Doctor in the House - Episode Guide

The lads are jealous when a handsome American doctor arrives, setting female hearts a-flutter. However there are more pressing matters as Michael, Paul and Bingham are on the interviewing panel to decide the new Senior House Officer. Michael has said it is a formality as he has promised it to Dick Stuart-Clark but when the better-qualified Nicky Barrington also applies Michael has no option but to give her the job.

When Michael leaves St. Swithins, Professor Loftus decides to replace him with Duncan Waring, who has been working as a doctor in Baltimore. When Duncan arrives at the hospital, Dick, Paul and others all pretend to have forgotten who he is for a joke but Loftus is pleased to see him and interested to know what methods he learned in America. One of these is singing during an operation. Loftus and Duncan disagree over treatment during the op but when Duncan is proved right Loftus joins him in playing a joke on the other doctors.

Learning that he may receive a knighthood if St. Swithins can produce a medical breakthrough, Professor Loftus takes up Bingham's suggestion that they research plastic catheters but sacks him when he finds he has stolen the idea from a magazine and assigns Duncan to the research instead. Duncan can't quite get the experiment to work but when an irate Bingham blows the whistle on Collier making home brew in the lab and takes a journalist there, it's Bingham's attempt to sabotage the research that causes its success.

The Minister of Health is to be admitted for the removal of varicose veins. When a vicar, Mr. Bridgenorth, also due to have varicose veins removed, turns up slightly ahead of the minister, he is mistaken for the illustrious patient and receives the full V.I.P. treatment whereas the minister himself is treated rather more ordinarily. However the minister appreciates this, and Professor Loftus breathes a sigh of relief that he might just get his knighthood after all.

Dr. Aziz comes to join Duncan in his research but Duncan finds it hard to understand him. Aziz leaves but a preparation of his is given to McCorquedale, a racist, bigoted Scots patient, as a sedative. Once again Duncan finds it hard to read Aziz's instructions and the wrong dosage is given - turning the patient black. Aziz makes it clear he left, not because he felt he was bullied racially but he found the staff incompetent and impossible to work with.

Duncan is dating Nurse Sandra so he is caught on the hop when Gloria and Bonnie, two girls he went out with in America, decide to show up independent of each other. He frantically tries to juggle things so the three don't meet up, and eventually Paul and Dick take the visitors off his hands. However, an irate Sandra refuses to speak to him so he is left with nobody.

The doctors are fed up with being over-worked and underpaid so Paul Collier does a time and motion study, setting out their hours. He writes letters to the Daily Mirror and the BMJ but the others are too cowardly to sign them so when they are published he is the only doctor called before the board - who actually agree with him and give the doctors a rise.

Duncan is returning a bag to Harley Street specialist Sir Desmond in his Oldsmobile, when Collier 'borrows' the car to impress a girl and Duncan reports it as stolen. He soon finds the car and drives off but then Paul reports it stolen and calls himself Duncan Waring, to appear to be the rightful owner of the car. They are both arrested and confuse the police by claiming to be the other. Professor Loftus eventually sorts things out by which time Sir Desmond's car has been towed away.

Dick shows an interest in joining the Freemasons so the other doctors send him a spoof letter, allegedly from the Masons, inviting him to spooky Wookham Priory at midnight. Here they terrify him, before revealing themselves so when Dick issues an invitation to an orgy at the Empire Hotel, Duncan assumes this is a wind-up and rings the police. When the police turn up it's actually a masonic meeting which they interrupt - involving the Chief Constable.

Lady Molly Cornford's father has died. He was a generous benefactor to St. Swithins and Professor Loftus organizes a memorial service for him. When the organist gets knocked unconscious whilst playing golf with Duncan, Bingham is only too pleased to fill the breach. Duncan, Paul and Dick see this as sucking up to Loftus so they get Bingham paralytic by giving him spiked tomato juices. And so at the service he ends up playing 'Good Golly, Miss Molly' instead of hymn number 123.

Professor Loftus believes there should be a junior doctor on the board but only Duncan and Bingham apply. Dick tries to swing things for Duncan by saying that his mother is a countess but Bingham, coincidentally called out to treat her, finds she is a policeman's wife and sends the board to see her. Dick thinks quickly and drags up to impersonate the countess and Duncan gets the post.

A new matron arrives, the terrifying and puritanical Miss Fox. Even Loftus, who knew her when he was a young doctor, is scared of her. Duncan and Paul attempt to get rid of her by sending love letters supposedly by Bingham but all in vain. Duncan and Bingham fall out over the same girl, Sandra, and Duncan decides to get at Bingham by putting a bucket of whitewash on top of the door so that it will fall him. It claims another victim instead - but it gets rid of the Fox!

Bingham is anxious to propose to Dr. Mary Parsons and does so in the mortuary where she is working, but by accident slips the ring onto a corpse's finger. Mary still carries a torch for Duncan, which angers Bingham. Dick has bet Duncan he can't stay the night alone in the mortuary so he, to win the bet, and Bingham, for revenge, dress as ghosts to scare him. Duncan sees through the trick immediately and sends them away - but another corpse is apparently stirring under a sheet. It's Mary, still after Duncan.

