The Young Ones - Series 1 (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?
Story
Characters / Performances
Special Effects
How does it compare to similar films?

Advantages:	Good for a laugh, More of the same for Bottom lovers
Disadvantages:	Dated, tired and nowhere near as good as Bottom

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Well here it is! Dedicated to Bigbaz (For pestering me to do this op). The definitive guide to The Young Ones series one. This opinion took about three days to write on and off and has been a real challenge. I hope you enjoy it.

The young Ones was the fore-runner to Bottom and is based on a group of students that never go to lectures and generally spend their days breaking things, fighting, and generally showing the world what the new generation is going to offer when they are let loose on the world.

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Contents

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Introduction

Spoiler
Demolition
Oil
Boring
Bomb
Interesting
Flood

Conclusion

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INTRODUCTION

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The Young Ones was written by Rik, Ade and Ben Elton. A lot of the episodes have several mini plots, that is if there is a plot in the first place. It is just a mish-mash of ideas and sometimes it works, but some cut scenes have no relevance to the story at all.

Although most people will have heard of the Young Ones, here is a quick rundown on the characters: -

Rik. Played by Rik Mayall, Rik is an Anarchist. He worships Cliff Richard and believes that everyone who disagrees with him is a Fascist. He hates all his other housemates, especially Neil. He studies Sociology at University but has never actually attended a lecture.

Vyvian: Played by Adrian Edmondson, Vyvian is studying medicine at University and wants to be a doctor. From what I can make out from watching the show, he has actually attended lectures on a couple of occasions. Vyv is an extremely violent person who takes great enjoyment in smashing things and hitting Rik.

Mike: Played by Christopher Ryan, Mike also avoids university like the plague. He is the ladies man of the group. Apart from the inflatable doll and collection of ladies underwear, He has a regular booking at the local restaurant for two. We never find out if he actually uses it though. We don’t find out what Mike is studying, but he claims to be in the School of Life.

Neil: Played by Nigel Planer, Neil is a Hippie. He just wants to live in a world of peace and love. Neil is an insomniac and spends most nights wandering round the room chanting and ringing bells. He is a strong believer that sleeping causes Cancer. Neil is constantly abused by Rik but is probably the most intellectual of the housemates. He also does all the cleaning and cooking, but receives no credit for his effort.

Chertsi (I haven’t a clue how to spell his name): Played by Alexei Sayle, Chertsi is the Russian Landlord of the house. He makes irregular appearances to ask for rent, or to generally cause trouble or add some colour to a dull sketch.

SPG: Special Patrol Group is Vyvians pet. A Scottish hamster with a fondness for curry. Frequently gets beaten by Vyvian.

Now on to my trademark spoiler for the show. If you don’t want to read about the episodes, skip straight to the conclusion at the bottom. The plots are very fragmented and confusing, so the spoiler is a lot longer than that of Bottom as I try to explain all the various stories within each episode. It is also more reliant on what the actors are saying, rather than what they do. I strongly recommend you read this over two or three sittings.

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SPOILER

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DEMOLITION

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Rik is listening to the radio and Neil is making the dinner. Rik gets straight into character and hassles Neil. He takes his radio and storms off. Neil sneezes in the lentil casserole. He takes the pot to the table but there is nowhere to put it. The pot is really hot and Neil ends up dropping it on the floor. He goes to the door and calls the others. “There’s some dinner on the floor if you want it”.

Rik stomps back in and demands an apology from Neil for saying things about Cliff. Neil didn’t apologise so Rik stays angry and reads some poetry that he has written. Neil is depressed, so he crawls into the oven to kill himself. He only succeeds in seeing how dirty it is so he starts raking handfuls of sludge out onto the floor. Rik continues talking about stuff and realises that Neil isn’t listening so he smashes a saucer over Neil’s head.

