Last Orders at the Winchester

Dave has given twenty-five years to the Winchester, and Arthur, in a generous mood, offers to have the place redecorated. The job goes to a man known only as Heart Attack, whose qualifications are unclear and whose workmanship is a danger to the public. He breaks through a bearing wall, and the pub is forced to close until expensive repairs are done. Dave's anniversary has turned into a demolition.

Arthur does what he does in a crisis: he organises a fundraiser. The charity football match between the pub's patrons and the local police is refereed by D.S. Morley, which is the only sensible thing about it. Just as the money is coming together, Heart Attack, who vanished the moment the wall collapsed, reappears carrying thousands of pounds. He has stolen it from Vic, a rival landlord and professional nark, and he hands it over with the air of a man solving a problem he created.

But the cash cannot simply be banked. The police are already suspicious, and Morley is the kind of officer who notices when a pub's charity fund grows overnight. Arthur's solution is an auction, a way of running the money through the books and out the other side without anyone quite catching on, with officers standing around bidding on things they do not want.

Gary Lawson, John Phelps and Leon Griffiths wrote it, A.J. Quinn directed. George Cole is Arthur, Gary Webster is Ray and Glynn Edwards is Dave, with Nicholas Day as Morley, Jonty Stephens as Field, Geoffrey Hutchings as Heart Attack, Gavin Richards as Vic, Emma Cunningham as Gloria, Aaron Harris as Barry and Barry McCarthy as George.

The plot is a money laundering joke played out in a pub function room, and the show knows it. Heart Attack is the perfect Minder creation: a disaster with a name, a man whose every appearance makes the episode better and the building worse.