Paul Temple and the Spencer Affair

Mary Dreisler, student at the British School of Dramatic Art, has been murdered. The police are baffled.

Steve is called by "Paul" and told to pack a case and not tell anyone where she's going. She remembers to ask "Where's Charlie fishing?" and gets the correct answer. But "Paul" tells her 'By George, Steve, you really are the limit!" and she gets suspicious.

Only half a mark for this one - our dose of attempted vehicular homicide instead took the form of someone driving very fast and deliberately trying to knock Steve over. Paul pushed her out of the way and earned a "I wouldn't dare push my wife around like that" from his friendly neighbourhood police inspector. As if to over-egg the driving murder pudding, this takes place after someone did exactly the same thing to another character.

...who technically survived but didn't know he would when he uttered the dying words "Play the record".

I'll give it half a point as Paul and Steve are returning from a holiday in Germany when we join them for an opening scene which serves only to make us like a man who they spend the next seven episodes making us suspect. It also gets several laughs (from the characters rather than the audience) from the play "Hamlet in Modern Dress".

"Adored every minute of it. Spencer" This innocent note assumes far greater significance when it becomes obvious that Spencer is the head of a pretty tough bunch of crooks and killers.

The obvious way to murder someone is to ring them up, pretend to be their husband, get them to drive off and be in the car when a bomb goes off. The man at the garage who looks after the car was quite happy for the bomber to have a good look under the bonnet as he "seemed a respectable sort of chap". Oh, the 1950s...

As if to crank the suspense-o-meter up a notch Paul and Steve visit an empty house on a creepy island and are accompanied by some incidental music which I swear is also used in "The Keys of Marinus". If it isn't then it certainly comes from the same album. The house, our detectives conclude, is used by Spencer as it was apparently bought a year earlier by a man using the name "Benser".

Everyone involved seems to be intimately connected to "The Stardust Club" run by the glamorous Terry Gibson. Who is a woman and not the same Terry Gibson who used to play for Coventry City. Oddly, the CD cover illustration calls it "The Starlite Club". Which is either an error of their part or another Top Cat/Boss Cat style cover up.

No medicos in sight. There are a couple of untrustworthy foreigners but not a thermometer between them.

We have a professional blackmailer in our midst. I'll tell you who it is if you leave a suitcase of used notes in a particular phone box in Putney.

"Precious stones" stolen by those ghastly Frenchies are making their way into our green and lily white island. Bah.

Everyone wants to know the importance of the gramophone record called "My Heart and Harry".

A dodgy car dealer - who says "I'm in the car racket... business now" as if to prove his credentials - labours under the name "Clutch" Brompton.

"Who are you having dinner with?"

"With Peter Wallace."

Frost sensibly says that "it depends on the question" when asked if he minds answering one of Paul's scandalous queries. "Did you give Mary Dreisler a diamond brooch?" asks Paul. It's not immediately obvious but if you listen very carefully you can hear a thud as Steve faints in shock at her husband's lewdness.

He plays Adrian Frost - the playwright who has never written a play and who is awfully rude to the Temples in a country lane when he's asked a rather personal question. He tries to match wits with Paul throughout the serial and that's never a good idea when your opponent's name is in the title.

Steve is lured into a trap. At the last minute she has a funny feeling and decides not to be lured into a trap. That's a pretty convincing definition of "intuition" in my book but Paul still teases her about it.

Judy Milton is found with a gap in her head and a gun in her hand. Her cottage is empty and the Temples heard the shot. It will require a fridge and a house boy to put Paul on the right track.

The only accent of note is Pete Roberts'. I think he's meant to be a Londoner but to my ear he sounds like Tony Hancock's Australian friend Bill.

He, she or it drowns rather than let the rozzers grab him, her or it by the guilty parties.

18 points which wins the Spencer Affair a free dinner at the Stardust Club.