Bingham and Mary are getting married but Mary is applying for promotion and Lawrence fears she won't get it if it's known she's married, so Duncan tells him to keep the wedding secret and leave it to the last moment. The day arrives and Duncan, who is to be best man, and Lawrence, race through an operation, arousing the suspicions of Paul and Dick, who think Mary is marrying Duncan. The wedding goes ahead but the four doctors get into a scrap and fall into a fountain, which shows up on the wedding photos.

As the Binghams prepare for their honeymoon, Paul and Dick get Lawrence so drunk he passes out and when he comes to they have encased his leg in plaster, telling him he broke it dancing on a table. Duncan has to drive the couple to their hotel in their car but due to the lack of trains must stay the night. Paul drives down next day to free Bingham but his car breaks down and Lawrence has to tow him. Unfortunately the plaster gets stuck on the accelerator and eventually the car stops on a level crossing. Lawrence is freed but the car is a write-off and Collier ends up with his leg genuinely in plaster as a result.

Waring and Bingham are on night duty in the emergency room, with sole patient Nobby Watts, when a sailor who has returned from Asia checks in - with all the symptoms of small-pox. Having rung the Medical Officer of Health to report the outbreak, the two doctors panic as they are bitten by the sailor's pet mouse and accidentally break the radiator, causing a flood. Next day it is revealed that the sailor had chicken pox, not small-pox, but the medics have to go into isolation since they were bitten by a - possibly rabid - mouse.

After a ward round row as to which doctor should examine ex-schoolmaster Mr. Hutton first, Professor Loftus asks the doctors to come up with a system to improve efficiency. Duncan is the only one with a system that looks workable but it becomes so complicated that it has to be scrapped. Then Bingham puts forward a system - which he has got from Mr. Hutton. Sadly this is the same system that Waring got from the old man.

Collier is feeling stressed and when he climbs out of a window onto scaffolding to retrieve a paper that has blown there it is assumed he is suicidal. Duncan goes out to rescue him but they both have to be saved by the fire brigade. Bingham has also tried to get them using his rock-climbing skills. Unfortunately he is left dangling.

Reggie Grace is a hapless, clumsy medical student but Collier has given him a good report because he fancies his sister, so when a party of big-wigs come to visit the hospital Grace is charged with showing them round. To cause a diversion Collier feigns illness and collapses. The plan is that he supposedly has glandular fever but Reggie correctly diagnoses a slipped disc and is declared the hero of the hour by the visitors.

Considering the food in the hospital canteen to be inedible, Duncan and Paul go on a macrobiotic diet, but Professor Loftus is appalled to find they have scurvy, due to a lack of vitamin C, and makes them eat in the canteen. To bring him on side they get him to eat the canteen food and he agrees that it is dreadful. However the new menu he orders proves to be so expensive that the old fare is served up again.

Due to a remark made by Duncan in his local Chinese restaurant, a party of Chinese communists comes to visit the hospital. Bingham, in particular, is convinced they are spies come to find how hospital equipment can be used to start wars, so there is panic when they all go missing. In fact they have been admiring the hospital's linear accelerator and put in an order for some for Chinese hospitals. They are then invited to watch an operation, which the paranoid Bingham almost sabotages, but the day ends well. However, it seems that Duncan has also been shooting his mouth off in his local Hungarian restaurant as well.

The doctors want to accompany Loftus on his ward rounds in order to see the pretty new physiotherapists. Loftus humiliates them in front of the ladies. Duncan dates one of them, Emma, whom he sees as young and vulnerable and he is very protective of her. This gets too much for her and she strips off in public, denouncing him as dull before she chucks him.

Envious of the Binghams' new house which they bought with financial help from their parents, Dick, Paul and Duncan consider buying a property. Dick and Paul offer six thousand to Major Woodnutt for his house in Primrose Crescent, which he says he will honour as an officer and a gentleman. However, when Duncan innocently puts in a higher offer he accepts that instead and eventually sells to a couple who put in an even higher bid. The house is lost but revenge presents itself when the major arrives at the hospital in need of an operation.

When Professor Loftus goes on holiday, his replacement is Dick's uncle, Jeremy De Quincy, who is easy-going and initially seen as a breath of fresh air. However, eventually he gets on everybody's nerves as he is a lecherous scrounger, borrowing money from both patients and doctors. When Dick tells him he knows he is not qualified to be a chief surgeon, he leaves - but appoints Lawrence Bingham as his successor.

Duncan and Paul want a colour television set for the doctors' common room but the Binghams want a table-tennis table as Lawrence professes to be excellent at the game. Dick stays neutral. To decide which item they should have a ping-pong match is arranged between Waring and Collier on one side and Bingham and Dick on the other with Mary as umpire - the winners to bring in their choice. Dick and Paul are both useless as is Mary as the umpire and even Lawrence's shortcomings are eventually exposed.

