Following a visit to his local G. P, a fitness freak if ever there was one, Rab discovers he may have cirrhosis of the liver and has been advised to give up alcohol lest he will be dead within twelve months.
Paying no heed to his doctor's warning, Rab continues to knock back the booze like there is no tomorrow, however upon visualising a pink elephant ( which Rab refers to as 'the heebie jeebies' ) during a hard drinking session, Rab decides to start attending a therapy group for alcoholics, which, as one could imagine, ends in disaster.
However, Rab soon discovers that clean living is not all it is cracked up to be when, during a lecture from his doctor about how he should take care of his body and exercise more, the doctor suddenly drops dead from a massive heart attack....
Not a bad episode, though there are better ones. Natually, Rab ends up going back to his old ways. With over six million viewers tuning in each week, Pattison had no intentions of killing off Rab so soon. David Troughton, who plays the doctor, was one of Farmer Whitlow's sons in David Clime's dreadful Anglia Television sitcom 'Backs To The Land' and is the son of the late Patrick Troughton ( who was the second actor to play 'Doctor Who' ) and brother of Michael Troughton, who is best known as Piers Fletcher Dervish from Laurence Marks' and Maurice Gran's wonderful political farce 'The New Statesman'.
Norman Lovett, who appears here as a boring middle aged man who Rab locks horns with at the therapy class, would later work with writer Ian Pattison on another BBC sitcom - the short lived 'I, Lovett'. The pink elephant ( constructed by 'Spitting Image' ) was voiced by the late, great Russell Hunter. There is a moment during the A. A. meeting in which Rab takes a hairspray can and sprays the aerosol in his mouth in a bid to intoxicate himself. This was omitted from repeat screenings and DVD releases, which is a pity as it is one of the funnier moments from the episode. Presumably, it was deleted so as not to encourage solvent abuse.
Funniest bit - Rab's reaction to seeing the pink elephant standing before him! Second funniest bit - Jamesie's reaction to seeing the pink elephant standing before him!
Paying no heed to his doctor's warning, Rab continues to knock back the booze like there is no tomorrow, however upon visualising a pink elephant ( which Rab refers to as 'the heebie jeebies' ) during a hard drinking session, Rab decides to start attending a therapy group for alcoholics, which, as one could imagine, ends in disaster.
However, Rab soon discovers that clean living is not all it is cracked up to be when, during a lecture from his doctor about how he should take care of his body and exercise more, the doctor suddenly drops dead from a massive heart attack....
Not a bad episode, though there are better ones. Natually, Rab ends up going back to his old ways. With over six million viewers tuning in each week, Pattison had no intentions of killing off Rab so soon. David Troughton, who plays the doctor, was one of Farmer Whitlow's sons in David Clime's dreadful Anglia Television sitcom 'Backs To The Land' and is the son of the late Patrick Troughton ( who was the second actor to play 'Doctor Who' ) and brother of Michael Troughton, who is best known as Piers Fletcher Dervish from Laurence Marks' and Maurice Gran's wonderful political farce 'The New Statesman'.
Norman Lovett, who appears here as a boring middle aged man who Rab locks horns with at the therapy class, would later work with writer Ian Pattison on another BBC sitcom - the short lived 'I, Lovett'. The pink elephant ( constructed by 'Spitting Image' ) was voiced by the late, great Russell Hunter. There is a moment during the A. A. meeting in which Rab takes a hairspray can and sprays the aerosol in his mouth in a bid to intoxicate himself. This was omitted from repeat screenings and DVD releases, which is a pity as it is one of the funnier moments from the episode. Presumably, it was deleted so as not to encourage solvent abuse.
Funniest bit - Rab's reaction to seeing the pink elephant standing before him! Second funniest bit - Jamesie's reaction to seeing the pink elephant standing before him!