hanky-panky going on and are about to spread the word when Gladys saves Jeff's reputation. However, she still leaves him to wonder what exactly went on between them.
- Jeff gets wind of the fact that Ted has got hold of a hard core pornographic film and will be charging male punters to watch it in the bar after hours. The film is so hot that the police want to confiscate it. Jeff and Gladys arrive in the bar as Ted is about to screen the film, as do the police. However Spike had found out that there was to be a police raid and substituted a Laurel and Hardy comedy instead of the blue movie.
- Following an inspection of the camp by Joe Maplin, Gladys is considered to be the most efficient worker and entitled to a rise. To prove her superiority she sews stripes onto her blazer but other staff members become jealous and decide to add stripes to their uniforms as well. After Gladys' half-brother Gareth has turned up and erroneously identified as a Peeping Tom, Gladys realises that she has been childish and removes the stripes.
- Riding instructor and ex-jockey Fred Quilley panics when he hears camper Ron Armitage mention Big Mac, since Big Mac is the name of a violent man who wants to thump Fred for failing to place a bet Big Mac won. In fact Ron is planning to rob the camp but when Jeff, to help Fred, offers him two hundred pounds to leave, Ron assumes Jeff is on to him and wants two hundred pounds to keep quiet. A mutual monetary exchange takes place.
- Yvonne and Barry decide to hold a genteel party for the more refined staff members. This does not include Peggy although they have asked her to give out the invitations. However, come the night of the party she admits she has forgotten to do this and the invitations are now probably lost. Advised by Jeff she summons all the entertainment staff to turn up but they are all going to bed so Barry and Yvonne find themselves the reluctant hosts of a pyjama party.
- With the camp completely full, Maplin sends Joan Wainwright in to make changes to increase the camp's efficiency. She is a very bossy girl who insults everybody but all are scared of her because she is alleged to be Maplin's girlfriend. But Ted knows her from way back, when she was Beryl Green, a lowly magician's assistant and single parent - a fact that she does not want Maplin to know and which is therefore the answer to everyone's troubles.
- Persistent rain literally washes out the outdoor entertainments usually provided for the children and, to make matters worse, Partridge has hit another kid - who will be compensated by winning a singing contest. Unfortunately this has already been rigged to accommodate another winner so that Ted has to come up with a plan to keep everybody happy.
- Peggy has a pen friend called Monty. He is seventeen years her senior but she seems happy enough and, in a dress lent her by Gladys, goes on a date with him. Next morning she announces that he has asked her to marry him. Everybody is keen to see what Monty looks like and the staff spy on him when he takes Peggy for a picnic. However he turns out to be more like thirty years older than her and she later tells Gladys that she turned him down as he really wanted somebody to nurse him in his old age.
- 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 are confronted by a different couple.
- Anxious not to alarm the guests Clive orders the pool lights to be turned off so that the corpse cannot be seen but instead Fred and the Yellowcoats turn out all the lights in the camp. An hysterical man who has seen the body is kept in Clive's office against his will but Clive knows he must call the police. When the police arrive they tell the staff that the 'corpse' was a dummy in Partridge's clothes. The man himself has quit the camp to open a pub but wanted to give everybody a fright as he left.
- Peggy Ollerenshaw, the most vocal member of Miss Cathcart's cleaning staff, is anxious to be a Yellowcoat entertainer and Jeff arranges for her to have an interview. To give her an opportunity to prove her entertaining skills Ted invites her to impersonate a shark in a poolside routine which will involve bathing beauty Spike being rescued from the beast's jaws. Unfortunately she isn't very good and will need to wait awhile before she can bid farewell to her dusters.
- The camp is hit by an epidemic of graffiti and Joe Maplin announces he will be visiting to make sure it is all erased. Barry hurts his back in trying to get rid of some and Yvonne calls in an old friend Julian, a retired dancer who now runs a pig farm, to replace him. Just before the visit Ted notices graffiti everywhere but gets the campers to clean it up, explaining it is the work of Fred, who had a traumatic wartime experience. The graffiti has all gone and Maplin is happy. As he drives off it is noticed that somebody has drawn on the back of his car.