Mrs. Loftus returns to work as a nurse at the same time that Annabel, Lady Cornford's daughter, starts work. Annabel does not want preferential treatment and disguises her parentage but when she lets it slip that she has had dinner with the professor and has been seeing a married man called Geoff, it is assumed that she and Loftus are having an affair. Mrs. Loftus eventually explains the truth but, to save face, Duncan tries to tell everybody about another of the professor's indiscretions.

Professor Loftus is near to receiving his knighthood when he hears that Professor Mincing from Highcross has also been considered. Having suspended Dick for cooking the books for the hospital bar, he reinstates him when Dick gets him membership at his club. Unfortunately this is all seen and recorded by Professor Mincing so, to avoid further suspension, Dick and Duncan, disguised as window-cleaners, set out to retrieve the tell-tale tapes.

Professor Loftus is to go Buckingham Palace to receive his knighthood but rivalry between Waring and Bingham means that his Rolls Royce is cancelled. Duncan sets out to drive him but runs out of petrol and, when Collier offers to drive, Bingham lets his tyres down so that eventually the journey has to be made in an ambulance. Since some robbers have also used an ambulance as a getaway vehicle, confusion reigns as the hospital party is arrested. Sir Geoffrey misses his appointment but they do get a reward for catching the villains.

Eaves-dropping on a conversation between Sir Geoffrey and Sir John Pollock, the head of Highcross, Duncan learns that St. Swithins is to be demolished to make way for a hotel and the staff moved into Highcross. Feelings run high as a result, leading to protests to suggest that the staff are all cavalier and incompetent. However, what really swings things is when the rugby team are made aware of the bad news.

Duncan tries to cheer up depressed Dr. Don Harper, whose wife has just left him, but in vain. Duncan himself is pleased because, though there is currently a dearth of pretty nurses to date, the lovely Nurse Dobbs has agreed to go out with him. However she is actually Harper's wife using her maiden name and, seeing her with Duncan, gives her husband the incentive to win her back.

Due to Dick Stuart-Clark's incompetence a patient almost loses a healthy leg and he gets a good telling off from Sir Geoffrey. When he asks his colleagues how he is regarded they are very honest, telling him he is a rubbish doctor and a notorious skirt chaser. He considers resigning but Sir Geoffrey wants to give him another chance, persuading Duncan and Paul to give him a confidence-boosting pep talk, though, due to a misunderstanding in terms, this almost goes wrong and when Dick eventually gets his own confidence back Sir Geoffrey is puzzled as to what actually happened.

The blundering Reggie Grace is feeling ill again so Waring decides to use a new computer to find out what his prognosis is and it turns out that he has typhoid. The hospital is sealed off and features on the evening news as a state of emergency is called. Ultimately a second opinion shows that Reggie has gastroentiritis and not typhoid after all. The machine was faulty - especially when it shows up that Lawrence Bingham is pregnant.

Sir Geoffrey wants bright ideas for the hospital's annual garden party. Duncan suggests a beauty contest but has trouble finding contestants and is upset when Annabel, whom he is dating, puts herself forward, as does Mary Bingham. Lawrence suggests donkey rides but the donkeys arrive early and have to he kept hidden. Paul will do conjuring tricks as The Great Collieto but he turns out to be a disaster as does Dick's puppet show when, after an encounter with Punch, Sir Geoffrey discovers it is a ploy to sell booze and children have to be sent away from it. Amidst all the chaos the beauty contest gets won by one of the donkeys and any profits made disappear as everybody wants a share.

Bingham refuses to recommend Paul to Loftus for a senior house post. However when Lionel Bingham, Lawrence's identical but less buttoned-up twin appears, he impersonates his brother and gets Paul the job. Whilst Lawrence launches a bitter diatribe against how Lionel always bested him at everything, a third brother Leonard, turns up.

Sir Geoffrey is off to a conference in Rome and asks Duncan to accompany him, giving him the text of the speech he will deliver. Paul, annoyed that Duncan threw him out of an operation for clowning around, steals the paper and hides it in an adult magazine, where it is found by Dick, who tries to exploit the situation to replace Duncan in Rome. The paper is replaced anonymously but gets thrown out with the rubbish. Duncan has offered a reward for its return and the reward goes to the cleaning lady. On the tarmac at the airport Sir Geoffrey checks the contents of his brief-case and the paper blows away.

Painters arrive to decorate the ward and, as they are in white coats, Duncan mistakes them for new students. The painters do their work but go home at five, leaving a bare patch, which Duncan paints in. Next day the irate painters down tools in protest at his non-union interference. The doctors put the furniture back in place, causing the porters to also down tools. Soon all the hospital's manual workers are on strike so Sir Geoffrey suspends Duncan to appease them. This causes the doctors to go on strike.

Duncan joins doctor Diana - whom he has helped by lancing a patient's boil very roughly - in protesting against the hospital swimming pool being demolished to make way for a new wing. Sir Geoffrey promises to keep the pool but goes back on his word and Duncan, Diana and other protesters lie down in front of the bulldozer coming to get rid of the pool. The driver is none other than the man with the boil and the bulldozer ends up demolishing Sir Geoffrey's car.