Mike returns home from the golf course and finds Rik smashing saucers everywhere. Mike asks Neil if the pile of sludge is dinner. Neil says no and points him towards the pile of lentils on the floor a little way away. He talks to Rik and Rik says that Mike must think he’s weird. He admits he is weird and says that is why he goes over people’s heads like an aeroplane. Mike didn’t think he was an aeroplane so Rik calls him a sycophant

The first of many annoying cut scenes throughout the series. This one has two rats talking about eating books. Rik spots them and kills one with Neil’s guitar. This upsets Neil. We cut back to one rat eating the other and saying, “It’s what he would’ve wanted”.

Neil apologises for the food getting uncool floorwise. The salt lid then comes off and spills all over Neil’s food. Mike jumps up and asks if someone phoned. Rik gets caught out with a smart comment and ends up getting really confused. The problem was that they haven’t got a phone. Rik then has a major fit because the lentils are South African. I suppose that this was before the whole Race issue came up and so I’m not going to go into this part. Rik wants his biro so Mike lends him one. Rik realises that it is his but Mike said he just saw it lying around and thought Rik didn’t want it anymore.

Rik writes a new poem and gets to a line about cost when Neil breaks the news that the meal will cost the housemates £4.50 each. It turns out that Neil made thirteen portions. Rik wants to know if Neil is starting a football team, but Neil says it is his last meal because he is going to hang himself. Vyvian smashes through the wall and finishes up sitting on the table. Rik tells him to wash his hands so Vyv kicks the sink off the wall and rinses his hands in the water flowing from the pipe. He turns the water off by thumping the wall. This also flushes the toilet.

Vyvian has been down to the morgue. Neil is upset that Vyvian hasn’t considered his feelings since he’s going to be killing himself tonight. Rik is upset that no one listens to him, but Vyvian says it is because he is very boring. When Rik disputes it, Vyvian splats Rik’s head into the lentil casserole. Vyvian has got a leg, he is supposed to write an essay about it, but he decides it would look better fixed to the bonnet of his car. Neil goes off to kill himself.

Mike is confused why Vyvian came through the wall. Most days he comes through the door. Sometimes he even opens it. All Vyvian says is that he got a letter from the council and goes to check on his hamster. Rik thinks that Special Patrol Group is a stupid name for a hamster, so Vyvian changes its name to Cliff Richard. SPG bites Vyvians finger for giving it such a horrid new name and so Vyvian dumps it into the hot lentils. After eating all the food SPG is very fat and when Vyvian drops him, he goes straight through the floor.

Rock around the clock starts to play so the housemates realise that Neil has killed himself and that the rent has just gone up by a third each. Neil made the rope too long though so he made it all the way to the floor without dying. Two ladies on the bus saw it happen. Chertsi gets off the bus and enters the house. Vyvian is trying to knock the wall down with his head. Chertsi walks in and Rik says that they have resident’s rights, he is supposed to knock. Chertsi just replies that he would like the rent. The boys panic and go for a house meeting in the hallway. Chertsi keeps us entertained with his opinions of where some of the great bands of the time emerged. Mike comes up with some story that the Moscow Jets Ice Hockey squad was looking for Chertsi so he beats a hasty retreat.

Rik and Mike are depressed. Vyvian tells them again that he got a letter from the Council. They are going to knock the house down tomorrow. All three are in a state of shock, Mike was going to turn the house into an entertainment complex. We get a song from a band called Nine Below Zero (When the camera zooms out, I can’t help thinking that they are a trio of Alan Hansens). As the song finishes, Vyvian tells them that he has a plan with which to thwart the council. He takes a sip of what I think looks like washing up liquid and throws the cup, as it has no sugar in. The cup hits the wall and flushes the toilet that Neil is sitting on.

Vyvians plan is simple. When the Council arrive the house, they are going to find it already destroyed from within. He then proceeds to smash through the wall into the house next door. We see another stupid cut scene with a deaf couple talking to each other. Then Rik tell Vyvian to shut up because he wants to watch a programme on TV. Vyv goes upstairs, kicking the slats out of the banister on the way up. He also kicks a hole in the toilet and pulls the cistern off the wall so Neil gets soaked.