- Ted is annoyed that a model volcano keeps erupting during his act. He persuades Fred to sabotage it so that when the fire inspector calls it will give off excess smoke and be removed as a fire hazard. Jeff learns (from Mr Partridge) that the sabotage is to take place and, along with Gladys, turns up to catch the saboteurs but they get locked in the Three Bears' Cottage for the night whilst trying to enter the bar undetected. Next day the sabotaged volcano belches smoke and is removed - only to be replaced by an equally distracting model of King Kong.
- Peggy reads in the paper that a notorious cat burglar has recently died, a man who stayed at the camp the previous summer. Furthermore the police are anxious to trace a number of his ill-gotten gains, which were never recovered, among them a priceless necklace. Ted gets it into his head that the necklace must be hidden somewhere in the holiday camp and sets about doping the campers so that he can search their chalets. Needless to say he pays the price for his greed as usual.
- Jeff finally agrees to his wife Daphne's request that he will be the guilty party in their divorce and allow himself to be caught - by Peggy - in a compromising position with another woman. Gladys is dying to oblige but Jeff picks Jenny Maitland and takes her to dinner at a local Italian restaurant. Unfortunately he is taken ill with food poisoning. Gladys, Sylvia and Yellowcoats Betty and Tracey are all concerned for him so that when Peggy turns up as planned she finds him in bed surrounded by five women.
- Ted feigns illness to perform at a Chamber of Commerce gig, where Peggy is also moonlighting as a waitress. Peggy overhears Dawson, a local butcher, outline a plan to cream off concessions from the camp shop. Jeff finds out where Ted has been and next day Ted turns up with a black eye after trying to blackmail Dawson into cutting him in on his scam. However Peggy has rung Joe Maplin to alert him to Dawson's scheme and Maplin has assumed that she did so on Ted's authority, meaning that Jeff must go easy on the comic.
- In the throes of his divorce, Jeff has to take care of his estranged wife's sheep-dog, Bubbles, but, due to Maplin's No Pets policy, has to hide the dog in his chalet. Hearing noises, people assume he is entertaining a young lady and Gladys is not pleased though all is revealed when a private eye, hired by Jeff's wife to catch him out with a member of the opposite sex, bursts into his room.
- Mr. Partridge, the Punch and Judy man, hates children and slaps one who is annoying him. Jeff is supposed to sack him but his kind nature cannot do it so he gives Partridge money. This is a bad move as the puppeteer gets very drunk and cannot perform. Jeff fills the breach, helped by glamorous Yellowcoat Sylvia, who, like Gladys, now very jealous, has a very soft spot for Mr. Fairbrother.
- Ted's latest scam to get money from the guests is the Campers' Amenity Fund, actually to pay maintenance to his ex-wife. He puts money on a horse that wins but pockets the cash, claiming that Spike failed to place the bet. When Jeff finds out he is disappointed in Ted but, when confronted by an elderly couple who have been robbed, finds a way to make amends.
- Once more Partridge has been giving the annoying kids a slap and parents and staff are up in arms. Yvonne has organized a petition to get rid of him but, as everybody else gathers in Clive's office, there is no sign of the offending puppeteer, just a letter from Joe Maplin to say that Partridge has complained about his colleagues. Then, as Ted and Spike are returning to their chalet for the night, they see what appears to be Partridge's body floating in the pool with a knife in his back.
- Jeff decides that there should be sing-alongs led by Spike but these are not entirely successful. His next idea, to play records of classical music to the campers to improve their minds, is even more of a flop and it is up to Ted to step in and give the public what they want without hurting Jeff's feelings.
- Ted's ex-wife Hilary turns up. He is behind with her maintenance and could be arrested unless he gives her fifty pounds. Ted and other members of the entertainment staff manage to scrape together forty pounds through a series of scams but Jeff refuses to give Ted the last tenner as Ted still owes him ten pounds from the previous day. Eventualy Jeff relents but Ted is annoyed as he could have got away with giving Hilary forty pounds and has to admit that the bet he placed with Jeff's ten pounds made him a winner so he has to repay Jeff as well.