The Binghams' marriage is in crisis. Lawrence wants a son and heir but Mary wants to carry on with her medical career. Efforts on Lawrence's part to get Duncan to talk Mary round fail miserably and soon Dick and Paul have been roped into the argument. Since Mary's pet name for her husband is Badger, Duncan wheels a crib into the ward containing a badger to drop a hint in her direction but she explains that she is already pregnant.

Sir Geoffrey and his wife are visiting her mother and he asks Duncan to look after his cat, Thomas, which wees everywhere and is not good-natured. Thomas gets put with the lab animals and Duncan assumes he has been taken away for experimentation. He buys a replacement cat but Sir Geoffrey claims this is not his Thomas. Thomas is saved, making Sir Geoffrey think again about animal tests, but, oddly, gives birth to kittens. Lady Loftus explains that the first Thomas died and she replaced him behind her husband's back, unaware that this cat was a different sex.

Duncan and Dick carry on playing cards during a fire drill, aware there is no fire but Sir Geoffrey is annoyed with their apathy and appoints them fire wardens. Urged by Sir Geoffrey to make the next fire drill as realistic as possible, Bingham causes a real fire but the brigade don't respond as they are used to hoaxes. Duncan and Dick panic and steal a fire engine only to discover that Sir Geoffrey has extinguished the flames himself. When the firemen eventually turn up they are not pleased with the doctors.

In debt and spurned by Annabel, Duncan decides to join the Navy but, when Annabel agrees to marry him, needs a way of getting out, so feigns madness. The psychiatrist testing him is also mad but the Surgeon Commander agrees to release Duncan if he keeps quiet about it. Duncan is released only to find that Annabel has now joined up.

The Municipal and District Hospital Patients' Protection League has received six hundred and seventy complaints about Duncan Waring, and he only has thirty patients on his ward. When the board of governors has a new member, the terrifying Mrs. Broadway, maybe it's time to bring in the charm offensive, since Dick is doing a roaring trade as a medi-florist and purveyor to patients of chocolates which are just past the sell-by date. By the end of the day, however, it's Duncan who wants to complain.

Items are going missing from around the hospital, arousing suspicions that they are being stolen and sold to hotels - until an electro-cardiograph machine goes walkabout. A recently flush Duncan becomes the prime suspect and an eager Bingham pulls all the stops out to catch the thief, but cries wolf so often that nobody believes him when he actually rumbles the culprit.

Duncan re-encounters Irishman Danny Hooley, a former colleague from his medical student days, who claims to have been working in Africa. Duncan gets him a job at St Swithins as a locum, but Bingham discovers he has been struck off for having affairs with patients and Sir Geoffrey sacks him. Duncan tries to hide him in his room but it's clear Danny's days as a doctor are over.

Dick gets the sack and Duncan resigns in protest. With Collier gone and the Binghams bringing up triplets they've nothing to stay around for and become ship's doctors on passenger liner the Begonia, only to find the captain is Sir Geoffrey's twin brother Norman. Next day they are shipped aboard by a crane to a very dirty ship whose last doctor died of suspected parrot fever and where they are likely to be pursued by crewman Mad Jake. Fortunately they find out in time they're on the wrong ship, it's not the Begonia after all.

Having put to sea, Duncan discovers that he is prone to sea-sickness so Dick gives him a healthy dose of remedial medicine. Unfortunately he overdoes the dosage and Duncan falls into the ship's swimming pool, arriving soaking wet at the captain's cocktail party. The captain sacks him and in revenge Duncan tells American passenger Mrs. Tranmere that Loftus loves to sing, so she asks him. Ultimately Loftus reinstates Duncan because the party was a huge success, due to his singing.

There is a loss of manpower on the Begonia because Dick has been doling out sick notes or chitties to the crew. Captain Loftus discovers this and threatens to sack him. Industrial action is called. However, when the ship arrives in Madeira nobody wants a chittie, as it would mean missing shore leave. Dick has been fooled by the crew. He has, however, made money by selling the chitties at two pounds a time.

Dick and Duncan are both smitten by the lovely Anna-Maria, a glamorous Austrian passenger. Dick gets to bandage her finger but Duncan,as the senior officer, takes over and keeps Dick away from her by forcing him to make animal noises in a talent contest. Anna-Maria is persuaded to enter a beauty pageant which she wins. However she has also attracted the attentions of the captain and when Duncan goes to her cabin, finds Loftus there in a compromising position.

The purser finds a pair of trousers with the name tag 'Manuel Sanchez' on and knows there is a stowaway on board. Dick finds him hiding in his wardrobe. He tells him he came to England for work but missed his girl-friend in Tenerife. Then Duncan finds him and gets a different story. The two doctors finally work together and, at Tenerife, dress Manuel as a souvenir vendor, knowing the purser will throw him off the ship as he wants.

