Episode list

Elizabeth has gone to stay with her sick mother so Reggie uses the opportunity for some afternoon delight with his glamorous secretary Joan, who proves herself to be up for it. Sadly, just as they are about to unleash their passions Reggie is visited, first by his layabout son, resting actor Mark, and then by Elizabeth's right-wing, scrounging brother Jimmy, wanting food. Eventually Joan, hiding from them in Reggie's bedroom, escapes down the drainpipe.

Reggie asks C.J. for a start-up loan to establish his shop Grot. C.J. thinks it's hush money to keep quiet about his hitting on Elizabeth and lends it to him. Grot sells highly unusual and often impractical things but people buy them,either because they are unique, such as square hula hoops, which in fact become a craze,or as presents for relatives they dislike, like Tom's turnip wine. Grot becomes a huge success and Reggie quickly has the wherewithal to repay the loan. However, when he returns to Sunshine Desserts to see his old boss he finds things have changed. Joan is now married to his former colleague Tony, and the firm is on the verge of collapse.

Scared by the fraudulent success of Grot, Reggie decides to kill off the monster he has created by giving executive posts to men he sees as incompetents - Doc Morrissey, Jimmy, Tom and an Irishman called Seamus in the hopes that they will destroy the shop chain. However the business goes on to even greater heights as a result, thanks to Tom's advertising slogans, leading to a television advert, and a useless machine made by Jimmy, which becomes the latest must-have item. He is mindful to sack them but feels he cannot fire in-laws and ends up by giving Seamus, who has seen through his ruse, a raise.

Reggie is about to open his fiftieth Grot shop whilst Sunshine Desserts has gone bust and is now a thing of the past. Generously Reggie decides to employ C.J. but makes him wait an extra week for his interview and enjoys having power over him. He asks Joan to be his secretary again but she and Tony are already having marital problems, which Reggie sorts out before employing them both. Elizabeth is annoyed that Reggie has yet to offer her a job with the shop, but eventually he does - even imagining her mother as a hippopotamus, just like old times.

Reginald Iolanthe Perrin is a 46-year old sales executive for Sunshine Desserts, run by the hearty but hectoring boss C.J. Reggie is clearly suffering a mid-life crisis. Though not unhappily married to Elizabeth, he calls her mother a hippopotamus and is finding no enthusiasm for marketing C.J.'s latest line - exotic ices. He wants something better for his life, but is not sure what.

A nervous Reggie is to address the British Fruit Association and mixes Dutch courage with sedative pills, with the result that the speech is a disaster and he has to be dragged off the stage. He is now at breaking point and tells C.J. that blood will flow. C.J. takes this literally when Reggie empties a lorry load of loganberry essence into the river where C.J. is fishing. Next Reggie leaves his clothes by the edge of the sea to fake his suicide and considers which false identity to assume.

Reggie tries out various new identities, including Lord Amherst (which attracts the attention of the comely Jean) and Donald Potts (which attracts the less comely Miss Pershore). However, he misses Elizabeth and is upset to find that, since she assumes that Reggie is dead, she is seeing an old flame, Henry. He even encounters them whilst pretending to be an Italian, though she fails to recognize him, as do his work colleagues when he sits near them in their local pub. Finally he gets a job in a sewage works.

Calling himself Martin Wellbourne, an alleged friend of the deceased newly arrived from Brazil, and sporting a curly beard, Reggie gate-crashes his own memorial service where a vague vicar plugs Mark's new play and people seem to miss Reggie less than he had hoped. Elizabeth is engaged to Henry but recognizes Reggie immediately. She allows him to romance her and plays along with his deception, finally agreeing to marry him, as Martin. Linda has also seen through the disguise but Elizabeth tells her to say nothing as Reggie is clearly much happier in his new skin. He even gets his old job back as Martin.

Life is beginning to get on top of Reggie as he starts to dictate abusive letters. Perhaps he needs a nice peaceful holiday. Unfortunately his daughter Linda asks him to take her and her husband Tom and their children, Adam and Jocasta, to a safari park, as Tom has crashed their own car. Being cooped up in a hot car in a safari park is too much for Reggie who gets out of the car for a walk and has to be rescued from the lions.

Desperate to kill off Grot, Reggie goes to extreme lengths, such as insulting chat show hosts on whose television shows he appears. He also insults a job applicant who mistakenly believes he is making a pass at him so he pretends to be gay when visiting the branch manager, only to find that he is gay and is attracted to Reggie. He dresses in drag in public but by now everybody is used to Reggie's eccentric behaviour and sees it as the norm. Finally he and Elizabeth go back to the beach and fake a double suicide, only to discover that they have set a trend and scores of people are following suit in order to reinvent themselves.