Line #1 Series/PhoneShop


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/phoneshop.jpg]] [[caption-width-right:350:The Sutton Branch. L-R: [[NewMeat Christopher]], [[CasanovaWannabe Ashley]], [[PointyHairedBoss Lance]], [[BewareTheQuietOnes Janine]], [[SharpDressedMan Jerwayne]]. Not seen: [[TheGhost Little Gary Patel]].]]
2	->''We don't run on the high street. We run the high street.''
3
4	''[=PhoneShop=]'' is a [[BritCom British sitcom]] first broadcast on Creator/Channel4 as part of the channel's 2009 Comedy Showcase season of comedy pilots. This was followed by a six-episode series broadcast on E4 in 2010 (which was actually commissioned before the pilot was even broadcast). A second series followed in 2011, and a third in 2013.
5
6	The show is set in a mobile phone shop -- a branch of the (fictional) [[TitleDrop [=PhoneShop=]]] Group -- located on the high street of the South London suburb of Sutton. It follows a university graduate called Christopher (played by Tom Bennett) during a one-day trial and his subsequent employment. The branch is managed by Lance (Martin Trenaman) and the other employees are Ashley (Andrew Brooke), Jerwayne (Javone Prince) and Janine (Emma Fryer). ''[=PhoneShop=]'' is created and written by Phil Bowker (the comedy editor at the production company behind the show, [=TalkBack=] Thames), with "The Cast" credited as supplying additional material. It was script edited by Creator/RickyGervais.
7
8	----
9	!!If man say him a trope...
10
11	* AbhorrentAdmirer: Despite being married to Lance [[note]] although the wedding was not, in fact, legal[[/note]], Shelley has propositioned both Ashley and Jerwayne. In the case of the latter, she ''forced her way into his bedroom'', causing him to run away in fear.
12	** Jerwayne himself can come across as this towards Janine. Who tends to get more than her fair share of these.
13	** When Jerwayne goes viral as the Sleepy Man, his admirers include old ladies and men. He only warms up to his new-found fame when some attractive young women show up as well.
14	** Lance, Ashley and Jerwayne all come across as this to Davinia when she goes to the Sutton Branch to run their staff training day.
15	* TheAce: Despite being in prison, Little Gary Patel -- branch assistant manager and phone salesman extraordinaire -- is seen as this by Lance and (to a lesser extent) the rest of the Sutton Branch. He even manages to retain his Salesman of the Month crown ''while doing time'', albeit by calling Lance and threatening to have someone go and vandalise his conservatory.
16	* TheAllegedCar: Jerwayne's Audi TT. There's a reason why he only paid £3,000 for a car that originally cost ten times as much.
17	* AmbiguouslyGay: Paul from the Croydon Branch, if Christopher's hints are anything to go by.
18	* AmbiguousSituation: Janine interrupts and ruins Christopher's date with Amanda by pretending to be a wronged ex-girlfriend of his. True, it hadn't been going well before the interruption ... but was Janine merely trying to prevent Christopher from making a fool of himself, did she know that Amanda was the PsychoExGirlfriend that Jerwayne and Ashley had previously mentioned, or was she just indulging in a bit of [[{{Jerkass}} jerkassery]]? Either way, she does her best to apologise to Christopher afterwards.
19	** Also, is the Elite Selling Crew a real thing, or just something Razz made up to intimidate the store managers (since they are said to be deployed to failing stores) and inspire the sales teams (since they are said to consist only of the best phone salesmen from across the company)? Given that Razz is not the most stable of people, it may well exist only in his head, although Lance seems to believe that it, or something like it, genuinely exists somewhere in the [=PhoneShop=] Group's hierarchy.
20	* AmbulanceCut: After the Meet & Greet guy goes out to beat up the Sax Man. Combined with a GilliganCut, since [[FightUnscene it turns out]] that the Sax Man won the fight.
21	* AshesToCrashes: A downplayed example; when Ashley is asked by an ex-girlfriend to scatter the ashes of her recently-deceased dog, he agrees ... only to empty the urn into a nearby bin when she's not looking.
22	* AsideGlance: In the (thankfully brief) snippet that we see of Lance and Shelley's HomePornMovie, Lance winks at the camera.
