- Fletcher: You're lookin' a bit down in the mouth, Mr Barrowclough, anything the matter?
- Mr Barrowclough: Oh, nothing much. The usual. Domestic crisis.
- Fletcher: Oh dear. Mrs Barrowclough left you, has she?
- Mr Barrowclough: Unhappily... no Fletcher.
- [Having been kidnapped and dumped outside jail, Fletcher and Godber try to break back in. They have to pass a farm where the old farmer is leaning on the gate. Fletcher riding is a bike, and Godber jogging alongside]
- Fletcher: [talking to Godber] Come on, come on, don't flag, jab, jab.
- [talks to the farmer]
- Fletcher: It's the big one next week, sir.
- Farmer's wife: Who was that?
- Farmer: Couple of escaped convicts.
- Farmer's wife: Ohhh.
- Bunny Warren: 'Ere Fletch!
- Fletcher: I'm late.
- Bunny Warren: Look, I've got a letter from the wife, can you read it to me?
- Fletcher: Listen Bunny, if you can't read, how do you know it's from your wife?
- Bunny Warren: It's got Elaine's scent.
- Fletcher: Cor, where's Elaine work? A tarpaulin factory?
- Fletcher: Show me a man who laughs at defeat and I will show you a black chiropodist with a sense of humour.
- Governor: [discussing who may be on the celebrity football team] Didn't you mention that comedian chap? Wh-What's his name? Jimmy Tarbrush?
- Mackay: Buck, sir.
- Governor: Yes. Buck Tarbrush.
- Mackay: Well, unhappily he's indisposed sir.
- Governor: Oh, dear.
- [he and Mackay leave]
- Fletcher: Buck Tarbrush. We should be lucky to get Basil Brush.
- Fletcher: You're not doing yourself any favours, are you Banyard? All you're doing is getting up other people's noses.
- Banyard: We have certain rights.
- Fletcher: No we don't, we're in the nick.
- Ives: I suppose you think you're entitled to something better just because you went to a public school, is that it?
- Banyard: On the contrary, Ives, I'm well used to this kind of food, I went to Harrow.
- Fletcher: Oh that's a good advert for the public school system, prepares you for the nick. Course it's harder in here for him than for most of us, 'cause he has had further to drop. Professional man, you see. Dentist. Tragic.
- Ives: What do you mean, Fletcher, 'tragic'? It's no laughing matter for that woman he had under the laughing gas.
- Banyard: There's no need for that, Ives. We don't have to keep unearthing each other's past, I'm paying for my peccadilloes.
- Fletcher: Oh that's good. If you're paying I'll have a large one.
- Bunny Warren: What's a peccadillo?
- Ives: It's a South African bird. Flies backwards to stop getting the sand in its eyes.
- Bunny Warren: No. No. I know what you mean though. It's an animal. Called the Armadildo.
- Banyard: The Armadildo.
- Fletcher: No, that was King Arthur's codpiece. I think that's what I'm eating an' all.
- Mr Beal: I was married. Divorced now.
- Mr Barrowclough: Well, look at it this way, 'tis better to have loved and lost than
- [sighs]
- Mr Barrowclough: to spend your whole ruddy life with her.
- Mr Beal: Mind if I cadge a lift?
- Mr Barrowclough: Oh, well, we're not...
- Mr Beal: I've just been posted here.
- Mr Barrowclough: Oh, a brother officer.
- Mr Beal: Saves me the cab fare.
- Mr Barrowclough: Aye, well, I'd still claim for it, though.
- [Fletcher finally gives in and reads Bunny's letter]
- Fletcher: All right, I'll just you the 'ighlights, all right? 'Dearest Bunny, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah...
- [pause as he turns the page]
- Fletcher: blah.
- Bunny Warren: Blah blah blah what?
- Fletcher: It's trivia, Bunny, it's just trivia, it's the weather, her mother's catarrh, she's retiled the lav, the canary's got haemorrhoids, she's met a welder at the Fiesta Club and she's thinking of movin' in with him. All right? Must rush. Can't hang about.
- [exits]
- Bunny Warren: But...
- [pauses]
- Bunny Warren: ...we 'aven't got a canary.
