It's breakfast time and Salty is ready for his sausages, so it's a pity that Bertha's prepared him a grapefruit. Meanwhile, Jenny's got a very important environmental message for us, the Sludges don't know what to do with all the green paper bits they've found, and Sam tells us about that time he was Chief of Police. Apologies for the start of this episode being cut off - that's exactly how it was on the tape.
As is so often the case, Mr and Mrs Sludge are the highlight of this one for me, although I think their adventure was funnier without the later information from the message in the bottle. They really are such heroically dim characters, but they love each other, and ultimately that's what makes them so endearing. Relatable, even.
This episode was made in 1999, so the main target audience is, was, and always will be those born in the 90s. Incidentally, that joke about there being no laughs for the manager of the Bank of England... A quick search turned up this on Wikipedia: BoE Governor Edward "George attracted controversy in [October] 1998 when he was widely reported to have made a statement to London newspaper executives implying that unemployment in the north of England was a price worth paying to preserve affluence in the south of the country." Is that what they were referencing, or some other scandal? Or was it just a general remark and I'm looking too deeply into it?
Humungous thanks to Joe for lending me this tape.
(If you're a copyright holder and have any objections, please feel free to contact me. Alternatively, I haven't monetised the video, so you're welcome to do so, and that way everybody wins.)