Sorry Pal, Wrong Number

Arthur's latest scheme has the polished air of a proper disaster. He teams up with J.J. Mooney, a veteran con artist, and the two of them run a race tipping scam from an office that does not exist. They hire a postal address, secure three public telephone boxes, and sit back to wait for the money to roll in. The whole enterprise has the smell of a plan that sounded better in the pub, which is where most Arthur plans are born. Terry's share of the work is minding the boxes, standing guard over three of the most sought-after phone numbers in London and making sure the punters can always get through.

It's the kind of plan that depends on everyone in London behaving themselves, which is to say it starts to come apart almost immediately. The money does begin to arrive, and then, at the height of the operation, Mooney has a heart attack. It's the one thing nobody could have fixed with a hired address or an empty office. The con collapses around a man in genuine trouble, and no amount of careful arrangement survives that. T.P. McKenna plays Mooney with a fine, doomed dignity, a craftsman done in by his own body mid-job.

Leon Griffiths wrote the script, Terry Green directed. Patrick Malahide appears as Chisholm, Glynn Edwards as Dave, Shaun Curry as Sprott, Jumoke Debayo as Petal, Timothy Bateson as the Railwayman, Rosalind Lloyd as Fenella and Royce Mills as Andrew. Dennis Waterman and George Cole are, as ever, at the centre.

The episode is a gentle reminder that the most careful schemes are only ever as safe as the people running them. Arthur's plans usually come unstuck through greed or bad luck; here it's the body itself that betrays the plan, which is a harder lesson to argue with. Terry, for his part, is done with phone boxes for the day, which is the closest he comes to winning. And the phone boxes, at least, stay free for the rest of the afternoon.