- [it's after lights out and lock up. There is the distant sound of a fellow inmate groaning mid-nightmare]
- Godber: You awake, Fletch?
- Fletcher: No.
- Godber: It's that bloke, Atkinson.
- Fletcher: I know.
- Godber: Keeps getting these terrible nightmares.
- Fletcher: Yeah.
- Godber: He's told the shrink about 'em, but all he's given 'im is aspirin. You have to feel compassion, don't you? A human soul in such torment.
- Fletcher: Hmm.
- [Atkinson bellows something in the distance]
- Fletcher: [shouts] Belt up, Atkinson, you noisy scrote.
- Fletcher: Success? Let me tell you about success. I had a pal, come to London 28 years ago without two ha'pennies to rub together. Now he managed to save up enough to buy a little hand cart and he went round collecting all old newspapers. Do you what he's worth today?
- Mr Barrowclough: No, what?
- Fletcher: Nothing. And he still owes for the hand cart.
- Harry Grout: Now we need someone reliable as trainer.
- Fletcher: Don't look at me. I've grown disenchanted with the game. Twenty years of supporting Orient does that for a man.
- Fletcher: Who are all these people, sir? I mean, me and the lads was given to understand that there would be a fair smattering of celebrities.
- Mackay: See that red-haired man? Tells the weather on Anglia TV. And there's a pair of script writers for someone quite famous, and Mr Bainbridge himself has just finished a season at the Al Hambra Swansea.
- Fletcher: I'll tell the lads. They'll be right chuffed.
- Bunny Warren: Who are they, Fletch?
- Fletcher: A weather man, eight small parts and a widow twanky, now go and get changed.
- Fletcher: [talking to Rudge in the bathrooms] Oh, one more thing. Don't hang about in 'ere too long. Ambush Alley they call this - not a safe place in the nick. You get 'em all in 'ere, homosexuals, transvestites, the lot. I tell ya, when someone just comes in 'ere, sits down and gets on with it, it's like a breath of fresh air.
- [At lunch time]
- Bunny Warren: What's the 'old up Fletch?
- Fletcher: It's the defrocked dentist havin' a go at the cuisine again.
- Fletcher: 'Ere, you owe me some darning wool.
- Godber: I already gave you some.
- Fletcher: That was in exchange for the orange.
- Godber: Tangerine. Anyway, that was to pay me for the stamp.
- Fletcher: What stamp?
- Godber: For your pools.
- Fletcher: I paid you for the stamp with a squirt of me toothpaste.
- Godber: No, that was for the darning wool.
- Fletcher: Do you see yon screw with his looks so vain, with his brand new key on his brand new chain, with a face like a ferret and a pea for a brain, with his hand on his whistle in the morning.
- Fletcher: What's the matter with you?
- Godber: We're still banged up in this cell aren't we, while Oakes is Hardy Kruger.
- Fletcher: Hardy Kruger?
- Godber: "The One that got away". A film starring Hardy Kruger.
- Fletcher: Don't worry. Before too long he'll be Googie Withers again.
- Godber: Googie Withers?
- Fletcher: "Within these walls".
- Fletcher: We got plenty of strength at the back, one thing we're not short of is stoppers. What we need now is a bit of creative mid-field flair.
- Godber: From what I saw of him Rudge could provide that. Revelation he was.
- Fletcher: Yeah. Reckons he had a trial for Brentford before he had a trial for shoplifting.
- Fletcher: Oh, look, Oaksey, I had your name down here all along. It's just I've spelled it MacMillan.
- Samson: Oi, Fletcher.
- Harry Grout: There'll be something for you in your Christmas stocking, Fletcher.
- Fletcher: Oh, thank you sir. I'll look forward to that, sir.
- Godber: I can't understand why Mackay hasn't come down on us like a pile of bricks.
- Fletcher: 'Cause he lost something in the kitchen today, that's why.
- Godber: What? Pride, you mean?
- Fletcher: Nah, something else. Shift.
- Godber: Why?
- Fletcher: It's hidden in your mattress.
- Godber: Oh, I see, so if we get a search I'm the one who gets the blame.
- Fletcher: Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.
- Godber: You think of everything, you do.
- Fletcher: I try.