Queen's Gambit

Queen's Gambit is a revenge plot in which the avenger's tools are a motorbike, a game of chess and a pun. At a Rotary Club dinner, Harry meets a local businessman, Joe Green, who is the target of a hate campaign. His car has been sabotaged, a newspaper cutting about him has arrived with a red dagger drawn across it, and someone pretending to be his secretary has cancelled the caterers at a Chamber of Commerce dinner.

Joe thinks someone is trying to stop his purchase of a restaurant in Derby, and he asks Harry to look into it. He also asks Harry to invest, with another businessman, Charles Hastings, and promises him a seat in the Star Chamber.

Harry persuades Ken to act as Joe's bodyguard, and Ken dislikes Joe at once. Joe is arrogant, treats him like dirt, and cannot be bothered to get his first name right. At the house, Ken meets Joe's wife, Sheila, who seems unexpectedly worried about the bodyguard.

A leather-clad motorcyclist on a Harley-Davidson watches the house. She is Karen Verdi, an old friend of Sheila's, and the two women are the ones who have been sabotaging the car. Karen engineers a puncture outside the CBS offices, and flirts shamelessly with Ken to learn what he knows.

Joe's twin-town dinner with a German town goes badly wrong when the entertainment turns out to be men in lederhosen and women made up as Hitler, playing Colonel Bogey. Joe blames Ken and Harry. Afterwards Sheila invites Ken to supper and tries to seduce him.

Harry is due to take a package to the Isle of Man, not knowing it holds the money for the restaurant, which Joe wants to pay into an illegal offshore account for the previous owner, a Mr Verdi. Sheila and Karen plan to steal it. Karen rides off on Ken's bike with false plates and robs Harry's car.

It is Alex who breaks the case. She realises that Verdi is Italian for Green, and so Joe already owns the restaurant: the sale is a sham. Ken matches the false plates to the thief's bike and understands that Sheila is involved. Hastings discovers that he is the sole owner of the restaurant, and finds a survey suggesting that it was cheap because it is built over an old mine-shaft.

Karen then tells Ken the truth. Joe is Giuseppe Verdi, and she is his first wife. They were never divorced, so Sheila's marriage to him is bigamous. The two women faked the survey and ran the sabotage as revenge. The restaurant is sound, Hastings is delighted with his bargain, and he guarantees Harry's place in the Star Chamber.

Helen Slavin wrote the episode and Nick Hurran directs. John Nettles, who has a page on this site, plays Joe, with Barbara Flynn as Sheila, Lynsey Baxter as Karen and Clive Swift as Hastings.

The best moment is Alex's pun on the name. The weakness is that Ken is made a fool of for most of the hour, and the closing song, which the fan site hears as Ken's sense of betrayal, is the only time he is allowed to say so.