Rik’s programme is actually just a poor attempt by Ben Elton to get his face on the telly. It is a programme called Nozin’ Aroun’. There isn’t much in it apart from an interesting bit that asks why 16 year olds cannot drink in pubs even though they can join the Army and have sex at that age. Rik gets bored with the programme, so he kicks a hole in the TV. Rik is then told that the house will definitely be knocked down tomorrow. Mike goes to prepare to meet the lady Councillor while Rik writes a poem, Vyv carries on demolishing the house and Neil plans to pretend to be thermal insulation so he can die when they knock the house down.

The workers arrive the next morning to find Rik tied to a cross on the wall of the house. He loses his poem so he sings Living Doll. Vivian asks the Councillor for another half an hour and bites a brick, which explodes in his mouth. Neil emerges with a pot of lentils as a last positive gesture but drops them all over the floor again when Mike barges him out of the way to see the Councillor. He tries to seduce her but fails, so the workers move in to demolish the house. Vyvian jumps in his car to try and bulldoze the house first, but he crashes. Neil puts his head between the wall and a worker’s sledgehammer and tells him that he will be doing him a favour. The worker just starts hitting the wall above Neil’s head instead. As a rather impromptu end to the episode, a plane crashes on the house.

This was a difficult episode to describe. This is because it was a pilot episode that had everything possible stuffed in to try and let the BBC decide whether the programme was suitable. The aeroplane crash was deliberate so that it left things open to either kill them if it wasn’t okayed, or let them survive, which is what eventually happened as the series went on to be a classic.

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OIL

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The lads arrive at their new house. Rik is disgusted but Neil thinks it’s beautiful. Vyvian, perceptive as ever notes that it is because this one hasn’t been razed to the ground yet. Neil looks at it positively, at least this one has a letter box. When Rik asks why that is so important, Neil says that he can look through it to see who is at the door. Apparently, Vyvian nailed the door in the old house to the ceiling in the living room when he was drunk. Mike breaks into the house with the key. He says that he used to be a cat burglar. When Neil gullibly asks really, Mike tells him he’s got 2000 cats in a Swiss bank account. They enter the house and the statue moans that it’s “More bl**dy students”.

While Rik and Vyvian rush upstairs to claim their rooms, Neil remarks on the amount of mail. Mike says they must be bills and Neil wanders off wondering who Bill is. Rik is fighting with Vyvian for a room. Vyvian manages to push his way in and the argument starts. Vyv wants to know where the witnesses are but Rik says he doesn'’ need witnesses and pinches Vyv. Vyv just punches Rik in the face and ducks when Rik throws a piece of wood at him so it smashes the window. Vyv says that it must be his room as all his clothes are on the floor. Rik just picks them up and throws them out of the window. Vyv has now lost his temper, so he gets out a packet of matches, sets fire to the bed and tells Rik that he can keep the bedroom. Rik doesn’t want it anymore, so they both run out and shout to Neil that his room is on fire. Neil dejectedly goes into his nominated room. Rik and Vyv start fighting over the next room.

While this is happening, Mike enters his room. He gets his inflatable friend out, empties a case full of ladies underwear over the bed and floor and hooks a bra on the outside of the door handle. He then sits on the bed and plays a cassette containing ladies making various moaning noises. He turns around to find that Buddy Holly is hanging from the ceiling. Buddy sings him a song called Cuckoo Daddy Longlegs. As he is singing, Mike is working out how much money he can make out of the song but he needn’t have worried himself because the harness breaks and Buddy dies in the fall. Mike thinks he can make a bit for the guitar though.