- Joe Maplin rings Jeff to say that inspectors are coming to look at land next to the camp with a view to building a new hospital and he wants the staff to sabotage the plan. Opinion is split among the staff but when the inspectors turn up they are greeted by a smelly bonfire and a few very noisy protesters. Peggy, however, is annoyed with Ted for tricking her into taking part by telling her the visitors were Hollywood talent scouts.
- Clive continues to borrow money, this time from Fred, to go to lunch with a relative from the Jockey Club, to get Fred's licence back. The staff go to the train station to welcome the new arrivals and Partridge gets into a fight with the station master who won't let Mr. Punch collect tickets. The incoming guests are given free food but Ted passes round an urn in which they can put voluntary contributions. Back at the camp Clive asks Ted for the money from the urn to help get Fred's licence back.
- England in the late 1950s: Jeffrey Fairbrother is an unassuming Cambridge academic suffering a mid-life crisis. His wife wants a divorce and he wants a change of career. He applies to become the entertainments manager at Maplins, a South coast holiday camp. Also up for the job is comedian Ted Bovis, a seasoned entertainer who knows how to work a crowd, but Jeff gets the job due to his administrative background and Ted remains Camp Host. Jeff feels that he should step down and give Ted the post but he is encouraged to stay when an elderly couple express their appreciation of his efforts.
- Clive is in debt again and his sports car is likely to be repossessed. Unknown to him Ted has an identical car but it's broken down. However he is planning a fiddle whereby Clive's car is exhibited as a raffle prize and Ted's car given to the winner. Unfortunately it's Ted's car that gets repossessed and Clive's car has to be presented. Ted makes sure the very large Mrs. Harris wins it as she's too big to get into the car and he gives her money instead. However his profit from the fiddle is also repossessed.
- THree new Yellowcoats - April, Dawn and Babs - arrive at the camp but Peggy is disappointed that, once more, she has been passed over for promotion. It is widely expected that Ted will get Jeff's job, especially when he is summoned to Head Office. However, this is for him to be told to repay the money he owes the Inland Revenue. The new entertainments manager is Clive Dempster, a former Air Force squadron leader. He has an eye for the ladies and a rather cavalier attitude which pleases Ted, as it is unlikely that Clive will want to check up on Ted's money-making schemes.
- In the wake of the wrongly captioned newspaper picture, Joe Maplin believes that the idea of an engaged couple is very good for the camp's business and that it will attract young couples, so he wants the 'happy couple' to be milked for maximum effect. The happy couple are not pleased, though Spike manages to get back with April. Clive sees it as an opportunity to escape Gladys' clutches but he has reckoned without her tenacity.
- Max Tewkesbury comes to the camp. He is the new lover of Jeff's estranged wife and wants Jeff to be the guilty party to facilitate a quick divorce. Peggy mistakes him for the overall Maplin's entertainment boss but listens when he tells her he will pay her to claim that she has knowledge of Jeff and Gladys being intimate. Peggy is in a quandary but finally Spike persuades her to do the right thing as Jeff goes off to comfort a depressed Gladys.
- Owing to the departure of the local vicar, Jeffrey finds himself conducting the Sunday Half-Hour. Needless to say, he makes a hash of it-so Ted takes over.
- It's Gladys' birthday and Clive is taking her out for a meal. However, Harold Fox, Maplin's hatchet man, also invites her and she feels she ought to go. She arranges to meet him early and they go to the local trattoria for spaghetti but Gladys feigns illness and Peggy whisks her off on a motor-bike to meet Clive - who takes her back to the trattoria for more spaghetti. After her date with Clive she is treated to a birthday surprise by the other staff - which turns out to be a trip to the trattoria for another meal of spaghetti.
- Clive's parents and uncles arrive at the camp to persuade him to return home. Their Rolls Royce breaks down, blocking access for the van delivering toilet paper and the Rolls is eventually loaded with the toilet tissues and pushed into the camp. Clive's parents try to dissuade him from marrying a 'common' girl like Gladys, who is hurt and returns Clive's ring to prove she is not just after his money. Touched by this and annoyed by his family's arrogance, Clive swears he will marry Gladys after all. He then wonders what he has done and asks for Ted's help. . . again.