Dick is running a late night poker school and a money exchange for passengers but collapses from the stress of it all and needs bed rest. He gets Duncan to take over but Duncan fumbles the exchange, giving the passengers overly generous rates and is hopeless at poker, losing to Captain Loftus, who finds out about it and wants to be included. Finally Duncan collapses from exhaustion - as does the purser.

Dick and Duncan have already been carpeted by Captain Loftus for being late back on ship after shore leave but now find themselves stranded on Madeira as the Begonia has sailed without them. They get hold of a small motor boat to chase after their ship and eventually wind up back on board but only after Dick has knocked Duncan overboard.

Duncan is dismissive of Mr. McArthur in front of fellow passenger Polly Roberts, an undercover journalist writing an article on the cruise. She complains about him to the captain, who tells him a Very Special Passenger has found fault with him. Duncan assumes this is McArthur and keeps out of his way. When Polly gets food poisoning, thanks to dodgy squid Dick bought for the captain's table, she is charmed by Duncan's concern and they bury the hatchet. Knowing she is the undercover journalist he is again rude to Mr. McArthur - who turns out to own the ship.

The two doctors are relaxing on a Spanish beach when Duncan sees a local girl in difficulties in the water and rushes to rescue her, applying mouth to mouth resuscitation. The locals assume he is kissing her and Duncan finds he is expected to marry her. When he refuses he is accused of rape and jailed, requiring Captain Loftus to bribe the police chief in order to release him.

Whilst Dick beats the captain at cards, Duncan has a day on the beach with the charming Rosita, only to find himself in extreme agony, clutching his side. He is sure he has appendicitis but, now the Begonia has sailed, there is only one other person on board - discounting the vet - who can operate - Dick Stuart-Clark. Duncan is most reluctant to let his friend loose on him though fortunately it transpires that his affliction is food poisoning from the ice cream he ate on the beach.

Mrs. Tranmere, an influential middle-aged American woman, has taken a shine to Duncan and the Captain orders him to dance attendance on her to keep her sweet. Duncan is more interested in her daughter, who has reciprocated the feeling, and he has also arranged to go on a date with her. To add to the complications, Joyce, the ship's nurse, gets drunk and throws herself at the doctor, requiring him to run from one date to the next, finally ending with none.

Duncan is sick of the purser offering medical advice and the purser is anxious to rat on Duncan to the captain for taking bribes from the kitchen. After the couple have publicly come to blows, the purser disappears and Duncan is suspected of killing him. The purser reappears, having got locked in a store room and escaped through the ventilation shaft, and the feud continues.

The Begonia comes home after the cruise and Duncan, having fallen out with Dick, decides he has had enough of being a ship's doctor and returns to St. Swithins. Things have changed but Sir Geoffrey will have him back - and Dick too. Should they accept? Or should they return to the Begonia?

Dick and Duncan return to St Swithins, having failed to stop - thanks to Dick - at a road accident. Hardly anybody remembers who they are, though they get their jobs back. New colleagues number efficient doctor Kate Wright, proud, but often tipsy, Scot Andrew MacKenzie and James Gascoigne, the creepy, serious natural successor to Lawrence Bingham. Duncan almost loses his new job on his first day after running up against the manager of an injured footballer.

Confusion reigns at the hospital when the non-English speaking Ciappossoni family take over Casualty, a hypochondriac demands an operation, a corpse goes astray and convicted criminal Melia, brought in under guard for a gallstone operation, has his trolley accidentally switched with that of the corpse and ends up in the morgue, where he assumes he is on a ward and chats to the other 'patients' - to nil response.

To celebrate Sir Geoffrey's twenty years as a professor of surgery, Dick and Duncan decide to buy him a present to celebrate the event, but the other doctors are not keen as they have had recent run-ins with the great man. Dick eventually buys him a tape recorder but it has a mind of its own and accidentally begins recording - a conversation the doctors are having in which they all criticize Sir Geoffrey.

When Sir Geoffrey gives the hospital its first radio service he should have known better than to let Dick help run it as he incorporates local advertisers - to line his own pockets. MacKenzie's drunken on-air rants and Gascoigne's tedious play about Louis Pasteur also drive the patients to watching old films on TV, but when Nurse Reynolds unwittingly chats up Duncan on air, it gives birth to a saucy soap opera with the patients clamouring for more.

Duncan has lost charity money entrusted him by Sir Geoffrey. A cross country race between St Swithins and Highcross is coming up so Duncan, Dick and McKenzie bet on Highcross to win and nobble their own runners by various means. Taking part themselves they accidentally win but are disqualified for cheating, ensuring a Highcross victory.

Duncan needs to pass a vital anatomy exam but the rowdy antics of flatmates Dick Stuart-Clark and Andrew MacKenzie are not conducive to a study environment. Fellow doctor Kate takes pity on him and lets him use her flat. Her boyfriend Barry is not at all happy with this so Kate finishes with him, leaving Duncan with the possibility of getting the girl, as well as the exam.

At an exhibition encouraging school-leavers to take up medicine, Dick, Duncan and Andrew meet the head of the Charlemagne hotel chain, who is looking for a resident doctor in his London hotel. The three doctors vie with each other and the post is won by Dick, but it is not what it was cracked up to be and he returns to St. Swithins.