Neil is in the kitchen making tea. He has mixed feelings. He is glad that the boys told him his room was on fire because he might have gone to sleep and burned to death. He was also depressed that it is always him who has to make the tea. He introduces himself to the kitchen, but tells it not to bother remembering his name as he will probably be dead soon anyway. He opens the cupboard, but all the crockery falls out and smashes on the floor. The only thing left is a mucky old teapot. He gives it a rub to clean it and a genie appears from a cloud of smoke. He doesn’t notice the Genie standing there and just says that he just wished that for once that didn’t happen to him. Magically, the crockery jumps off the floor and back into the cupboard.

Vyvian comes downstairs and believing it is some kind of sick joke, he asks Neil why supper isn’t ready. Neil shows some assertiveness for the first time and says that because no one helps him with anything and that he’s not feeling well, NO, he hasn’t made the supper yet. Neil then says that he wishes he had six pairs of hands and amazingly, five more pairs appear about his body. He rushes upstairs to show Rik. Vyvian decides he will have to make the tea himself. He pours boiling water into the teapot, killing the Genie. Neil’s spare hands disappear and so he is left standing there looking daft and Rik just ignores him.

Rik goes downstairs to ask Vyvian a couple of questions. He starts by asking why Vyvian threw the toilet out of the bathroom window. Vyvian tells him that it is to lower the rent. Rik asks what is he talking about, and Vyvian says that you don’t have to pay as much for a house with an outside toilet. Rik thinks that Vyvian did it on purpose because Rik has a runny bottom. Vyvian ignores him and shouts for Neil to get downstairs and make the supper. As Neil is coming down the stairs, Mike is bringing the body of Buddy down in a sack. Neil asks if he is doing washing and draws attention to the Peoples Charter that they wrote when they moved in. Apparently, no one can go to the laundrette, even if they have been eaten by wild dogs, without collecting the other’s dirty laundry first. Mike points out clause 83, which simply states, “Except Mike”. Vyv gives Neil three seconds to make supper and when Neil fails, Vyv knocks him out by smashing a plate over his head. Rik is upset that Neil is laying down on the job and decides to do it himself. He only manages to blow up the cooker though.

Mike takes his stiff to the cellar. There is another useless cut scene with two men who are having a holiday in the cellar and have hallucinations. Mike bungs the sack in the cellar and tells them to look after his Buddy. OK, so it wasn’t much of a joke, but death isn’t funny.

Rik, Neil and Vyv are sitting in front of the TV watching the little white dot. Vyv is eating a lovely supper of flour and water. Unfortunately, it has set around his fork so he can’t eat it. Neil breaks the news that the dot means there’s no more TV and it’s time to go to bed. He wanders of to paint his astrological star chart. Rik has a rant at Neil once he is out of earshot. He then goes to bed himself. He wishes that they had a video so he could watch the dot in the morning. Vyv gets bored watching the dot and decides to play murder in the dark.

Mike is playing golf upstairs. He plays the ball straight into the toilet that Neil is sitting on. He shouts for Neil to throw his ball back, which he does. Rik runs up the stairs and catches it. He then screams and runs into the bathroom to wash his hands. Vyv had been using Rik’s toothpaste as tippex on his essay. Rik wants to know why Mike is standing outside his bedroom. Mike says that there is only the floor to sit on. Mike tells Rik that it will cost £5 to get in. When Rik asks if he has turned it into a roller disco, Mike just says, “Uncanny”. Rik goes in and tries to throw everyone out. This just incurs the wrath of the bouncer who drags him out and drops Rik on his head while he indulges ina bit of Cockney talk. When Rik says that he is going to tell the police, Mike says that he has arranged for Rik to share Neil’s room.

Rik goes into Neil’s room and starts getting ready for bed. When he lifts the sheet though, he finds a moose head. Neil screams, but Mike comes ion and explains that when he lends someone money, he expects to get it back. If Neil doesn’t pay up the £1.50 by the end of the week, another moose dies. Vyv runs into the room and breaks some amazing news. He was playing murder in the dark but got bored. He decided to try and crack the floor with his head and when he did, a huge spurt of oil came out. Mike tells everyone that they should go to bed and have a house meeting at nine o’clock in the broom cupboard.