23	* AxCrazy: Little Gary Patel. And Razz Prince. Also, quite a few of the women who Ashley and Jerwayne try to date.
24	* BadBoss: Lance doesn't really qualify for this, as he's merely unsuited for a management role. Razz, who as the area manager is Lance's boss, is a more straightforward example — he tries to encourage Christopher to spy on Lance in order to get the guy fired, exhibits behaviour in the workplace that comes across as borderline insane, and treats his personal assistant rather badly.
25	* BadJobWorseUniform: In "Bear Bad Man", Christopher has to don the mascot costume to drum up sales.
26	* BaitAndSwitch: Often.
27	** Janine's ex is stated by her to be a total psycho who was sent to prison for assaulting someone by throwing barbecue baked beans over him. When he shows up in Sutton, he assumes that Christopher is her new boyfriend after running into them and invites Christopher to have lunch with him. Christopher is told by everyone that he's probably going to have to fight the man. However, he turns out to be a fairly mild-mannered chap who fabricated the whole baked bean thing with a friend and then moved abroad in order to get away from Janine.
28	** When Lance is publicly mocked by Jez for being boring, he snaps and gets up to do something outrageous (which is later revealed to have been him taking his shirt off and entering the wet t-shirt contest). Janine tries to stop him — but only so that she can get her notebook out, as she had previously promised Lance that she would write about anything he did that wasn't boring. Once she's ready, she lets him continue.
29	** When Jerwayne is invited to lunch to meet his latest girlfriend's dad, he picks up on her nervousness about the encounter and assumes (given that she's white) that it's because the dad is a racist. Turns out, though, the dad is actually PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy and thinks that the sophisticated, well-dressed Jerwayne is ''not black enough'' for his daughter.
30	* BasementDweller: Downplayed with the [[SharpDressedMan invariably well-dressed]] Jerwayne, who for all his street smarts and talk about being TheCasanova does still live with his mum. Despite this, he seems to have more luck with the ladies than Ashley.
31	* BecauseISaidSo: "If man say him a ting, then him a ting"
32	* BecomingTheMask: Combined with NotSoAboveItAll in the case of Christopher. Although he doesn't approve of sales tricks like showing off a flashy watch and pretending to be a student (who's only working in order to fund his studies to become a doctor or a lawyer) in order to gain a customer's trust, he is nevertheless very quick to make use of such tricks.
33	* BewareTheNiceOnes: She may seem nice at first glance, but Amanda from Waterstones ultimately turns out to be ''both'' of the {{Psycho Ex Girlfriend}}s Ashley and Jerwayne had mentioned earlier in the episode -- she just keeps changing her name.
34	* BewareTheQuietOnes: Janine spends most of her time as an ExtremeDoormat, but is quietly extremely ambitious, and pulls out the occasional LetsGetDangerous moment.
35	* BiggerIsBetterInBed: "Now we know why man's called 'Lance'..."
36	* BingeMontage: With shots of [[KlatchianCoffee "quad-shot ristretto"]], in preparation for Super Sales Wednesday. Jerwayne is even shown licking sugar off the back of his hand, as one would lick salt while doing tequila slammers.
37	* TheBlindLeadingTheBlind: Christopher pulls the classic sitcom asking-your-mates-for-dating-advice error, which goes predictably badly. Subverted, though, as Ashley and Jerwayne freely admit that their strategy doesn't work on girls from a particular "aspirational demographic" which includes Waterstones employees, and Christopher had not mentioned that his date works in said bookshop. The fact that she turns out to be a psycho doesn't help matters either.
38	-->'''Jerwayne:''' You said she was Costa!
39	-->'''Christopher:''' I said ''I met her'' in Costa!
40	* BookSmart: Christopher, although he soon finds out that his new job requires him to be ''street'' smart, which he really isn't.
41	* BriefAccentImitation: Don doesn't like people imitating his Scottish accent, and Jez doesn't like people putting on an Irish accent when they talk to him ... because he's actually Welsh.
42	* BrokenAce: Lance qualifies, as it's explained that he was a promising company executive back in the late 1980s, but he ruined this by investing heavily in phone cards rather than the emerging mobile phone technology that would go on to dominate the communications industry. As a result, he's stuck in a management position for which he's unsuited, and is treated with disdain by staff and superiors alike.
