The Brittas Empire

- Season 7

(1997)

Gordon takes the staff for a military-style team-building exercise into Wales. While dealing with the rigors of the wild, they are relentlessly pursued by would-be assassins. Gordon's well-intentioned motivational skills make things worse.

Gordon's day starts with a step into elephant dung collected by Colin, who lost an engagement ring in it; Tim is terrified enough of the bungee-jump Brittas arranged to pretend he's sick so he won't need to tell 'tough' lover Gavin--a secret agoraphobic; Helen, helped by Julie, tries to stage a fur-coat theft as an insurance scam.

Gordon orders all the staff to do a critical report on a colleague's performance. Tim is to do a report for him, but is now found to have unofficially changed his name to Whistler (being fatherless) Goebbels, so Gordon considers Tim as non-existent. Linda meanwhile enjoys armed police protection from P.C. Greg Edwards as she is a witness against a mobster. Helen's latest obsession is bidding absurd prices for junk at auctions which she expects staff to accept 'gratefully'. The results surprise everybody.

Mr. Brittas had the leisure center renovated and thoroughly computerized, painstakingly detailed and cumbersome to operate when it works and seems to put the staff out of work, even harder to beat when reality doesn't conform to its options. Councillor Druggett trusts Britas will hang himself being given a free hand to spend lottery and European subsidy funds. Tim and Gavin enlist the sabotaging help of a hacking schoolboy, so everything goes wrong even worse then usual...

Gordon has entered the leisure center for a European excellence price and expects everyone to prepare for the inspection using the 'inner lion' roar to tap one's unused potential which he learned at a loony Florida course. Alas in Carole's case this unleashes a power-hungry side of her personality, which tricks Gordon into resigning over an accident she stages to take over as a despotic manager who makes everyone's lives so miserable they actually all want Brittas back.

Although he feels it undermines the team spirit, Gordon must award the council's employee of the month prize, a weekend in Paris, which spurs the staff into remarkable initiative. Alas it goes very wrong for Linda, whose gym equipment boost causes constructional havoc, and Colin, whose magic act for the birthday party packet -Gavin's idea, but others claim credit- involving various animals proves dangerous for himself, animals and party guests.

Before dragging the staff to a stark sea resort for the annual 'team building' event, Gordon makes Gavin confess to a record company of infringing their copyright. After receiving a letter that the company is suing for £10,000, he takes Colin's experimental spud-powered motorboat to sea and goes missing for days. Gordon assumes he's dead and organizes a cheap 'funeral' without telling the family--all overseas--there is no body. French pirates picked Gavin up and put him up for sale as a slave. Tim blames himself for writing the letter as a prank but is furious to hear...

Crusader TV reporter Roger Ferguson's budget is exhausted by a Nigerian trip, so he chooses the leisure center as next target for his 'documentary'. Gordon is confident his experience obtained from a PR course will result in favourable publicity, and even hires a gorgeous model as stand-in for Colin, but the real one's tropical rodents spread a bubonic fever. Gordon's over-confident 'damage control' makes it all much worse, and 'preventively' attracts the press.

After a weird curse from a gypsy about fatal food, the staff is afraid to eat Gordon's self-baked cake to celebrate the Leisure Centre's seventh anniversary, especially after Gordon's friend Harold eats some kedgeree and dies; Helen and Carole figure out that Carole's twins were fathered by Gordon (believing he was with his wife when everyone was in costume at Julie's party); Councillor Jack Druggett happily reports that the municipal council voted that Gordon must go on early retirement, but dies himself after enjoying a biscuit in Gordon's office.