At nine o’clock we see another cut scene where the cleaning equipment prepare themselves for the days abuse. Neil and Rik arrive because Neil stayed up all night chanting and ringing bells to avoid getting cancer. After an argument about who does the most housework, Neil sneezes and blows the door off its hinges. They are met by Vyv, who beats them to the ground with a cricket bat for conspiring in the broom cupboard. Mike (El Presidente) enters the room to talk to the conspirators. When Neil says that they were having a house meeting, Mike says that he and Vyv had a house meeting upstairs a quarter of an hour ago upstairs and according to the new regulations, non-attendance is punishable by death. He is prepared to let them off if they go down to the cellar and dig up all the oil.
Rik calls him a Fascist and gets a bat round the head for his trouble. There is a cut scene that highlights the Saudi’s love of cutting peoples hands off.

Down in the cellar, Neil manages to put a pickaxe through Vyv’s head. Rik realises that this is the opportunity that they have been waiting for and declares a revolution. Neil and Rik head upstairs for a benefit concert in the living room. Alexei Sayle is running the band and sings a song called Doctor Martens Boots. Rik isn’t to happy with the amount of incitement for the revolution, but Mike comes in and tells Rik that his attempted revolution has cost them one day of being incredibly rich. Hmmm, another strange and abrupt ending to an episode. While the credits run, Vyv tries to smash the house, then he says that it was a complete lie about the oil.

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BORING

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The episode starts with a cut scene, which I find rather strange. There are lots of fictional characters wandering round the house. Neil is sitting in the window and watches dawn break. The boys are in the kitchen and Mike is putting cereal in his bowl one piece at a time. Vyv is entering a competition to win a Ford Tippex. He just has to match six noses with six bogeys. Then he has to say in ten words what Cornflakes mean to him. He just writes the word Cornflakes ten times.

Rik doesn’t think he win win because nothing interesting ever happens to them. Vyv tells him to stop being so boring. That’s nice coming from someone as boring as you, says Rik. Neil chips in with “Stop hassling each other, it’s getting really boring”. Rik just retorts that the most boring person in the world is finally getting a taste of his own medicine. Mike suggests that they are over-doing the boredom motif. Neil says that he was just saying it was very boring. Rik points out that they are just bickering. Rather good for him I think. Vyv suggests that they play Monopoly.

They sit down and play Monopoly but Rik comes out with the most boring thing anyone can say when playing Monopoly, “wouldn’t it be amazing if the money was real”. Vyv has changed the rules to make the game more interesting. In fact, he has changed all the chance cards so that you get to do horrible things to Rik. Neil is digging a grave at the bottom of the garden, in case he kills himself later. We get another stupid cut scene with really interesting people living underground.

Neil returns to the house to find that he lost at Monopoly. He is surprised that he lasted as long as he did. Someone knocks on the door but no one wants to answer it. In the end, Neil has to go, but the person smashes the door down and comes in first. It is one of Chertsi’s relatives called Billy. He has a bicycle and wants to know who called a taxi. To get hold of a message that he has, Rik goes along with him and says he wants a taxi but doesn’t want to go anywhere. Billy then drinks the contents of the goldfish bowl, including fish and plays a game of charades. Rik gets fed up with him and snatches the message. It just says, “Don’t let Billy near the goldfish bowl”. Billy leaves as Neil comes back and informs the group that there was no one there. Rik yawns and we are taken to yet another cut scene with two devils torturing a man. One of them is called Ftoomsh (remember that for a bit later on).