Duncan takes charge of a group of new students and tries to get in with them by playing the joker and recounting his own japes as a young student. Following an operation he is aghast to find that there is a spare body part in the bin. He fears that he has done something wrong but in fact it's the students playing a joke on him. He needs to get his own back.

The five doctors are finding it very cramped having to share one office, and getting smaller desks doesn't help, so Dick has an idea. In exchange for being introduced to the local golf professional, Sir Geoffrey will swap his large office for the others'. However, further complications arise and everybody is still dissatisfied, so Duncan hatches a plan to get things back to normal.

Duncan competes with James Gascoigne to find an unusual case study to present at a forthcoming medical conference. Fortunately for Duncan he finds Mr. Andrews, a man whose heart is on the right hand side of his body - a rare case indeed. Unfortunately Mr. Andrews gets fed up with waiting around and wanders off whilst the eventual X-ray tendered is that of Sir Geoffrey.

Duncan is feeling depressed so he goes to see Professor Browning, a psychiatrist who urges him to change his life-style and become more confident. This works so well that Dick and Andrew also go to see Browning and change their life-styles - both becoming unusually sober and serious. Even Sir Geoffrey is not immune from the Browning treatment but he becomes very trendy.

Dick hurts his leg and Duncan does his back in so they decide that, as an alternative to conventional medicine, they will seek the help of a faith healer. Sir Geoffrey is dismissive, calling such people quacks. However, when the two doctors arrive for their appointment they discover that the faith healer has just died.

Duncan is feeling stressed out again. Gascoigne seems to be after his job and they have a public falling-out in front of a bunch of medical students. He loves Kate but can he go through with marriage to her? Things conspire to get on top of him and he has a big bust up with her after she hits him. Will they get back on track for the next series?

When Duncan finds a baby on his door step with a note attached saying Baby Duncan, he assumes that the child is his and makes efforts to track down the putative mother from his ex-girlfriends. He takes easily to paternity, as, rather oddly, does Dick, and he is dismayed when the baby's actual mother turns up to claim the ownership of her small charge and finds he has no connection with it.

Duncan is planning to take Kate for a romantic weekend in Paris but has to deliver a kidney for a transplant at St. Swithins and gets Dick to drive him there. Unfortunately Dick's crazy driving attracts police attention and Duncan has to hitch a lift with a family on holiday but they have to stop when their son is sick. Fortunately an R.A.F. helicopter comes to Duncan's rescue but the weekend still looks to be doomed.

Duncan is shocked to find himself overdrawn at the bank, thanks to Dick's 'borrowing' his credit card to gamble on the horses. He lost and, as Andy MacKenzie is also in need of funds, the three doctors volunteer to be paid guinea pigs at a scientific research unit. This involves testing a new muscle relaxant, with which they are injected. Being so relaxed has dire results when they return to work at St. Swithins.

Duncan panics when physiotherapist Eleanor Wilcox comes to work at the hospital. Some while ago, returning from a conference, he had a one night stand with her but said his name was Dick Stuart-Clark, to prevent Kate finding out. Now he must keep up the pretence with Dick pretending he is Duncan. In fact Kate knew about it all along but had also had a similar fling with a male physiotherapist.

Dick hopes to win a new car in a slogan-writing contest. So does Mr. Wilkes, a butcher admitted with a suspected gallstone. Sir Geoffrey and Duncan feel that an operation to remove it is warranted. Chief physician Professor Avery feels that this is unnecessary - it can be removed by other means. Andrew MacKenzie agrees with him - leading to a war of the wards, though ultimately it turns out that the 'gallstone' is actually a shadow on the X-ray.

Gervaise Gascoigne, the pompous, rude and very wealthy father of James, arrives as a patient at the hospital and manages to irritate everybody, including his son, whom he refers to as Florence Nightingale. Dick tries to fleece him in a gambling scam but Gervaise is too canny to be had and turns the tables on him. Even Sir Geoffrey is not immune from old Gascoigne's withering comments as Alicia, Gervaise's wife, once had a fling with him.

Duncan is desperate to get together five unusual medical cases so that he can present them at an exam. However his frantic efforts to acquire them are somehow misunderstood so that he ends up, not with medical anomalies but cute soft toys, as fluffy bunnies and cuddly Teddy bears fill up his ward - a fact which is not going to endear him to Loftus.

Sir Geoffrey is in a constant foul mood, worse than anybody has ever seen him in before, barking at staff and patients alike. Knowing that he has always had a soft spot for Duncan, his colleagues put Waring forward as the natural peace-maker. He discovers that his boss's black mood is down to his having had a row with his wife, as a result of which they are not speaking to each other. Helped by Kate, Duncan resolves to patch things up between the couple.

The funds from the Entertainments Committee seem to have disappeared and so a new means of raising cash is required. What about a beauty contest to find the prettiest nurse? Dick fixes it that Nurse Reynolds will win it and then return the winnings to him for the fund but Duncan suspects that this is another of Dick's dishonest scams and talks the nurse out of it. With no 'plant' to win the money, there is only one solution - Duncan must drag up as the prettiest nurse, attracting the attention of Sir Edmund Steele from Highcross at the same time.

