Hi-de-Hi!

- Season 7

(1986)

Peggy reads in the paper that a notorious cat burglar has recently died, a man who stayed at the camp the previous summer. Furthermore the police are anxious to trace a number of his ill-gotten gains, which were never recovered, among them a priceless necklace. Ted gets it into his head that the necklace must be hidden somewhere in the holiday camp and sets about doping the campers so that he can search their chalets. Needless to say he pays the price for his greed as usual.

Once more Partridge has been giving the annoying kids a slap and parents and staff are up in arms. Yvonne has organized a petition to get rid of him but, as everybody else gathers in Clive's office, there is no sign of the offending puppeteer, just a letter from Joe Maplin to say that Partridge has complained about his colleagues. Then, as Ted and Spike are returning to their chalet for the night, they see what appears to be Partridge's body floating in the pool with a knife in his back.

Anxious not to alarm the guests Clive orders the pool lights to be turned off so that the corpse cannot be seen but instead Fred and the Yellowcoats turn out all the lights in the camp. An hysterical man who has seen the body is kept in Clive's office against his will but Clive knows he must call the police. When the police arrive they tell the staff that the 'corpse' was a dummy in Partridge's clothes. The man himself has quit the camp to open a pub but wanted to give everybody a fright as he left.

It's Gladys' birthday and Clive is taking her out for a meal. However, Harold Fox, Maplin's hatchet man, also invites her and she feels she ought to go. She arranges to meet him early and they go to the local trattoria for spaghetti but Gladys feigns illness and Peggy whisks her off on a motor-bike to meet Clive - who takes her back to the trattoria for more spaghetti. After her date with Clive she is treated to a birthday surprise by the other staff - which turns out to be a trip to the trattoria for another meal of spaghetti.

Clive gets a letter from Maplin to say that Mr. Partridge will not be replaced as it is late in the season. Instead the staff will enact nursery rhymes for the kids, which they hate doing. Ted comes across Uncle Sammy, a former puppeteer down on his luck and gets Clive to give him Partridge's old job. Unfortunately Sammy makes off with Maplin's trophies but the police feel sorry for him and everybody blames Ted for only giving him a third of the money Clive gave Ted to pay Sammy.

Clive's uncle comes to the camp. The family's stately home with its safari park needs a new manager and Clive thinks Gladys would be ideal. He invites her to meet his father but Gladys, encouraged by Ted, assumes that Clive will propose to her and is annoyed that she was asked if she could handle giraffes instead. Spike is also annoyed. Although he is dating Yellowcoat April, the local paper has wrongly captioned a photo of him with Gladys as being of an engaged couple.

In the wake of the wrongly captioned newspaper picture, Joe Maplin believes that the idea of an engaged couple is very good for the camp's business and that it will attract young couples, so he wants the 'happy couple' to be milked for maximum effect. The happy couple are not pleased, though Spike manages to get back with April. Clive sees it as an opportunity to escape Gladys' clutches but he has reckoned without her tenacity.