43	* BritishBrevity: One pilot + three series consisting of six episodes each = 19 episodes in total.
44	* TheBully: Little Gary, who clearly intimated and coerced customers into buying inflexible phone packages, still intimidates Lance from behind bars and is implied to have bullied Jerwayne. Razz Prince also has shades of this in addition to being an AxCrazy CloudCuckoolander. In the final episode, Jerwayne runs into Cuzzy, who used to bully him in Sunday school and who still manages to intimate him.
45	* ButtMonkey: Christopher, especially in the first series.
46	* CallBack:
47	** "What did I tell you about running?"
48	** "A ''hour?''" "A ''hour.''"
49	* TheCasanova: How Ashley and Jerwayne both see themselves. In actual fact, Ashley is more of a straightforward CasanovaWannabe, while Jerwayne -- despite having more luck with the ladies than his friend -- [[BasementDweller still lives with his mum]] and can come across as an AbhorrentAdmirer to Janine, the main object of his affections.
50	* CasanovaWannabe: Although he sees himself as TheCasanova, Ashley is actually this, as his romantic encounters rarely go well. Despite being more picky, Jerwayne does (slightly) better.
51	* TheChainOfHarm: In "Revenge of the Razz", Christopher is wearing a grey suit and sporting a fauxhawk. Lance, who's similarly attired, tells Christopher off for trying to copy his style. Turns out, Razz is also going for the same vibe, and when he shows up he tells ''Lance'' off for copying ''his'' style.
52	* ChekhovsGun: The one-touch voice recorder on Christopher's phone. And the dildos that Jez is giving away. Both are used to undermine Razz, and he thoroughly deserves it.
53	* ChekhovsSkill: Although Christopher is mocked by Ashley and Jerwayne for having been in the debating society at university, this experience does come in handy -- although his RousingSpeech falls flat when he's subsequently revealed to have used the 'part time student' trick that he was railing against in order to sell a phone plan.
54	* CloudCuckoolander: Razz Prince, the [=PhoneShop=] Group's area manager, comes across as one of these.
55	* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: After a teenager tries and fails to rob the shop, Jerwayne strips him to his underwear and puts him in the cage in the back room. Apparently, Little Gary used to do this a lot.
56	* CountryMatters[=/=]CurseCutShort: Almost once an episode, someone gets called a "cunnnn-". At one point, we even see it written that way on the wall of the toilet.
57	* CringeComedy: has its moments.
58	* DirtyCop: Somewhat downplayed, but Lance does have to pay off the police officers who find that there are two men in their underwear imprisoned in the store's cage. Another cop is only too happy to sell him some confiscated weed in order to help him get in with the White Men's Reggae Club.
59	* DiscriminateAndSwitch: Janine isn't eligible for Salesman of the Month. It's not because she's a woman -- it's because she sells Pay As You Go.
60	-->'''Lance''': The company's come a long way since 2008.
61	* DrugsAreBad: Lance is rather fond of dope but tends to get sick after smoking it. In "Baking Bad", the boys are affected by inadvertently eating Lance's hash cookies in various ways, none of them good.
62	* EmployeeOfTheMonth: The Sutton branch's Salesman of the Month award is perpetually won by Little Gary, despite the fact that he's in prison.
63	* EveryoneHasStandards: A few non-villainous examples.
64	** Jerwayne, who sees himself as TheCasanova, has a long list of high street retailers that he will not date the female employees of, those stores being beneath [=PhoneShop=] in his and Ashley's reading of the hierarchy of the high street [[note]] so he'll date a young lady who works for Zara, but not Clare's Accessories, the Build-A-Bear Workshop or Mothercare; on the other end of the scale, he has to up his game with those who work for Waterstones and the Citizens Advice Bureau, as they are immune to his usual tricks and moves [[/note]]. He won't even consider dating any woman who wears a polo shirt as part of her work uniform, and does not respond well to Ashley's suggestion that they should give the "lower league talent" a try.
65	** Shelley tries to bully Janine into a group sex session with two male escorts. When it's revealed that one of the escorts is Wheelchair Dave, Shelley herself runs away.