Saturday afternoon war breaks out in the doctors' common room. Duncan, Dick and Andy want to watch football on the television but Gascoigne wants to see an old film and, for a while, gets his way, thanks to Sir Geoffrey. When Dick tries to persuade Gascoigne that the set has broken down, two repairs men arrive to take it away for mending. Gascoigne, however, has the last word by sending the others a set with no internal workings, just a football on a piece of string inside it.

Californian girl Kirby Allen comes to St. Swithins. Her father is a millionaire and Sir Geoffrey hopes that he will contribute an expensive scintillascope to the hospital. But father must be kept sweet so, although Dick, Andy and Duncan are all smitten by Kirby, they must not molest or antagonize her in any way. Strangely enough, she has no interest in any of them and only has eyes for James Gascoigne, who appears to be scoring with her.

It's Sunday and Duncan has just completed a punishing night shift and is exhausted. It's also his birthday but everybody, even Kate, has forgotten the fact. He really could do with a little peace and quiet but Sir Geoffrey, who gets him to buy him lunch, and Dick, smarting because he has failed to get a date with new nurse Nerida, only manage to get in his way. Not to mention the bleeper going off. What's a guy to do to earn a day of rest?

Duncan and Kate announce that they are getting married. Dick wants to organize a reception at the bar for them but Andy, whose own marriage failed, cannot understand why they should wish to tie the knot. To escape the attentions of their colleagues they decide to have a very quiet ceremony at a registry office with no guests but, at the end of the day, do not go through with it.

Duncan is working in St. Barnabas hospital, Sydney, under fearsome Professor Beaumont and alongside the Australian answer to Bingham, Maurice Griffin. Dick Stuart-Clark is admitted as an amnesia sufferer, though this is a ploy, as he skipped St Swithins having sold off oxygen cylinders and is wanted in Sydney for not paying his hotel bill. Duncan takes him to see Beaumont about a job but before any deal can be reached Griffin, whose patient Dick is, has shoved a syringe full of sedatives up his bottom and knocked him cold.

Still unemployed, Dick parties till all hours, causing Duncan to be late for an operation and throw up on the theatre sister. Duncan decides it's time his friend got a job and makes him fill in the application form. Dick, a reluctant interviewee, does his best to get on the wrong side of chief anaesthetist Wilkinson, but the man loves his cavalier attitude and gives him a job.

Dick and Duncan both want to take physiotherapist Pamela Kincaid to a weekend beach party. Duncan plans to get Dick out of the way by sending him to a conference but Dick 'persuades' a philandering patient to take his place. When the man's wife turns up at St. Barnabas to see him, a heavily bandaged Duncan impersonates him, but his efforts to avoid Professor Beaumont leave Dick free to act as escort to Pamela.

Retired jockey 'Chalky' White is on Duncan's ward. Whilst Sister Cummings misunderstands their conversation about horses, 'Chalky' persuades Duncan to invest in a race horse, Moonboggler, and Dick goes half shares with him. When the horse goes lame the doctors plan to put him for stud but unfortunately too much sex makes him go dizzy.

Dick's latest money-making scheme is a raffle with a trip to Hawaii as the main prize. Griffin wins it but goes down with a 'mysterious' illness and can't make it so Beaumont, who has bought most of the tickets, demands there is a second draw. The winner is Duncan but the trip is cancelled because the travel agent with whom Dick arranged it has been arrested for fraud.

When Dick hears that Duncan might be moving his new girl-friend, Sister Potts, into the flat, he fears for his tenancy. After becoming a responsible doctor at work and waiting on Duncan at home, he concocts a story that he is engaged to fearsome Sister Fletcher, and wants her to move in but offers to break it off if Duncan gives up his girl-friend. Actually Sister Fletcher is unaware that she has just got engaged but soon will be as Duncan plans his revenge on Dick.

An attractive young lady out-patient asks Dick and Duncan to her fancy dress party, where her 'costume' will be Lady Godiva. Duncan plans to go as a witch-doctor but Griffin, who has been reading a book on head-hunters of Borneo, mishears him ordering his costume and assumes that a witch-doctor is working in the hospital. He tells Beaumont, who believes he is over-doing it and sends him home, asking Duncan to replace him. Arriving in costume Duncan frightens the out-patients.

As a pre-cursor to a visit to St. Barnabas by the Minister of Health, his underlings are shown around and get the wrong impression when they walk in on Dick advising Griffin on how to chat up Nurse Pettigrew. When the Minister turns up to watch an operation, Duncan has inadvertently got drunk, Dick is listening to the races and Griffin makes an awkward entrance on a trolley with Nurse Pettigrew. When the three doctors are sent for for a carpeting, Dick and Duncan discover it's good to have friends in high places.