- Foster fires Peggy on trumped up theft charges and Gladys goes to have it out with him. He makes a pass at her and punches Spike, who, still fond of her, goes to defend her. When Clive intervenes on Gladys's behalf Foster punches him too and sacks him. Both Peggy and Clive intend to make a low-key early morning exit but help arrives from an unexpected quarter. Down-at-heel Punch and Judy man Sammy saved Maplin's life during the war and now he is asking the camp boss to return the favour, which,of course, he does. Clive and Peggy are reinstated and Foster is recalled.
- Jeff is horrified to learn that Maplin wants him to persuade elderly Mrs. Baxter to leave her cottage so it can be demolished to make way for an extension to the camp and he consults the Save British Heritage group as well as organizing a petition. However he learns that the cottage is to be 'accidentally' knocked down before the Save British Heritage team arrive for their assessment and he rallies the staff to hide the bulldozer. The plan works and he and Ted are invited to tea by the grateful old lady.
- Julian gives Yvonne a conducted tour of his pig farm but she is not dressed for the part and finds the experience rather off-putting. Ted falls for Betty, a young pianist who has won the camp's talent contest. Despite the age gap she has feelings for him and they plan to form a variety act together. However Betty's mother tells Ted that her daughter has been accepted at a prestigious music college and, if they marry as planned, it could harm Betty's considerable future as a pianist. Ted agrees to let her go but, during a theme evening of At the Circus, he is given a note from her to say that she did really love him.
- There is to be a beauty contest, held by the pool and to be judged by Jeff. Spike, the other comic, will emerge from the pool dressed as Ollie the Octopus and squirt Jeff. Jeff discovers that Ted has been running a nice little side-line in bribery in fixing the contest and puts his foot down. The winner must be chosen honestly. However the winner's father is not in on this and when Jeff chooses her honestly he gets rewarded with a bottle of bubbly anyway.
- Statues of Joe Maplin are to be unveiled at all six of his holiday camps and, to make sure the work is done, his oily henchman Fox will visit Jeff's camp. The statue duly arrives but Spike gets drunk and defaces it with paint. Ted suggests another coat - of brown paint - which has to be done twice as the first coat is washed away by rain. Eventually the statue is unveiled and Fox is satisfied, though he is swayed by Peggy's little speech about how Joe Maplin saved her from a life in the gutter.
- Spike is smitten by Francoise Ogilvy, staying at the camp with her mother, but Francoise believes that Spike should adopt a more sophisticated act. Spike does this in order to please her but he is not a success. Finally Ted and Peggy sabotage his act, which annoys Francoise but regains Spike's popularity. Gladys sees off the opposition when Sylvia becomes the camp announcer on a trial basis.
- Fred is distraught to hear that Joe Maplin wants him to get rid of the six oldest of his beloved horses to make way for a new string of ponies. However Ted is aware that Maplin wants a knighthood and so he leaks to the press that Maplin is a charitable philanthropist who aims to turn part of the camp into a home for retired horses. Maplin cannot back down and the plan succeeds. It does, however, mean that people turn up at the camp with retired horses to be re-homed.
- It is now 1960 and most of the staff turn up at the station for the new holiday season. However Jeff is missing. When they arrive at the camp there is a letter to say that Jeff has accepted a professorship at the University of Wisconsin and will not be returning to Maplin's. Ted assumes he will get Jeff's old job. Gladys is heart-broken but is somewhat cheered up when Peggy shows her a picture of herself with Jeff.
- Ted Bovis is seen entering a chalet with Rose, a young camper whose parents are friends of owner Joe Maplin. They are reported but Rose implicates Jeff as being her secret lover. Gladys Pugh, the camp's strident announcer, is prepared to dig Jeff out of the hole, but it means she will forever be on his back - in the most adoring way.
- 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 option but to sack him and bring back Ted.
- 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 music school.
- The hospital could still be built next to the camp so Maplin sends Jeff a thousand pounds with which to bribe officials. Ted tricks Jeff into letting him do the hand-over but he is pursued by a policeman who wonders why he has so much money and he drops Jeff in it by saying it is a pay-off to a girl impregnated by Jeff. The news comes that the hospital will be built elsewhere. Maplin will donate nine hundred of the thousand pounds to the hospital and Ted hopes to pocket the remaining hundred for himself. However he gives it to Fred, who needs to pay the vet when his horse gets ill.