66	** Christopher is mocked for dating a receptionist from a hair salon as a woman in such a job is seen as being beneath a [=PhoneShop=] salesman in the high street hierarchy. When she gets promoted to stylist, though, she dumps Christopher as she now considers [=PhoneShop=] salesmen to be beneath ''her''.
67	** Jerwayne and Ashley are both thrilled when Razz invites them to join the (possibly made-up) Elite Selling Crew, but walk away when Razz reveals to them that there's only one space available, and they'll have to fight each other for it.
68	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: ''[=PhoneShop=]'' is about the employees of a high street phone shop. Which is actually called [=PhoneShop=].
69	* {{Facecam}}: Christopher's coffee-fuelled FreakOut.
70	* FanDisservice: The security guard -- an overweight middle-aged man who has pierced nipples and is ''very'' keen to strip down to his underwear -- definitely counts as this.
71	* FirstEpisodeTwist: The pilot episode is about new employee Christopher's one-day trial as a [=PhoneShop=] salesman; if he doesn't make at least one sale, he doesn't get the job. Since he's a regular cast member in the main series, it's something of a foregone conclusion that he'll pass the trial. Especially given that a full series was commissioned ''before the pilot was even broadcast''.
72	* FishOutOfWater: Christopher, when he starts working for the [=PhoneShop=] Group.
73	* FunnyBackgroundEvent: When Ashley and Jerwayne walk past Phones [=4U=], the employees are giving them the finger.
74	** In series two, Little Gary is still pulling in the Salesman of the Month awards from behind bars, even though (according to the photos on the break room wall) he has become a radical Muslim extremist.
75	* GenderBlenderName: Kim from the Purley branch is actually a man, something Lance was unaware of when he was agonising about how to respond to the fact that an email to him from Kim was signed with two kisses.
76	** Ashley later falls victim to this trope when he signs up to an Army dating website in the hope of dating female soldiers, but is contacted by several ''male'' soldiers.
77	* TheGhost: Little Gary Patel, salesman extraordinaire, is unseen because he's in prison -- although we do see various photos of him on the Salesman of the Month panel, an image of him in the ShrineToTheFallen, and we briefly see him on CCTV footage.
78	* GroinAttack: Razz gets shot in the testicles with a paintball gun.
79	* HardWorkMontage: Super Sales Wednesday, fuelled by KlatchianCoffee.
80	* HiddenDepths: Plenty.
81	** Janine has a few, including the ability to speak fluent Mandarin.
82	** Ashley finds that he's surprised by the eloquence of some of the poetry he received from soldiers after he signed up to an Army dating website.
83	** Despite being the newest employee, Christopher knows ''a lot'' about the history of the [=PhoneShop=] Group. Granted, this is evidently part of the company's training as fellow-newbie Rochelle from the Croydon branch knows a fair bit as well, but his knowledge proves to be better than hers.
84	* HomePornMovie: Lance has some filming equipment due to him and Shelley having made a few of these.
85	-->'''Lance:''' Spanking. Wanking. Franking. ''[Jerwayne looks puzzled]'' Post Office role play. I'm the postman. Special delivery won't fit in the letterbox so I have to go round the back.
86	* HypocriticalHumor: In "Doctor Who", Christopher makes a RousingSpeech entreating the other salespeople to stop using underhanded lies and confidence tricks to make sales ... at the end of which, a little old lady comes along and congratulates him, saying he'll make a fine human rights lawyer once he finishes his exams.
87	* ICallHimMrHappy: "Jerwayne Junior, Esquire."
88	* ItWillNeverCatchOn: Back in TheEighties, Lance thought this of mobile phones, and invested heavily in phone cards instead — thus torpedoing his executive career, dooming him to a life of junior management to which he is unsuited.
89	-->'''Lance''': They were big, bulky things. You needed both hands to hold one of them.
90	* JerkassHasAPoint: Razz may be a bullying, unstable nut-job, but he's not wrong when he points out that Lance is incompetent.
91	* KlatchianCoffee: As consumed to gee everyone up for Super Sales Wednesday.
