In Sickness and in Health

Alf Garnett has not mellowed with the years and is as bigoted as ever. The Garnetts are now living in a council maisonette, near West Ham football ground, but Alf's lot is not made easy by having to push Else, who has rheumatoid arthritis, around in a wheelchair.

Opticians are the focus of Alf attention this week.

Also in the firing line are yer Fleet Street and yer Church, but he meets his match outside a ladies loo.

Alf hears of the provision of home-helps by the DHSS, but none of them will stay in the same house as him. After a session in the pub with Arthur, he returns home to find that Else has acquired a different kind of home-help - one who will stay!

Alf uses his neighbours' phone to ring his daughter Rita, in Liverpool. It's so much easier now 'you don't have to bother with the operator no more' - but Rita's not on the phone and Else is still next door but after all: what are neighbours for!

Rita comes home for a few days to visit Mum and Dad, and meets their new home-help, Winston. Mike , meanwhile, is still unemployed in Liverpool, and who can wonder, when 'the Tory Government's being run by a grocer's daughter!'

Unable to qualify for a powered wheelchair and fed up with pushing Else and the shopping home, Alf asks the local mechanic to modify an old lawn-mower engine for her chair. While demonstrating its safety to an unconvinced Else, Alf realises he forgot to ask for a brake.

Alf and Else are invited to Christmas dinner at the church hall - thereby missing the free beano for pensioners at the local pub. Alf feels he ought to have his share of both, and achieves as much by conniving with his mate Arthur. Also using devious means, Rita is forced to stay to look after them over the Christmas period which ends with a knees-up at the church hall.