The boys are now sitting watching B*stard Squad on TV. There is no room on the sofa for Rik, so he switches it over to Oh Crikey. It is a really lame joke and Vyv gets annoyed and turns it back over. Rik jumps onto Vyv’s seat but Vyv just pushes him off and onto the floor. Rik ends up sitting on the rickety chair. Unfortunately, B*stard Squad is cancelled to cover a siege. A terrorist is holed up in their house and the police surround it, Neil recognises Vyv’s car but Vyv says that it must be someone else’s. The Army burst in and blow up the terrorist, but Rik is sure the sound is only dubbed. They switch off the TV and Neil goes to make some food. One of the terrorist’s grenades explodes though and blasts their dinner all over the kitchen. They others want Neil to refund their money, even though he hadn’t collected the weeks shopping money yet. Vyv takes the opportunity at this point to smash a bottle over Rik’s head. Depressed, they decide to go to the pub.

Madness plays House of Fun as the lads walk to the Kebab and Calculator pub. When they get to the pub, Rik asks madness to play Summer Holiday by Cliff Richard but they decline. They sit at a table but realise that it is just as boring as sitting at home. Vyv stole some money from Rik’s room, so he buys the drinks. He orders water for Mike, Roast Ox crisps for Neil, and a Babycham for himself. The barmaid is actually Vyv’s mum. Vyv is a bit surprised, as she was a shoplifter when he last saw her. She takes the money, as well as Vyv’s ring and watch to pay for the stuff, then she brings it to their table and gets drags Mike off for an intimate chat. Neil tries to open his crisps, but the packet bursts and they go everywhere. Another cut scene (yawn), this time Goldilocks goes into their house and spits their lentils everywhere. As they leave the pub, Rik asks Mike if he’s finished talking to the barmaid about his herpes. Mike jumps up and leaves quickly.

Ten seconds after the last cut scene, we get another. This time, it is two policeman with rather poor IQ’s talking about all kinds of rubbish. They become the picture on the newspaper that Rik is reading. Rik points out that there are now more tin cans than people according to the Guardian newspaper. Vyvian has a new trick, which involves chopping off a fake finger. Unfortunately, he cuts off the wrong one and runs off to stop the bleeding. Neil is meditating in the living room. Rik spots a story that says students can get a bigger grant. All they need is a noomkel fookejel ftoomsh. When Neil says, “what is a Ftoomsh?”, the little devil from the cut scene appears. The devil points at the ceiling and the light falls where Rik was sitting a second before. Rik moves into the living room to get away from a horrible farty smell. The devil throws a knife at Rik but misses so he gives up and tries to electrocute Neil. This only succeeds in giving Neil an idea of something to do. He decides to go and get a local paper to find out if there is anything on at the cinema. As he gets up, the devil stabs a skewer through Neil’s head. He pulls it out as he leaves the house. He is confused how the skewer got there.

As Neil goes out of the gate, The man from the Cornflakes competition arrives to give Vyvian his prize. After a joke about racist policemen, The man tells the little devil that he has won a car. The devil just shoots him with a machine gun, so the policeman jumps into the car and steals it. Neil comes back from the shop and is upset because they didn’t have any local papers. Mike says that they probably don’t come from round here. In a moment of complete insanity, Neil suggests that they should try going to college to relieve the boredom. Mike decides that this is being over the top and says he is going to treat the problem like his mattress and sleep on it. The episode ends with another cut scene with the three bears looking at the lentils at the table and deciding to go to McDonald’s instead.

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BOMB

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Before the opening credits, we see a plane drop a bomb. Neil’s alarm clock sounds but he only wakes up when it dies and falls over. Rik is in the bathroom, popping zits. He recites a poem about pollution. Neil gets up and calls to the others that it is two o’clock in the afternoon and it was lucky he woke up because they might have missed half the day. As he walks out of his room, he falls through the floor and ends up in the living room. “Thanks for telling me about the new hole in the floor”, he shouts back up to the others.

Rik is still in the bathroom and is about to put on some deodorant when he notices an odd hair on the roller. He shouts at Vyvian through the wall for using his deodorant but it turns out that Vyvian used it to give SPG a going over as he is starting to whiff. SPG is less than pleased to smell like a student’s armpit. Rik says that it is common stealing and if he uses his deodorant again, he is going to report it to the police. Vyv replies by punching a hole in the wall and sticking his fingers up at Rik.

