Rab C. Nesbitt

- Season 8

(1999)

Rab leaves jail having served his time for burning down the house following Mary's fling with Jamesie and gets a job washing dishes in the filthy kitchens of Chez Alex. Mary is staying in a hostel. Rab is initially out for revenge but, after sitting round the table with the Cotters, he and Mary reunite and the neighbours rally round to make their burnt-out house habitable again.

MP Tony Welthorpe, who thinks the unemployed are 'feather-bedded',accepts the challenge to change life-styles with Rab for a month and live on benefits. After a shaky start Rab endears himself to Tony's wife Jenny with his knowledge of the Social Security Acts and they end up kissing.Tony is patronising and offensive, making a play for Mary, but Gash sees a way to fix him.

Due to his bad back Rab just cannot nod off and Mary's talking in her sleep does not help. Nor does the arrival of Jamesie,fleeing an irate deaf-mute husband with a shotgun and who tries to get his leg over with Gash's girlfriend Bridie. Ella meanwhile gets cosy with the gunman but next morning Rab's fitful snooze is disturbed by a shot.

Rab has a vasectomy and Bridie gives birth to a baby girl, whom she calls Peaches.Rab takes the baby out in the pram but nods off and when he wakes up she's gone.Jamesie suspects Ella of having an affair with a man at the allotments but his investigation finally locate the missing Peaches.

An insomniac Rab gets no help from an insomniac doctor and when Andra collapses with a heart attack, Rab feels the Millennium Bug has struck. Waiting to visit Andra he picks up a leaflet on Buddhism and decides to meditate in the park where he joins the dossers, and comes to realise where he is best off.

Rab and Jamesie are excited to be invited to Big Barney's birthday booze-up, a selective affair because of the volumes of drink involved, and are disappointed to find a drastic change has come over Barney,so that the party is not what they expected. Meanwhile local-boy-made-good Shug returns to Govan and organizes a far more enjoyable knees-up for the ones not invited.