Original subtitles

What's the matter?

Wind.

Been at me all night.

It must be yes, it is dead dog stew.

That's better.

That's a done a U -turn.

Thank God for that.

Well, better an empty house than a bad tenant.

Well, just don't do your evicting in here.

Dear Miss Trent, how do they know my name?

Probably looked at the envelope.

Dear Miss Trent, you have probably already won £2 ,000.

Pig's bum, I have.

Nobody gets anything for nothing, Tom.

Now, if they had said, Dear Miss Trent, the likelihood of a decrepit old prune

like you winning more than a gnat's knickers is about ten million to one,

then I might have read further.

I don't suppose they aim their campaigns at just one particularly perversal bat.

Nasty little people.

In fact, I think we might see the sun seize over long before we see that kind

honesty in advertising.

Honesty in anything, come to that.

Honesty is the great lost art of our time.

Now, what on earth does that mean? I don't know, but it sounded quite good.

It would be nice if we were all honest.

It wouldn't be, but bloody disastrous.

This delicate ramshackle shed of our existence is only saved from toppling

the cliff of life by the strands and web of deceit which anchor it to the

crumbling lime.

Would you care to repeat that?

No. But it hopes not.

It's only Monday, and her metaphors are already wildly out of control.

What I'm saying is that we are brought up on lies and dishonesty right from the

beginning. What is the first thing that a child hears?

Oh, what a beautiful baby.

It probably looks like a diseased tomato.

I was a beautiful baby.

Yes, well, I'm sure they told you that.

Every little boy is told that he's going to grow up to be something amazing.

Then he spends the rest of his life trying to work out why he's just a

bit of gormless cannon fodder picking his nose with a shovel.

Man is the only species that tells fibs.

It's such a pity.

We should all be honest about everything all the time.

It'd never catch on.

From now on, I'm going to be honest in everything I say.

It might catch on, and the world will be a better place, all thanks to Tom

Ballard, explorer and philosopher.

And well -known fruit loop.

You may mock, but just remember, mighty oaks come from little crab apples.

Bloody old fool.

Oh, my God.

Hello.

Morning, Diana.

Good morning, Diana.

On the good ship, lollipop, it's a quick trip to the candy shop. What are you

doing? I may not be a very important person, but I would like to be

as at least existing when I come into a room.

Jane, when I... I am reading my private mail in my own private cell. I do not

expect to be assailed by tap -dancing ding -a -lings.

What do you want?

I'm just doing my rounds.

Oh, you've got a letter?

Yes, from my niece, the Clapham Strangler, the one who wants to kill me.

She thinks you're the bee's niece.

Well,

she wants to get married.

Oh, so do I.

Oh, isn't that nice?

Oh, Jane, you're stopping so wet.

The lovely Sarah. How wonderful.

Well, she's bringing her intended down here.

Oh, mustn't it be wonderful to have an intended?

Da -da, da -da.

Do you, Jane, take this man?

Oh, yes, I do. I do, I do. Da -da, da -da. Oh, shut up. Oh, I'm sorry. I just

get carried away when there's romance in the air.

You'll never get married, Jane.

What? Not a chance.

honest at all times. No.

I mean, if ever there was a spinster, it's you, Jane.

No man in his right mind would even notice you, let alone take a second

Is that true, Diana? No, Jane, it certainly is not true. Tom is just

some rather silly psychological party game.

I am being honest.

Jane, you are never going to get within a hundred miles of Harvey Bay.

Aren't I?

Not a chance. You must realise that in the great swimming pool of life, Harvey

Baines is permanently at the shallow end. Harvey is a man of great depth. He

about as much depth as a puddle in a drought.

His ideal woman is something that looks good with his car.

Something that will prop up his well -justified lack of self -esteem.

A glamorised, sexy doxy.

That's what he wants.

A beauty queen.

A beauty queen?

Yes, he's certainly not going to be interested in someone who looks like a

leftover from a jumble sale.

out this chappy my niece is so keen on, but I want you to keep your mouth shut.

None of this onerty claptrap.

It's very hard to waver once you're on the path to righteousness.

One wrong word and you'll get my stick up your path to righteousness.

Look, here they come.

Now just, just button your lip.

Hello, auntie.

Don't call me auntie, you revolting child.

Hello, Tom.

Hello.

You're looking well.

I had a terrible night with my wind.

Oh!

Diana, Tom, I'd like you to meet my fiancé, Sam Parry.

How do you do, Miss Trent? I've heard so much about you. You're Sarah's great

hero. She always was a silly child.

Hello, Tom.

Right, come on, let's all go and eat.

You'll find the food quite revolting.

Today, it's cat stew and eyeball soup.

So, what do you do, Sam?

Ah, you mean what are my prospects?

No, no, no, not at all.

If Sarah's chosen you, well, that's fine by me.

