Gone with the Winchester

Toby 'Jug' Johnson has been inside for many years, and when he gets out the first thing he does is find the old gang. The reunion happens at the Winchester: Arthur, Dave and Jug, three men who were once the Brentford Backhanders, and it starts warm and drunk. The old stories come out with the old bottles. Then Jug starts talking about old betrayals, about the things Dave did when they were all younger, and the warmth starts leaking out of the room.

But Dave, for his part, is holding secret meetings that Arthur is not invited to. Between Jug's stories and those meetings, Arthur convinces himself he is being cut out of the future he thought he and Dave shared. He falls out with Dave completely, and with Jug's encouragement he opens his own club to compete with the Winchester. The price war that follows is brief and expensive for everyone involved.

Ray never trusts Jug, and Ray has good instincts. Arthur is heading for a painful lesson about which of his old friends is actually his friend, and he learns it the hard way. The lesson costs him money, which for Arthur is the most expensive kind of lesson. Eventually Ray arranges a mediation, the two clubs stop undercutting each other, and peace, of a sort, is restored to the local drinking economy.

Bernard Dempsey, Kevin McNally and Leon Griffiths wrote it, Lawrence Gordon Clark directed. George Cole is Arthur, Gary Webster is Ray and Glynn Edwards is Dave, with James Booth as Jug, Sidney Livingstone as Bert, Lill Roughley as Doreen, Emma Cunningham as Gloria, John Levitt as Jimmy the Jeweller, Frank Mills as Len and Peter Gowen as Dermot.

The episode is a story about an old friendship being tested by a new voice. Jug is the poison in the pint glass, and the show is wise enough to let Arthur feel the sting before the reconciliation.