- Date First Aired: 13/02/1992
The centre is once again closed, although this time, it's so Brittas can carry out fire drills. However, it isn't working too well, with the staff seeing high failure rates and trying to get around it. Meanwhile, an opportunity has come up for Carole - an old boyfriend of hers wants her to join him in Australia but she needs £1200. Luckily, finance comes to her in the form of £100 in a handbag she had left behind the previous year. Although she is encouraged by Tim and Gavin to use this money on betting on horses, Brittas get word of this and convinces her to not do so. With this in mind, she gets Gavin to store it in Brittas' office.
During this, Helen is hoping to use the opportunity to have lunch with Brittas in his office. She even intends to use the opportunity to finally bust her habit of antidepressants. When Gavin comes in, they end up talking and having cigarettes together. Unfortunately, Brittas catches them, leading to Helen ending up dumping her still lit cigarette into Carole's handbag. Although husband and wife try to have their dinner, Councillor Dapping arrives. She's asking about an expansion to one of the fire escapes that Brittas wants. Said fire escape is in a location where there would be little traffic, although Brittas is insistent on it. Unfortunately, Helen is starting to get pretty pissed at Brittas for not doing her lunch and starts sending him some of the food to be used during lunch. Brittas is able to calm her down and they try to continue their romantic lunch. Unfortunately, it will not last long, for the lit cigarette has caused a fire in the centre. Councillor Dapping proceeds to herd a bunch of people through the exit that Brittas wanted to be made larger and ends up snapping the ladder, leading to lots of injuries and Brittas' fears becoming true.. Helen, having had her lunch ruined, gets her anti-depressants back, and it's revealed that if Carole had bet on the horse that Tim and Gavin were hoping to bet on, she would have gotten the needed money.
Tropes featured in this episode:
- A Bloody Mess: Inverted when Brittas initially believes that an injury that one of the employees sustained in the fire is just a prop wound, only to realise that it’s actually real.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Helen is discussing her plans to ditch her anti-depressants, she mentions that it was Dr. Grey specifically who wanted her to cut back, who had previously appeared in "Stop Thief!"
- Helen mentions that a new woman has taken over her and Mr. Brittas' marriage guidance lessons after they had been previously cancelled in "Temple of the Body". Additionally, Gavin's use of cigarettes to unwind, first shown in that episode, once again shows up.
- Crazy-Prepared: Brittas' fire drills, where among the things that the staff have to be prepared for is a train crashing into the centre and dumping nuclear waste onto their hockey pitch.
- The Extremist Was Right: Brittas' frequent letters to the council to get a ladder capable of holding more people proves true when Councillor Dapping herself tries to use it and is sent crashing to the ground.
- Fear-Induced Idiocy: A fire starts in the leisure centre, and the customers are misdirected by Linda (who is unaware of the fire, but currently doing safety drills for the centre) into thinking that they can't go down past the third floor. The panicking crowd end up all on the same ladder in a disused room to get down, in spite of the fact that the ladder is designed to handle only 8 people and the crowd is of a higher number than that. Special mention goes to Councillor Drapping, who tells everyone to get off as the ladder can't handle the weight... whilst on the ladder. Naturally, everyone ends up injured when the ladder breaks.
- Funny Background Event: Whilst Brittas is being interviewed, several of the staff members can be seen listening to the horse races. Brittas and Carole the reporter end up being interrupted when Gavin and Tim win at the horse bets.
- Gambling Ruins Lives: How Brittas views Carole's desire to spend cash on horse-betting, believing that she would be just throwing money away and advising that she just saves it instead. The episode actually ends up being a subversion of the trope, as the ending shows that if she had betted, she would have raised the necessary money to go to Australia.
- House Fire: An improperly put-out cigarette ends up causing a fire in the centre, which leads to trouble when it interacts with the characters' safety drills. Luckily, the centre is back to normal by the next episode.
- Idiot Ball: Councillor Dapping picks it up at the end of the episode. She goes to tell the others the fire escape ladder can't handle their combined weight... by going down it herself and snapping it off the wall.
- Meaningful Name: The horse which Tim and Gavin plan to bet on is called "Australian Journey", which would have been the horse to have allowed Carole to raise enough funds for her to undertake the journey to Australia if Brittas hadn't changed her mind.
- Mistaken for Cheating: A poor choice of words from Brittas leads Helen to briefly think that he has a mistress.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Brittas ruins Carole's chances to move to Australia with an old boyfriend.
- No Medication for Me: Helen tries to improve her life by quitting and giving her antidepressants to Brittas, but just becomes more frustrated than usual, even sending Brittas portions of the dinner they were meant to have. After the events of the episode, Brittas decides to return them to her.
- No Name Given: Carole mentions an old boyfriend of hers who runs a sheep farm and wants her to go to Australia, but no name is ever given to him.
- One-Shot Character: Carole Jones.
- One-Steve Limit: The reporter who shows up at the end of the episode, also known as Carole Jones, shares the same first name as Carole the receptionist.
- Red Armband of Leadership: Brittas wears a red armband when he is leading the fire drills.
- Romantic Candlelit Dinner: Helen's intended lunch with Brittas certainly fits the bill, even coming with dimmed lights. Too bad it goes horribly wrong...
- Running Gag: Everyone keeps thinking that Brittas' office has lost a bulb when Helen has the light dimmed down for her lunch.
- Serious Business: Brittas catches Gavin having a smoke with Helen, so he makes him apologise for shortening her life expectancy by three minutes.
- Smoking Is Not Cool: It's revealed that Brittas and Tim believe this to be true. Brittas has a habit of scattering health leaflets showing what happens to people's lungs when they smoke, whilst Tim makes Gavin smoke out in the garden.
- Status Quo Is God: Helen is hoping to ditch her anti-depressants, but relapses after her romantic lunch with Brittas goes wrong.
- Tantrum Throwing: When Brittas doesn't quite get up to the lunch that Helen had prepared for him, an enraged Helen begins throwing dishes and glass about the place and shoving pieces of dinner with the leftover shards in envelopes to take to Brittas.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: During the fire drills, Brittas accidentally creates a scenario where it is impossible for anyone to successfully flee to safety, making it unwinnable. He tries to argue to Laura that fires "can be extremely inconvenient", but he eventually relents when he realises that the exit he thought he had planned out as usable was actually inaccessible and frees up an exit.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Carole is given the possibility of a better life in Australia if she follows Tim and Gavin's advice regarding horse betting using money from a handbag she had misplaced from when she was still with Derrick. However, Brittas convinces her to leave it and to use the money to gain interest in the bank. Not only is the cash subsequently destroyed in an ensuing fire, it is also revealed that if she had followed Tim and Gavin's advice, she would have successfully raised enough money.