Apart from her occasional attempts to kill me, I've always found her to be a

very sound judgment, especially since she gave up running the knocking shops.

What?

Diana thought that running a model agency was akin to running a brothel.

it's the same business, isn't it? You've got it, you sell it, you've still got

it.

Enough.

I now have three beauty parlours. Oh.

still pandering to women's weaknesses and insecurities. She's a sad, twisted

woman, take no notice of her.

A sack full of broken crockery. Thank you, Tom.

Dead in everything but body.

That's not like you, Tom.

You're usually such a nice man.

I'm still a nice man.

I just happen to be a nice, honest man.

You'll be a nice, honest dead man if you don't watch it.

What do you do, Sam?

Well, I'm in promotions and property.

Wheeling and dealing, shaving the percentage.

Commodities, franchises, bit of spec stuff.

In and out of risk properties. We know what they say. If it moves, buy, buy,

buy. If it stops, sell, sell, sell.

Isn't he clever?

Clever? I think he's an absolute... Are you all right?

Fine, fine. Just a spot of wind backing up the hard way.

Oh.

Oh, my God.

Jane, she'd been in an accident.

beauty queen.

Hi, Harvey.

Hi. Yes, hi.

It's such a privilege to be here on this glorious night in this wonderful place.

Jane, this is the dining room at lunchtime. Oh, you're so funny.

What's the matter with you?

My hobbies are travel and world theater.

What? For my talent piece, I'd like to sing my song.

So...

out of your mind.

I really want to work with small children. And what's the matter with

faith? Has someone hit you with a hedgehog?

You're absolutely hideous.

Well, I'll see you in my office.

I'm so sorry, but she's a spinster, you know.

Well done, Tom.

I don't think I could have perpetrated such a miserably humiliating scene even

on one of my best days.

So much for honesty.

Oh. Well, you can't make an omelette without cracking a few heads.

I must try it out on Marion.

What ho, Geoffrey.

Lovely to see you.

Hello, Marion.

Is there a crisis, Dad? Life is a crisis, Geoffrey. But I have the

Follow me.

Did you bring my pills?

I feel a tumour coming on.

Your daughter -in -law bites the heads off hamsters.

I always thought you were a great joker.

I wasn't joking.

So, what is this wonderful scheme you're going to tell me about?

Sam's had a brilliant idea.

Oh.

Oh, Jane.

Yes, Harvey?

What can I say, Jane?

What have you like, Harvey?

I know that, Jane.

I mean, what should I say when my trusted lieutenant goes totally banana?

Maybe you should ask me why I did...

what I want to ask, Jane.

Sorry, Harvey.

Why did you do it, Jane?

Because you like beauty queens.

Who told you that?

Tom did.

Yes, well, my relationship with Miss Huddersfield Tractors 1973 has got

to do with Tom or you.

Anyway, I don't see what that has to do with your grotesque charade.

I was trying to be a beauty queen.

You wanted to be a beauty queen?

Oh, Jane, that's very funny.

What were you going to be? Miss Short and Dumpy?

Or Miss Back End of a Butt?

All these years I thought you had no sense of humour, but you're the funniest

thing on two little fat legs.

Oh, that's funny. So you were just putting on a little show to cheer up the

residents. Well, that's wonderful.

Absolutely the right spirit. Just one thing, Jane.

What? Never do it again.

The idea of you as a beauty queen could bring on a wave of hysteria -induced

cardiac arrest.

And we don't want the dining room cluttered up with rattlers and gurglers,

we?

No, Harvey.

And cook always gets so moody when people snuff it at mealtimes.

Yes, Harvey.

But no more jokes about beauty queens, OK, Jane?

And you tell Tom to keep his nose out of my love life, OK?

I'll see you later, beauty queen.

Oh, that's very funny, Jane.

Franchises. Mm, franchises.

Same businesses all over the country.

Oh, you mean like McDonald's and things? Right.

Sam's going to sell franchises in my beauty parlour.

Well, where do I come into this? We want you to run the Bournemouth franchise.

Goodness.

And I thought I was almost dead.

And as Brutus says in Julius Caesar, Cassius, there is no terror in your

threats, for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass me by as the idle

wind.

A quotation that is doubly relevant to me today, as not only does it support

honesty, but the references to Idle Wind are somewhat pertinent as well.

And as Juvenal says in his satires, probitas laudatur et alget,

honesty is praised and starved. So from now on, I have decided that honesty will

starve no longer. We are all going to be honest and the world is long.

Being honest, I have to admit, Geoffrey, that I have been a failure as a father.

Well, I wouldn't say that, Dad. Look at me.

I am Geoffrey.

And I've been a competent father. I would have taught you perceptions of

worth that would have made you run 10 ,000 leagues rather than marry this pill

-popping packet of razor blades you call your wife.

