Walking Off Air

Ken has moved to Nottingham and has set up Boon Investigations, operating out of a small office near the Castle. His first case involves him being employed by Gerry Anscomb, manager of a local radio station, Sherwood Sound. He wants Ken to act as minder for Eddie Cotton, “The Man You Love To Hate”, a brash loud-mouthed young DJ who has a habit of turning up for work drunk... or not even turning up at all. They want to make sure he will not let them down at a Charity Telethon this coming weekend. Eddie gives Ken chance to plug Boon Investigations on the radio.

Ken and Eddie go to a snooker club where Eddie gives Ken the slip and picks up Donna Delaney, a leggy young woman who wears cowboy boots and has closely-cropped blonde hair. Eddie and Donna go to a night club where she drugs him. He makes something of a spectacle of himself and gets his photo printed in the gossip column of the local paper. He misses his show and a fellow DJ, Tony Lyons, has to stand in for him. He eventually turns up, severely hungover, and Bill Stone, the managing director, fires him on the spot.

But Ken suspects that Eddie was drugged. Because he is no longer retained by Sherwood Sound, he needs to enlist the help of Laura Marsh, the station’s receptionist, to get back into the studios. To begin with, he suspects Tony Lyons, but then he discovers that Gerry Anscomb is leaving at the end of the month. He also finds out that Donna Delaney works for the radio station that Anscomb will shortly be joining. He and Laura decide to set up Anscomb and Donna. Laura passes on a message to her, apparently from Anscomb, asking her to meet him at the Telethon. Once Anscomb and Donna are seen together, the game is up and Anscomb admits that he deliberately set out to damage Eddie’s reputation to get him sacked because he wanted Eddie to join him at the new station and knew he would not do so voluntarily. Such is friendship! Eddie gets his old job back and the Telethon is saved. Laura is not so lucky. She is sacked for letting Ken into the studios after he no longer had reason to be there. Ken offers her a job at Boon Investigations, working as his secretary and personal assistant.

Harry has gone into partnership with a widow, Helen Yeldham, to run Woodcote Park, a hotel and county club in the Nottinghamshire countryside. He has big ideas about setting it up as a venue for international sporting events such as golf and tennis tournaments. He plans to convert the nearby Trent Meadow into tennis courts and is negotiating to buy the field from Richard Gibbs, a neighbouring farmer. However Gibbs wants to turn his farm into a commune and to build accommodation in the Meadow. David Tredegar, an eccentric naturalist who was a friend of Helen’s husband, Philip, has come to stay at Woodcote. He discovers that Trent Meadow is inhabited by a rare breed of Natterjack Toad which are a protected species. Consequently neither the tennis courts nor the commune can be built there.

Notes and episode list © Martin Underwood, 1997

Page last modified: 17 December 2008, 23:48