- Ted is offered the opportunity to do another gig, away from the holiday camp. If it goes well he is likely to get a residency at golf club dinners. Jeff reluctantly gives him time off but his act dies, as Peggy, who has sneaked off to see him, tells Jeff. In order to spare Ted's feelings as to why he will now no longer want to leave Maplin's, Jeff tells him he is too valuable to the camp to let him go.
- Clive gets a letter from Maplin to say that Mr. Partridge will not be replaced as it is late in the season. Instead the staff will enact nursery rhymes for the kids, which they hate doing. Ted comes across Uncle Sammy, a former puppeteer down on his luck and gets Clive to give him Partridge's old job. Unfortunately Sammy makes off with Maplin's trophies but the police feel sorry for him and everybody blames Ted for only giving him a third of the money Clive gave Ted to pay Sammy.
- Comedian Spike Dixon falls for the lovely Brenda and the feeling is mutual. The only problem is that Brenda's father regards Spike's occupation as being anything but a proper trade and, if he is to give consent to the union, Spike must follow him into the family's butcher's shop. Spike is faced with a dilemma but Ted and Jeff know exactly what he should do for the best.
- Peggy finds a letter to Clive from Joe Maplin, saying that he wants the entertainment manager to find out scams that could be useful to him. She shows the letter to Spike who, like her, assumes Clive has been sent to the camp to spy on the staff but, as it is marked Private he cannot divulge its contents and, instead, sabotages staff fiddles, causing surprise at his actions. In fact it turns out that Clive is from an aristocratic family and Maplin wanted him to find secrets to blackmail other noblemen to secure his knighthood, and not spy on the staff after all.
- Clive feels that Gladys trapped him into proposing marriage to her and asks Ted to get him out of his fix. Spike has momentary feelings for Gladys but is reunited with his April. Yvonne refuses to leave her chalet after Barry walks out on her but Gladys persuades her old partner Julian to fill the breach and he duly obliges. A fearsome new camp controller, sent by Maplin, arrives in the night and immediately sacks the security guard.
- Clive's uncle comes to the camp. The family's stately home with its safari park needs a new manager and Clive thinks Gladys would be ideal. He invites her to meet his father but Gladys, encouraged by Ted, assumes that Clive will propose to her and is annoyed that she was asked if she could handle giraffes instead. Spike is also annoyed. Although he is dating Yellowcoat April, the local paper has wrongly captioned a photo of him with Gladys as being of an engaged couple.
- Clive does not have the same principles as Jeff, as is evident when he borrows money from Gladys to repay Ted, claiming the loan is to help Yvonne. However he does let Peggy dress as a clown to join in the Drown Your Granny slapstick game. Then Peggy hears that she has been promoted. She is the new storeroom supervisor but she is not impressed as it is dull work in company with a senile old man called Horace. She decides to go back to being a cleaner, which at least allows her to dress as a clown again and get thrown into the swimming pool.
- 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.
- Having sacked several other employees, new camp controller Foster turns his attentions to the entertainment staff. Clive tries to use the situation to his advantage by telling Gladys that his parents will disown him if he marries her but it does not work. Whilst some of the male staff squabble about sleeping arrangements, Peggy tells Foster of her desire to become a Yellowcoat and he invites her to his chalet late at night. However he makes a play for her and threatens to sack her if she gives him away. She confides in Gladys, who comforts her.
- 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.
- Now surer of his feelings for April, Spike gets Ted to organize a mass outing to the cinema on April's birthday to watch her favourite film, 'Bambi'. Since this is one of Ted's dodgy deals with the projectionist behind the manager's back, when the staff arrive at the cinema, 'Bambi' has been returned and replaced with a black and white war film, during which Gladys falls asleep. She imagines all the staff as being characters in an old war movie, in which the heroic Clive is feared missing but returns to her for the romantic fade-out. When she wakes up everybody else but Clive and herself have gone home.