Geoffrey! Why my pills?

Could you get to the point, Dad? Marion's about to jump out of her

To be honest and to go forward, I must first love myself.

But we are members of the same family, the same home.

Therefore, you are part of me, so to love myself, I must love you.

Geoffrey, I love you.

And Marion, I love you. Get him off! Get him off!

Don't you wish to be honest, Marion?

Yes, I do.

Marvellous. What do you want to say?

I wish you were dead.

Goodbye.

Well, that's a bit depressing.

Well, it's been great, Di.

Really super.

Lots of fun.

So, if you could pop the cheque in the post, we'll get everything underway.

Check? I'm sorry, what check?

For the franchise purchase.

Five to everyone else, but three to you, family.

Three hundred?

Wouldn't that be nice, eh?

So, if you could bung us the five grand.

I thought you just said three.

For the franchise.

But then there's the promo budget and initial leasing fee and equipment.

Does Sarah know about this?

Don't worry, I won't say a word.

We'll call it a little prezzy from us to her.

Mum's the word, eh?

Child, I... I'm a bit shocked.

My daughter -in -law wishes me dead.

She always has.

Yes, I know, but before, I always thought she was sort of joking, but she

honestly said she wished me dead.

Told you honesty was a bad idea.

You remove the polite dishonesty from society and you're going to cop it full

the mush every time.

Yes, but it's not nice to be so disliked.

What? can I do to win her over?

Shoot yourself?

Thank you, Diana.

I always know I can rely on you to cut the cobblers and come up with something

totally cynical.

So, what do you think of Sarah and Sam's little idea?

Scythe house?

Yes.

Running a beauty parlor? Yes.

You? Yes.

Darkest idea I've ever heard of. Yes.

Sarah's chap is a con man.

Well, be honest with us.

But she's in love with him.

What am I supposed to do, go up and say, Hello, Sarah, your fiancé's a little

sharper. You should be shoved down the lobby forthwith. Yes.

Break her heart.

Well, he'll only do it later on.

We don't know that.

Women see good in the strangest people.

Dare say Eva Braun thought Hitler was just a misguided dog lover.

I don't suppose that nice Mrs Genghis Khan was hanging around just for the

shopping opportunities.

No,

they might be glorious.

I'm seriously happy. I can't interfere.

But you can't run a beauty parlour either.

No, no, I couldn't. As opposed to run a place like that, I would need to

identify with the customers.

I'd have to be virtually brain dead.

I'd have to be Marian.

Oh.

By golly.

I think I've got it. I think I've got it.

Try penicillin.

No, no, no.

The brilliant idea.

Can't you see the light bulb flashing round my head?

I must dash. Got to get to London.

Don't talk to Sam yet.

God, Tom, you're brilliant.

Take the train, Tom. The stagecoach doesn't stop here anymore.

Oh, God.

Last hope house.

Diana? Oh, and here comes Miss Final Garth.

Hello, Jane.

Oh, dear. I was just thinking about you. Oh, that's, uh...

What do you want? I'm knackered.

I just came to say goodbye.

Goodbye?

That is goodbye forever.

I know that I am going to regret this.

All right, Jane.

Bye. Goodbye forever.

Tom was right.

Tom is never right. Tom can't even say hello and get it right.

Tom was right about me and Harvey.

I'll never find the Holy Grail here at Bayview.

Harvey Baines is not the Holy Grail, Jane.

He's not even a mildly revered tooth mug.

You only say that because you've not experienced real passion.

Yes, I have.

I have consumed and been consumed.

I have made the sea boil up the beach.

I have known passion that would kill a donkey at 500 yards.

So far.

as a younger woman, my romantic life was confined to rather stilted letters

between me and my Canadian pen pal, Mr.

Chigachgook.

Mr. Chigachgook? He was Eskimo.

Oh.

An Inuit.

No, he was very bright.

Oh, God almighty.

But somehow I never felt the spark of real romance.

So I returned the bone that he'd sent me for my nose.

and the midnight sun.

And that's when it happened.

What? Oh, the explosion of my volcano of passion.

But when? Where?

Here, of course.

Oh, it was like the conversion on the road to Damascus.

As I plodded up the drive with weary heart, I looked up, and there he was,

Harvey Baines. He had a sort of aura around him. He uses a garlic deodorant.

He turned towards me, his Roman nose in noble profile in the setting sun.

He smiled.

I swooned. He caught me in his arms.

He smiled as he looked down at me with laughing eyes.

Oh, and then his succulent lips parted. And in his manly

voice, he uttered those first wonderful words.

Keep off.

the grass.

Oh, and my heart burst into a thousand stars.

Oh, Barbara, cut and eat your heart out.

But it would appear my fickle heart has led me astray.

It was not to be.

My great passion is to go unrequited.

