There is a mention of Greta Garbo in this episode and the episode itself is a riff on Grand Hotel.
After Budgie got a display in salesmanship in the previous episode from Charlie Endell. Budgie is hoping to sell Charlie a film projector. Good luck with that.
So Charlie is invited by Budgie to have dinner in the Grandee Hotel on the North Orbital Road. It is a low end hotel with aspirations and a touch of Spain about it.
The hotel is full of salesmen with business accounts. They are expecting a rugby party from Wales. Budgie needs to do some quick cons to have enough dosh to pay for the room and dinner.
Charlie turns up with his wife, shes does not say much. He does not do business when he is with her. It looks like that film projector is going nowhere.
The beauty of the episode are all the vignettes. The hotel manager with aspirations to leap to a better hotel. He also has and no plans to marry his lovelorn assistant who he carries on with.
The elderly salesman on the verge of losing his biggest customer in his area. Then there is Peter Olliphant (Peter Sallis) who is down in London to look for his teenage daughter who has run away.
Peter is getting drunk in the bar as the salesman is desperately sourcing some mincemeat.
The comedy is provided by the hapless loser Budgie who has bought the long suffering Hazel with him. Yet the story has a cold dark deviation, Peter does find the whereabouts of his daughter.
It really does demonstrate that Budgie was never a comedy drama of lowlife and unlovable villains. As in the episode, Some Mothers' Sons; there were plenty of other losers out there. A very bittersweet episode.