You Gotta Have Friends

When a gangster's bearer bonds go missing, the gangster does not ring the police. Bobby Altman sends his heavies after the courier, Billy Gilpin, and Billy does the sensible thing for once: he runs to Arthur and Terry. Terry drives him down to Brighton and parks him in a hotel, out of harm's way, while Arthur stays behind to handle things. Handling things, in Arthur's case, means keeping his mouth shut at exactly the wrong moments.

Altman is a big man with a low tolerance for loose ends, and it does not take him long to decide that Arthur knows more than he is saying. Arthur is taken for a ride, which in this world is not a holiday. The questioning is uncomfortable and very funny, because Arthur talks his way around a question the way other men breathe, and Altman listens with the patience of a man who has heard every excuse before. Billy sits in Brighton, presumably unaware that his saviour is in considerably deeper water than he is.

Leon Griffiths wrote it, Ian Toynton directed. George Cole and Dennis Waterman head the cast, with George Baker putting his considerable presence to work as Altman. David Buck is Billy Gilpin, Deborah Grant plays Lady Ingrave, and Brian Hall, Allan Surtees, Prentis Hancock, Gary Whelan and Terence Budd take the supporting roles.

The title says it all. Billy has friends, and friends are what you need when a man like Altman is asking questions. Arthur would happily claim friendship with anyone who might be useful, but here the friendship runs the other way, and it saves him. The bond between the two of them was never in doubt; the fun is watching them survive each other. And it ends, as these things often do, with everyone slightly the worse for wear and nobody quite sure who owes whom.