And the man at whose feet I have prostrated myself.

If only we could collide with another planet and get it all over with

Hello

Diana What can I do for you

or have you come in for just a bit of grievous bodily amusement you and I

always seen eye to eye.

We never see eye to eye. Let's be honest here. Oh, no, please don't. Let's be

honest. Being honest is a very bad idea. It causes nothing but pain.

To whom?

Well, Jane, for a start.

Jane? What's wrong with her? She's in fine form.

Didn't you see her splendid charade at lunch today?

The beauty queen bit.

Very funny. That, you dismal little earwig, was her last ditch attempt to

your attention.

Oh, really? Yes.

For reasons best known to herself, she has developed a fixation about you.

Yes, well, you know, these things tend to happen to a special guy.

Try not to make me sick.

I'm sorry, Diana.

Well, she has found that there is no response from your good self.

Well, she's not really my type.

That's because she hasn't got a staple through her navel.

Can we get to the point, please, Diana?

She is very upset.

She is leaving forever.

Leaving?

Precisely. Without her to run this place, your appalling inadequacies will

revealed immediately.

Oh, my God, what am I going to do?

Well, if I were you, Harvey, I would lie through my teeth as I have never lied

before.

You want to what, Tom?

I want to be honest with you.

That's a fairly novel idea around here.

Let's give it a try.

Fire away.

You are a bent little weasel who couldn't lie straight in his own bed.

Sounds fair enough to me.

Really? Oh, yes.

I've been called far worse.

And it doesn't worry you?

No, not at all.

You see, Tom, I can be honest too.

I'm honest enough to admit that I don't have a single scruple in my entire body

and that I have only two interests in life, making money and marrying Sarah.

So you do love her?

Oh, totally and utterly.

She's everything I need in my life.

She's good and lovely and she'll no doubt save me from my unpleasant self.

So I need to make as much as I possibly can now before I turn into a foggy but

happy bourgeois marshmallow.

So you are open to blackmail?

I'm open to anything underhand and deviant.

So if I threaten to tell Thera what a cad you really are in trying to con

out of 5 ,000 pounds, you might get worried?

I would.

I'd also break your legs.

But I would get worried.

You know something, Sam?

I find your brand of honesty almost refreshing.

I think we'd better talk turkey.

Gobble, gobble, gobble.

I don't know what to say, Dad. It's so generous of you.

Marion has always wanted to have a beauty parlour. And now she's got one.

But how did you pay for the franchise?

I didn't.

I got it by good, honest blackmail.

Well, we're overwhelmed.

And Marion has something to say to you.

Marion?

Thank you.

Sorry, bit deaf.

What did you say?

Thank you.

Oh, that's all right.

Wasn't too painful, was it?

I'm sorry. I said I wished you were dead.

That's all right.

Don't overdo it.

First day. You don't want to exhaust yourself.

Well, we'll be off, Dan.

Thanks again.

A kissy, Marion.

A cold.

Bye. Bye, Dan.

Ah, generosity.

The most subtle revenge. The Bible is right.

Love your enemies.

Drives them insane.

Look!

Despite your chicanery, Sarah and Sam have invited us to their wedding. Oh,

much are the tickets?

So, how's your wind?

My wind is my business.

Oh, what happened to open honesty?

Oh, well, I don't know. I think perhaps I'm a bit too old to start a whole new

crusade. I might just read a book instead.

Oh, I see.

So, having messed up... several lies as some sort of intellectual experiment.

You're not bored. You're moving on, leaving the bodies lying around.

Oh, dear.

Is that what I've done?

Hello.

Here comes the main victim of your callousness.

Hello. How are we all?

Dead.

Jane, Jane, I have something to say to you.

I was only joking when I said that I thought you would be the eternal

wallflower. I was thinking of someone else. It's all right, Tom.

It's all for the best.

It brought things to a head.

Harvey has opened his heart to me.

How revolting.

He's explained about his tendency to have relationships with brainless

women. They provide an intellectual challenge.

It all goes back to his mother. She was very dominating and she forced him into

an early marriage with a completely unsuitable concert pianist who is a

and has tuberculosis.

And he's in a clinic in Switzerland.

So, of course, divorce is out of the question.

So, until he's free from her, he said he feels he can't afford to fall for a

real woman. So he has to dally in shallow relationships with naked women

like farming equipment.

So, what are you going to do? Buy a combine harvester?

I'm going to wait for him.

I'm going to see him through this time of trial, and then, well, who knows?

See you later.

The filthy, rotten, low -down, lying bounder.

Jane is happy, Tom.

Where on earth did he get a story like that from?

I can't imagine.

You! You wicked old woman!

That's me.

Give me the gin.

I give up. I really do.

To hell with honesty.

Here's to the devious. Long may they reign. I'll drink to that.