13th October 1976

Reggie tries out various guises, but settles on being Donald Potts, and finds a job at a sewerage works. He eventually realises how lonely he is, and how much he misses Elizabeth in particular. Concocting a plan to see her while in disguise, he is shocked to find that she is seeing Henry Possett. Later, he decides to reveal to his daughter, Linda, that he is in fact alive, and is on the verge of revealing this to Elizabeth, but his nerve fails him when she reveals that she is going to marry Henry...

Reggie Perrin, 46, has disappeared, clothes found abandoned on beach. Presumed dead. Still very much alive!

When Rosie the landlady reveals that the local Lover's Lane is now situated within a new housing estate, Reggie sees himself snogging a former girlfriend in his car, which is parked in a front garden of a house on a housing estate. When Reggie gets an invitation to follow a woman to her house, he sees himself relaxing with Elizabeth on their settee at home. We get our first hippo shot when Reggie goes back to their home, only to be told by a neighbour that Elizabeth is away in Worthing visiting her mother, who is in hospital again. There is another hippo shot later on when Reggie is reading out loud a letter he has written to Elizabeth, when he mentions that he sees her mother as a hippo.

When Reggie loiters outside his old workplace and contemplates seeing his old colleagues again, we see that the sign contains the letters UNSHIN then DES and ER.

"...wondering what life's all about".

"...by thinking".

C.J.'s Dad told him that "Philosophy doesn't get the washing up done!". They weren't close - his Dad called him C.J.

When C.J. tells Tony that he will manage the exotic fruits project as well as, if not better than, Reggie, we get two Greats and Supers each from Tony and David. David describes Reggie as unpredictable, while Tony describes him as a decent enough chap who wasn't quite up to it.

Reggie starts this episode in a town that sounds like Chillhampton St.Peter, where Reggie spent his summer holidays on his Uncle Percy's farm. This is also where he took his first girlfriend, Angela, to Lover's Lane in his car. His spotty, smelly friend Alf is now married to Rosie Wilson, who had a chestnut horse and liked to take the boys around the back of the quarry. Reggie has spent a month away from home. Henry Possett is multi-lingual. The road tax has run out on Elizabeth's car. Reggie gets work at the North Hillingly Sewerage Reclamation Works.