31st August 1986

Rodney and Del spot a sobbing German girl in the Nags Head. Rodney initially can’t miss the chance to "help out", but soon the family take on more than they bargained for…

Anna is a French and English language student, and has been staying with the family of a British businessman. However, their son has gotten her pregnant and they have kicked her out, not believing her story.

Boycie and Marlene ("You remember Boycie, the Second Hand Car Dealer?" says Del, as if speaking to the viewers, even though he was only in the previous episode) have been trying to have a baby "for years", even attempting to foster and adopt. However, Boycie appears to have served time in prison for "perjury, embezzlement, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, fraudulent conversion of travellers cheques [a reference to "To Hull and Back" perhaps?] and an attempt to bribe the mayor of Lambeth"! This seems to have been what’s stopped the couple being able to adopt. Marlene and Dukey the Dog ("As Sleeping Dogs Lie") are both back.

Rodney appears to have a "Swedish" fetish. Albert was in Germany "just after the war" (heaven knows why). "Nipper" Townsend was an old mate of Alberts, stationed in Malta.

Del is trying to sell cordless telephones as the episode starts. There is a box in the hall with "R.A.J.A.H Computers – Made In Mauritous" stamped on the side.

Anna’s English is extremely variable. When we first meet her in the pub she is unable to communicate basic information about what nationality she is, yet in the flat she spends several minutes explaining her entire story to Del, Rodney and Albert in English, including words even Del can’t understand!

Marlene asks if Del wants to be "one of those suffragette fathers"!

"They’ll chop your head off round here if you have gold teeth"

Del says he has "more relatives crawling out the woodwork than Blake Carrington!" (a reference to Uncle Albert’s appearance in "Strained Relations")

There are some good lines at the end:

"Everything you buy off him has something missing!" (Boycie upon finding out that Anna’s baby is a girl, not a boy as Del had promised)

"It might be a throwback!" (Marlene on how they could explain the baby has dark skin)

Boycie’s hideous yellow and navy tie (later swapped for a barely more agreeable blue and black striped alternative)

After being absent in "To Hull and Back", Nula Cornwell’s Maureen is back behind the bar.

I remember this one with very little fondness, and a re-watching it has not changed my mind. Among the concepts we are expected to laugh at here are a clichéd stupid foreigner (Anna was visited in the night by a man "wanting to be my friend" and "then, baby came"), Del trying to make £3000 by taking a baby away from its Mother apparently in revenge for being "tucked up" previously, a desperate childless couple being taken advantage of and, to top it all off, a dash of racism too (Boycie’s joke about "the pitter patter of Jack Boots" when he discovers the babies mother is German). Perhaps the problem is Sue Holderness, who is simply too convincing not to make this an extremely tasteless episode ("It was a nice little dream while it lasted"). Nevertheless she remains by far the best thing about this frankly very dubious slice of family comedy.