Professor Beaumont receives a letter from Sir Geoffrey claiming that Duncan owes two thousand pounds in gambling debts back in Britain. In fact the culprit is Dick, who has used Duncan's name and Duncan threatens to have him extradited unless he clears the matter up. Dick goes to the bank to collect the money but blows it at the races, earning a thump from Duncan. Beaumont agrees to take the money out of Dick's salary but Dick finds out that he is not the only one to use another's name in vain.

Professor Beaumont is angry that the patients have been complaining about the three doctors, even Griffin, whose lengthy descriptions of operations have induced nausea and all must behave themselves. Unfortunately Griffin gets into a spat with a cantankerous old man, Dick is caught on the fiddle and Duncan gets a thump from a seven foot muscle man whose car he damaged earlier in the day. Duncan is relieved when the day is over - until he drives into Beaumont's car.

Dick and Duncan urge Professor Beaumont to have a day off, but Dick leaves Duncan in the lurch when he joins a friend on his boat, The Sydney Surprise. Duncan goes to find him but Griffin rings Professor Beaumont and sends him to the boat on a supposed emergency. The two doctors are found out - but so is the professor when a rich widow also on board turns out to be his bit on the side.

When Professor Beaumont asks to use the doctors' flat for the afternoon, Duncan assumes it's to entertain his bit on the side and when Griffin overhears Duncan tell Dick, he is only too happy to lead the professor's wife to the flat. In fact the young lady in question is the professor's niece, whom he is helping with her exams, but Beaumont doesn't want his wife to find out, so when Dick arrives with his card school, Beaumont joins in. Soon Mrs. Beaumont has taken his place and is winning money from everybody at the table.

The animosity between Duncan and Maurice Griffin intensifies when Griffin gets slapped by a nurse's irate mother after she is told he is Duncan. Both doctors squabble over who should have priority in the operating theatre with their respective patients but it appears they have mixed the patients up and performed an operation on a man who does not need one. In fact the orderlies mixed up the name tags but Professor Beaumont allows the doctors to believe they are in the wrong so that he can transfer them - and Stuart-Clark - to Casualty.

Over twenty years have passed since their student days. Dick is now Professor of Surgery with rich wife Emma and daughter Rebecca, a militant union leader among the medical students, Paul is a thrice-divorced Harley Street consultant and Duncan married to Loftus's daughter Geraldine. Whilst perusing a photo album to discuss the guest list for Sir Geoffrey's upcoming birthday party, the three doctors find a picture of former nurse Dorothy Sheridan, who dated them all. When Rebecca introduces her friend Justine, Dorothy's daughter, each wonder if they are her father - as does colleague Lionel Snell.

Rebecca tells Dick the hospital needs a new computer costing two thousand pounds but he is otherwise occupied with inviting minor celebrities to Sir Geoffrey's birthday party in pursuit of that elusive knighthood, though Sir Geoffrey is dismayed that the guest list comprises mainly strangers. On the night Rebecca and her students kidnap Sir Geoffrey and demand the price of the computer as a ransom. Dick pays up, hoping to stop the cheque but finds Sir Geoffrey was in cahoots with the students all along and, thanks to them, is loving his party.

Duncan is appalled that the penny-pinching hospital administrator, accountant Adam Quint, will not spend money on run-down wards, malfunctioning internal phone systems and other much-needed improvements. So he tells him that there is to be a V.I.P. visitor and Quint puts everything to rights, feeling cheated when a satisfied Duncan tells him it was his own fault for assuming that celebrity patient was not the heir to the throne but a little boy who needed his tonsils out - also called Charles Windsor.

Paul decides to have a vasectomy and persuades Duncan to do the same. Duncan has his, but on the way to the operating theatre Paul sees a pretty girl and backs out, having to pretend to Duncan that he had the snip. When he eventually sees the pretty girl with whom he would like to have babies again Paul discovers that she is about to have a sex change operation.

The three doctors are all set to go to Cardiff Arms Park to watch the rugby but, fearing wifely disapproval, claim to be going to the funeral of their late, unpopular colleague Bickerstaff, which is taking place near the ground. Along with Sir Geoffrey they attend the funeral, staying for the wake where they sample Bickerstaff's mother's crab and avocado dip, Unfortunately it lands all four of them in casualty with food poisoning before they can see the match - leading them to ponder on the fact that, even when dead, Bickerstaff knew how to ruin their day.

To the jealousy of some of his colleagues, Paul becomes a national celebrity as the Monday Medic on breakfast television, with his catchphrase 'It's all right, I am a doctor'. He gets a column in women's magazine Twenty-Something where he is invited to conduct research on why young women are attracted to older men, and finds himself smitten by the American researcher working with him. However it turns out that she was only using him, as her marriage to him would have given her a work permit.

Duncan is feeling stressed out. He rows with a young patient called Alec who swears by Paul Collier's new book and, having thrown a fit when his relaxation tape is also by Paul, comes to see that he is jealous of his colleague. To help him find out if private medicine is for him, Paul lets him take his Harley Street surgery for an afternoon but, after another meeting with Alec, appreciates that Paul does not have the answer for everything and is happy to stay at St. Swithins.