Man About The House Series 1, Episode 1 (Summary)

Three’s A Crowd

First Aired: 15-08-1973

Written by: Brian Cooke & Johnnie Mortimer

In the first episode of Man About The House the sun is shining, the world is turning and it can’t be bad. At least not according to the man on the radio who is blasting his transistorized message from a table full of empty bottles and dirty glasses.

It might be a nice morning and the world may very well be turning, but as Chrissy stumbles out of her bedroom it looks like her stomach is turning too. Jo on the other hand appears to have survived the party more or less intact and is even doing a spot of vacuuming. Until her sickly roommate unplugs the vacuum cleaner anyway.

“Tell me something,” Chrissy asks her.

“Yeah.”

“That terrible girl at the party last night.”

“Yeah.”

“The one that kept giggling and wanted to striptease.”

“Yeah.”

“It was me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

It sounds like some party, but she is paying the price now.

Chrissy and Jo’s roommate, Diana, has just got married and Chrissy is worried that she ruined the wedding reception. Jo tells her not to worry; Diana barely even noticed because her labour pains had started. Jo blames Chrissy’s behaviour on the punch anyway; it was so strong that it has turned the ladle green.

When Chrissy decides to run herself a bath there is a man asleep in the tub and she is so preoccupied that she does not even notice. The sleeping stranger seems to be pretty out of it as well and when Chrissy sets the taps running he doesn’t even blink an eyelid, so the chances are that he had some of the punch as well. Never mix your drinks folks.

The man in the tub is Robin Tripp and he arrived at the party with a friend of one of the gatecrashers.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing in your bath,” he says, when the threat of drowning finally rouses him.

“No, not at all,” Chrissy replies. “I’m just glad I noticed you before I got in.”

Robin tells the girls that the last thing he can remember is having some of that dreadful punch, so I suppose it would be hard for anyone to blame him for dripping water on the carpet.

As it turns out Robin’s arrival is rather well timed because the girls are looking for someone to fill the empty bed in Diana’s room and Robin is looking for somewhere to live. Two girls and a guy sharing an apartment though! This was the seventies, remember, and it wasn’t the sort of arrangement that anyone would enter into lightly. The thing is that neither of the girls can cook and when Jo presents Robin with a plateful of Scrambled eggs it looks like he might be taking his life in his hands if he eats them.

“Oh, charming!” Jo says when Robin finds that all of the non-stick in with his breakfast is making it stick in his throat. “Can you do any better?”

“Yes,” he replies and he can indeed because he is studying for his diploma in cooking, at the technical college.

Robin’s cooking wows the two girls and they invite him to move in with them: equal share on the utility bills and Robin will need to do all of the cooking. And the washing up. There is only one problem, the Ropers will never agree to the arrangement. Chrissy has the solution to that one though; she tells the Ropers that Robin is a puff.