The Ring

Strapped for cash, Lovejoy sets up an unusual form of dealers' ring to bump up the price of a painting he has entered in an auction. The painting is by local artist Jessie Webb, and the plan is simple: three old friends, Matron, Gideon and Henry the Hearse Chaser, attend the sale and bid against each other until the price reaches the clouds. Old con artists rally round for old times' sake, and nothing goes according to plan. Jane is drawn in without knowing what she is part of, which only makes her anger at Lovejoy funnier when it arrives.

The scheme works a little too well. Lady Jane was also in the bidding, innocently, and she is not amused to find she has been bidding against Lovejoy's ring. And the ring's gains have to go somewhere: Lovejoy ends up handing the proceeds to a young antique dealer he rooked earlier in the affair. There is a lovely economy to the ending, money flowing round the trade and ending up where it least wants to be.

Ian La Frenais, Jonathan Gash and Roger Marshall wrote it, John Crome directed. Ian McShane is Lovejoy, Phyllis Logan is Lady Jane Felsham, Dudley Sutton is Tinker Dill, and Chris Jury is Eric Catchpole. Charlotte Cornwell plays Matron, Alfred Lynch is Gideon, Frederick Treves is Henry, Tim Dutton is Fotheringill, Peter Kelly is Robin, and Helene Kvale is Gloria.

It went out in January 1993, early in the fourth series, when the show had settled into a rhythm it would keep for years. The episode is a finely tuned piece about value, monetary and personal. The biggest frauds are not always the grand ones; sometimes they are the small, human ones played out in the quiet corners of an auction hall. Lovejoy's ring is a masterpiece of amateur enterprise, and its collapse is the most entertaining part of it.