Dick Tracy – G-Man agent and scourge of the Lame One’s ring – has been shot by his brother and has fallen from a high roof in what can only be described as a double helping of death. It comes as no surprise then that he gets up unscathed and without so much as a hair out of place.

The plan, you’ll remember, was for Dick to draw off the guards so his chum could get the plane ready for a swift getaway. Dick reaches the plane, bringing the baddies with him, and the pilot jumps out of the cockpit to shoot at them. Thereby scuppering their getaway. They don’t think things through. They need a gantt chart so they begin to understand prerequisites and interdependencies.

On board The Lame Plane, Gordon gives the order to fly into the stratosphere so Dick won’t be able to follow them. Last thing I saw, Dick was trying to escape from the baddies. Now the baddies think the goodies are chasing them. One of us is becoming very confused and I hope its me because I’m not sure I want to be the sort of person who understands this rubbish.

Dick gets his name in the paper. "Clever detective" hardly does justice to the stupidity of the criminals he’s battling.

The sinister Gordon opens the secret door into what we must assume is the Lame One’s headquarters.

Meanwhile, the paperboy has brought this week’s plot.

The Lame One is cross with Gordon but lets it go very easily. He’s more interested in what is in the newspaper. He’s also either wearing a bald wig or has a very lumpy head. Perhaps he should be The Lame and Lumpy One. My new guess is that it is Willie Thorne masterminding the Spider Ring.

Dick has found some fingerprints on a gun and they belong to this man. I don’t know which gun they’re talking about.

The token woman interjects with some factual information about the professor’s new alloy. It turns out she’s met him and knows where his lab is. Dick decides the alloy mustn’t get into the wrong hands.

They pay him a visit.

By he may already be dead.

Or just stunned.

But his formula has gone. Luckily, the thieves left a footprint in some oil which will mean Dick will catch them within eight minutes. I’m starting the watch… now.

Bizarrely, the woman looks at the footprint and takes a sample of the oil instead. But her womanly foolishness doesn’t matter – the professor has looked at the photo of the man Dick was handed earlier and confirmed he is the thief.

At a friendly tavern, some burly men give the formula to Gordon.

This is it in case you ever want to make some nickolanium.

Dick and the idiot arrive at the same friendly tavern where the recent Gordon got his goods.

The friendly barman sounds a secret alarm as he’s in league with the bad guys. Who would’ve believed it?

The Lame One himself is skulking about in a corridor. Does this mean he and Dick will come face to face? And if they do, will it be as exciting as when Dick discovered his brother had betrayed him by turned evil and was trying to kill him? I’ll never forget the look of total indifference on Dick’s face. It was as if something quite important had decided not to happen right in front of him. And then followed it up by not happening again for good measure.

Now there is the stuff of nightmare – a painting of a gay cowboy Auton which has been vandalised by someone with a poor sense of humour and a marker pen.

A fight breaks out.

Dick is creeping upstairs when he is found by the Lame One’s men and ordered – at gun point – to go upstairs.

The small boy uses a pretend gun to terrify the friendly barman. The latter is a dangerous cross between Jerry Stiller and Bernard Cribbins. It ends the fight downstairs but one is still raging upstairs. Where there’s Dick, there’s trouble. That’s my motto.

A submarine is arriving to take the formula away.

From the submarine comes an evil foreign agent. He buys the formula with evil foreign glee.

Another fight breaks out on the water front.

What a thundering nuisance – Dick’s foot has become tangled up with a rope from the submarine.

Dick is dragged into the foaming water below.

The submarine submerges and Dick is dragged, kicking but not screaming, to a watery grave.

Hurrah – next week’s Dick Tracy has been cancelled to make way for Scooby Doo!