Neil wants to know why it is always him who makes the tea. He plugs the kettle in and it promptly explodes. Neil realises that the kettle would rather kill itself than be used by him. Mike talks rubbish until Rik comes out of the bathroom to reply, then he jumps in and locks Rik out. Vyv’s bed was full of bits and he has a conversation with Mike about the similarities between fleas and bits. Neil is sitting in the kitchen talking to the kettle. Vyvian comes in and asks where the tea is. When Neil tells Vyv about the kettle, Vyvian decides to have raw tea and starts eating a teabag. Vyv has a great new trick. He gets Neil to stand on still with his eyes shut, then he clonks him over the head with the kettle. Neil just has time to say, “Ha ha, I get it” before he collapses.

He gets up again and looks for the lentils. He has a problem though, the lentils are trapped behind a huge mound of teetering crockery that will fall out of the cupboard if he opens the door. He asks Vyv to think of something. Vyv decides to get into the cupboard from the back, so they start tearing holes in the wall from the stairs. They finally get into the cupboard but the lentils leak out onto the floor. Neil asks Vyvian to get something to catch the lentils in so he walks into the kitchen and opens the cupboard to get a dish. The crockery falls out and smashes, but Vyv gets a saucer that he passes through the wall to Neil just in time to catch about four lentils. Neil suggests that they have cornflakes for breakfast, to which Vyv replies, “That’s disgusting”.

Mike comes downstairs and admires himself in the mirror. He thinks he looks great, unlike the kitchen. When he asks what the mess is, Neil replies “Well it’s mostly lentils, but there’s some crockery mixed in”. Vyv says that there is a cup of tea in the pot, putting a beaker with a teabag in the top of the pot. Mike thinks the act is really coming along. We get a cut scene with the ideal (post) nuclear family, but they start getting doused in ketchup. Rik walks in to catch Vyv using his sauce on the cornflakes. Vyv says that he couldn’t get to the fridge because there is an atom bomb in front of it. Everyone panics, except for Vyv, who suggests that they watch the TV. Neil thinks it’s the holocaust. There is nothing on and Rik says that he doesn’t know why they bother paying their licence fee. Mike says they don’t. Rik quite likes the idea of being a criminal and starts thinking of letting everyone know at the Anarchist’s society. Just then, someone rings the doorbell and Neil goes to answer it. If Neil got a penny for every time he answered the door, he would have £5.63. Vyv thinks that it will be someone unbelievably boring, but Neil shouts back that it is the TV detector man. Rik panics because he doesn’t want to go to prison and have horrible things done to him. Mike walks towards the door to be diplomatic, but Neil says that he thinks he is going to have to lie. Mike comes up with a back-up plan, throw the TV out of the window. Unfortunately, it bounces off the frame so they need another idea. This time Mike tells Vyvian to eat the TV. Vyv says that he’s wanted to do this for years and tucks in.

Mike goes to the door to stall the TV man while Rik writes his letter blaming everyone else for not buying a licence. Mike stalls him for a few moments with some mindless banter but the TV man gets annoyed and barges his way into the house. He finds Vyv in the kitchen with an electric lead sticking out of his mouth. Saying that this is an old trick, he tries to pull the TV out of Vyvian. Mike threatens to sue if the contents of his colleague’s stomach get damaged. The TV man then goes up to the bathroom to wait for nature to take its course so he can arrest him. He pauses to look at the bomb on his way.

As you can probably guess, there is a heck of a lot more in this op. I have reached the 6000 word limit that I didn't know existed. Bear with me as I have e-mailed Ciao to ask them to split the young ones products into their separate videos of 3 episodes so I will be able to fit all of the opinion in. Here's hoping that they do it for me. :(