92	-->'''Jerwayne''': What we're working with is under-the-counter quad-shot ristretto. This shit here? [[BannedInChina Banned in Milan]]. It killed ''a priest''.
93	* LiarRevealed: New Man Ting, the rap group fronted by Christopher that Jerwayne made up in order to impress Cuzzy, is revealed to be a load of drama students posing as urban youths — but only after a music executive got taken in by their supposed authenticity. Cuzzy himself is eventually revealed to be a mere car cleaner.
94	* MaintainTheLie: Happens a few times.
95	** In order to get out of a relationship, Ashley lies to the lady in question, telling her that he's gay and in a relationship with Jerwayne. When Jerwayne finds out, he's furious — not just because Ashley violated a pre-existing verbal agreement between the two of them [[note]] namely, that either of them needs the other's consent before trying to get out of anything by pretending to be gay [[/note]] but also because the woman Ashley dumped works for Zara and she's told all of her colleagues, ruining Jerwayne's chances of pulling any of them. He demands that Ashley admit to not actually being gay, only to change tack (and insist that Ashley continue to pretend to be gay) when he finds that the Zara girls now see him as a gay best friend, which gets him an invite to an Ann Summers party which they would never have granted to a straight man.
96	** Christopher tells his parents that he's the store manager, which is fairly harmless until they come along to the shop's sales seminar evening. Rather than embarrass him, though, his colleagues play along with the notion that he's the manager, a deception they continue to pull off even when the police get called in.
97	** Taken to extremes in the final episode when Jerwayne tells Cuzzy that he's the manager of a rap group called New Man Ting, which leads to everyone getting involved in the making of a music video which impresses a music executive who thinks that the group — actually Christopher and some of his drama student friends — are genuine disaffected urban youths with a penchant for throwing fried chicken bones on the floor.
98	* MistakenForGay: Happens to Jerwayne with the girls from Zara thanks to Ashley violating an unwritten rule they have about not pretending to be gay without the other man's permission. He decides to go along with it in the hope of hooking up with one of them by way of claiming that she has 'converted' him to heterosexuality. They, though, are trying to hook him up with a gay friend of theirs, [[spoiler: but in a final twist, this friend is revealed to be a straight man who is attempting the same thing as Jerwayne]].
99	* MistakenForRacist: Christopher on his first day, although [[BaitAndSwitch it's quickly revealed]] that Ashley and Jerwayne are just winding him up.
100	* MemeticMutation: In-universe; Jerwayne becomes an Internet sensation after a video of him sleeping goes viral in "The Sleepyman". People come from as far afield as Scotland and the Netherlands in order to see him.
101	* TheMole: Razz tries to groom Christopher to be one of these in order to gather enough evidence to justify firing Lance. Subverted, though, as Christopher plays along for a while before turning on Razz.
102	* TheNapoleon: ''Little'' Gary Patel, AxCrazy super-salesman.
103	* NewMeat: Christopher, or "New Man" as he is called by Ashley and Jerwayne.
104	* NoodleIncident: Plenty.
105	** Concerning Ashley and Jerwayne, there's the "Aiya Napa bedroom misunderstanding of 2005", a consequence of which is that either man must get the consent of the other before "doing the gay ting" (ie. pretending to be gay for any reason whatsoever, as — due to their close friendship — doing so could inadvertently cast aspersions on the other man's sexuality).
106	** Anything involving Little Gary, notably the "Catford hat-trick" (ABH [[note]] actual bodily harm[[/note]], GBH [[note]] grievous bodily harm[[/note]] and attempted kidnapping) that resulted in his arrest and imprisonment.
107	** Whatever Shelley did to the entire Croydon Branch at a party she hadn't been invited to.
108	* NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat: "Not being gay myself but simultaneously not having a problem with the lifestyle choices of others..."
109	* NotWhatItLooksLike: Christopher, who has a new girlfriend, is bullied by Janine into accompanying her to a lesbian nightclub on an evening when the girlfriend is having a girls' night out with a friend. Naturally, they run into each other when Christopher and some of the lesbians are going for kebabs after a hard night's partying. He can't even begin to explain to her that it really is not what it looks like.
