A Friend in Need

Whilst Susan pigs out on food and frets about premarital sex, Muriel arranges to travel to Bournemouth by train for the weekend to celebrate her sister Sarah's birthday. An old divorced friend of Dudley's, insurance salesman Dick Mitchell, telephones to say he has come down from Birmingham for a few days, and arranges for them to get together for dinner that evening at The White Cockatoo in town, on his expense account. Dudley arrives at the fashionable restaurant to discover that Dick has booked the company of two attractive escort service girls, Mimi and Barbara, who transpire to be big fans of Barney the Bionic Bulldog. Muriel is about to leave for the station when her sister telephones to say one of her children has developed mumps; since Muriel has never had the infectious virus, she postpones her visit and plays a game of Monopoly with Susan and Jacqui before retiring to bed with a Harold Robbins' novel. Dick, meanwhile, insists on taking Mimi and Barbara back to Dudley's place f