110	* OddFriendship: Between Shelley and Janine, for a time; it mainly consists of alcohol-fuelled nights out, and ends when Shelley demands that Janine prove her loyalty by taking part in a group sex session with a pair of male escorts. Janine's uneasy with this anyway, but when the men are revealed to be Wheelchair Dave and a friend of his, she outright refuses (and almost throws up).
111	* OhCrap: Ashley has this reaction when he realises that the seemingly nice girl he's been chatting up is in fact the psycho with the owl tattoo that Jerwayne had previously been talking about.
112	-->'''Ashley''': A owl?
113	-->'''Jerwayne''': A owl!
114	* OnlySaneMan: Poor, poor Christopher.
115	* APartyAlsoKnownAsAnOrgy: Invoked in a couple of cases:
116	** When Janine and Christopher's out-of-hours visit to a seemingly nice middle-aged customer's home looks like it's about to become this, they bail.
117	** The two women who hire the boys when they try to branch out and become male escorts are evidently keen on one of these, what with them being porkers, not talkers.
118	** Shelley's test of Janine's loyalty is one of these with two male escorts who turn out to be Wheelchair Dave and an unnamed (but presumably just as disgusting) friend of his. Janine, who was reluctant to go along with it in any case, is both horrified and disgusted in equal measure. So, for that matter, is Shelley as she evidently did not know who the male escorts she'd booked would be. Both women run away.
119	* PointyHairedBoss: Lance, literally so in some episodes (where he appears to be copying Razz's style).
120	* PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy: The White Men's Reggae Club is roundly mocked by Ashley and Jerwayne for being this, although Lance points out that it's really just a place where middle-aged white men who happen to like reggae music can dance to it "without fear of ridicule".
121	** The dad of one of Jerwayne's girlfriends is a somewhat extreme example, given that he only drinks Supermalt and complains about the fancy restaurant they go to not serving West Indian food, much to Jerwayne's bemusement.
122	** Ashley is a more justified example, being a white man who uses typically London West Indian speech patterns and who is best friends with a black man (Jerwayne); it's perfectly possible (likely, even) that he was raised in a predominantly black neighbourhood and so has grown up with that culture.
123	* PsychoExGirlfriend: A couple of these are encountered. Ashley is horrified when he realises that the pretty blonde he's just secured a date with is the nutcase with the owl tattoo [[note]] a owl? [[/note]] who Jerwayne had previously mentioned. In the same episode, Christopher dates Amanda, who in a case of BewareTheNiceOnes turns out to have previously dated Ashley and Jerwayne, who (respectively) knew her as French Connecky Becky (who did a shit in a store window display) and Lisa Blake (who set fire to Jerwayne's cousin's hair).
124	* TheReveal: A few examples.
125	** To everyone's surprise, Amanda is revealed to be a PsychoExGirlfriend of both Ashley and Jerwayne.
126	** Don, a love interest of Janine's who poses as a businessman, is revealed to be the Sani Van Man [[note]] the man who collects the sanitary towel bins from just about every retailer on the high street [[/note]]; granted, it's his own business, but ''still''.
127	* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Jez's [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Copiapó_mining_accident Chilean Miners]] charity scam. Even though he's doing it ''over a year'' after the accident happened, with Lance posing as the last of the miners to be rescued.
128	* RunningGag: Excrement is thrown at the shop window in more than one episode.
129	-->'''Lance''': Clean that, Christopher. Use the old squeegee.
130	** Lance's encounters with Sandra, a woman who works elsewhere on the high street and who likes to mock him when things aren't looking good for the [=PhoneShop=], invariably end with him telling her to fuck off. This gets a few variations, as she tells ''him'' to fuck off when she has to wear her shop's mascot costume on the high street, and on another occasion Jerwayne and Lance simultaneously tell her to fuck off.
131	* ServileSnarker: Young Wang, Razz's PA. When making coffee for his boss, he spits in it, and tells a surprised Janine that if she was Razz's PA, she'd do the same.
132	* SharpDressedMan: Jerwayne and Ashley.
133	* ShoutOut: Several episode titles -- among them "Series/DoctorWho", "[[Series/BreakingBad Baking Bad]]", "[[Series/ComeDineWithMe Come Dine With We]]", "[[Film/TheLastTemptationOfChrist The First Temptation of Chris]]" and "[[Series/TinkerTailorSoldierSpy Soldier, Swinger, Shelley, Shelley]]".
134	** When Lance smokes dope at work in a bid to make himself come across as less boring, he plays the theme from ''Series/{{QI}}'' (as in, "quite interesting", ie. ''not'' boring) on the shop's PA system.
135	** Razz Prince seems to be trying to model himself on [[Film/Scarface1983 Tony Montana]], while referring to his personal assistant as his "[[Franchise/ThePinkPanther Cato]]". In addition to which, the theme from ''Film/TheGodfather'' plays while he's in his office.
136	** Ashley believes that expressing admiration for the films of Creator/JudeLaw is an effective method of seduction.
137	* ShownTheirWork: The way that Jerwayne and Ashley speak is accurate, up-to-date London street slang.
138	* ShrineToTheFallen: To Little Gary, although he's not dead -- just in prison.
139	* SitcomArchNemesis: Pretty much every character has one, mostly competitors or employees of other high street retailers whose business rivalry has been inflated in their heads into a blood feud. The shop as a whole has the Croydon Branch.
140	* StalkerWithACrush: Janine spends an entire episode having to deal with the fact that she has a female stalker on her hands. At the end, the girl enters the store and reveals that she was following for love ... not for Janine, but for Christopher, who she thought was a woman who had a preference for suits.
141	* StreetMusician: The Sax Man, who sets up outside of the branch in one episode. His upbeat music helps to attract customers, but after Janine dates and dumps him in short order he starts to play sad music which drives everyone away. This causes the Meet & Greet man to go out and beat him up, only for the subsequent AmbulanceCut to reveal that the Sax Man won the fight; he's last seen playing happy music from the back of a police car.
142	* StupidSexyFlanders: Lance's [[SensualSpandex bike shorts]] certainly have an effect on Shelley.
143	* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: "Is this about the hoax call earlier? B-because there wasn't one and it wasn't me"
144	* TakeAThirdOption: When the staff need to buckle down and get things done, they get a ludicrous amount of extra-strong coffee. Christopher asks how they could afford it all, and Ashley explains about the loyalty cards in coffee shops, which get ink-stamped eight times before you get a free coffee. Christopher assumes they just have a load of loyalty cards saved up, but Ashley explains the secret -- ''they've got the stamp''.
145	* TeamDad: Lance, if only because he's somewhat older than the others. Although he acts very fatherly to Ashley and Jerwayne when they are suffering from the effects of eating the hash brownies in "Baking Bad".
146	* ThoseTwoGuys: Ashley and Jerwayne are usually seen together.
147	* TooSpicyForYogSothoth: A sexual variant; Shelley seems to have notably fewer inhibitions than anyone else, and thinks nothing of hitting on her husband's co-workers. In the escort episode, she tries to force Janine to go along with a group sex encounter ... but when one of the male escorts she's booked is revealed to be Wheelchair Dave, she joins Janine in running away in terror.
148	* TitleDrop: Frequently, and justifiably so given that the name of the show is also the name of the company the main characters work for.
149	* UnresolvedSexualTension: Between Jerwayne and Janine. In Jerwayne's head, at any rate.
150	* VomitDiscretionShot: Lance, after smoking some weed.
151	* VomitIndiscretionShot: Janine, after getting drunk with Shelley. Viewers can clearly see that the puke is ''grey''.
152	* TheWhitestBlackGuy: Jerwayne is surprised when the father of a white girl he's dating says that he's ''not black enough'' for his daughter. The dad, for his part, is an exaggerated example of PrettyFlyForAWhiteGuy, to Jerwayne's confusion.
153	* WideEyedIdealist. Christopher. Also Janine, to a lesser extent.
154	* WorkCom: It's a sitcom set in a suburban mobile phone shop.
155	* YouDidntAsk: The reason why Lance hadn't told Shelley that he still had those ... [[SensualSpandex revealing]] bike shorts.
156	* YouGetMeCoffee: Being the newbie, Christopher is often forced to make the tea.
157	----
158	->''Talkback Thames!''
159	->''A Fremantle Media company!''
160	->''Aloe Vera toilet paper!''

Context Series / PhoneShop