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Private Notes
Arthur is determined his team will defeat their old rivals at the Winchester Pub Quiz night. Unfortunately his star performer is an escaped convict with DS Morley hot on his trail.
The acquisition of a giant ballon introduces Arthur to the lucrative world of aerial advertising. But the launch of Daley Inflatables comes to a abrupt halt when Arthur is abducted by a psychotic business rival.
Arthur can't believe his fortune: London's newest despatch business "The Daley Post" is swamped with choice customers. But Ray thinks it's all to good to be true - or legal.
Whilst searching for car dealership Goodtime Motors, Arthur is arrested for kerb-crawling, soliciting a prostitute and assaulting a police officer. Despite DS Morley's opinion that Arthur would be incapable of such offences, DS Tomkins is determined to proceed with the case. Arthur insists on defending himself in court. As the trial proceeds, Ray seeks out the elusive Goodtime Motors and eventually finds them. He persuades the owner to appear in court as a defence witness, and the prosecution withdraw all charges.
Arthur sells some surplus stock to Nolan, a fairground owner, in exchange for a slot machine, but discovers that the machine is full of Irish money. He realises that Nolan was part of a major Dublin bank robbery some years previously and has thus hidden the money. With Ray's help, Arthur manages to inform DS Morley of what's been happening and an operation is set up to arrest Nolan and his cronies.
Toby ‘Jug’ Johnson is released from prison after many years and a drunken reunion begins at the Winchester between him, Arthur and Dave, who were members of the same gang in their youth, the ‘Brentford Backhanders’. Arthur begins to suspect that Dave is setting up a rival business with another gang member and they fall out. So Arthur starts a rival club and a price war erupts. Ray is eventually able to arrange a mediation and peace is restored.
Arthur decides to retire and leaves Ray in charge. He is initially successful, computerising the records and expanding business, but he doesn’t have Arthur’s hard-won knowledge of people and their habits. Ray falls victim to a sting operation involving jewellery and Arthur, who’s become bored with retirement anyway, returns to the business to sort out the mess.
Seeing the fashion for television satellite dishes, Arthur employs Logie Lawson, a self-trained electronics ‘expert’ to install ex-East German army dishes – but the instructions are all in German and they mess up their first job. They get an order to install one on the house of ‘Fingers’ Rossetti, who has a very bad reputation and a very short temper. The installation goes badly wrong and both Arthur and Logie, who has a fear of heights, are stranded on the roof.
To celebrate Dave’s 25 years at the Winchester, Arthur offers to get the club redecorated. He gives the job to “Heart Attack” – but the latter promptly breaks through a bearing wall and the club is forced to close down. To raise the money for repairs, Arthur organises a fundraiser football match, refereed by DS Morley. Then ‘Heart Attack’, who’d vanished, reappears and hands over the money for the repairs, which he’s stolen from Vic, a rival club owner. To allay police suspicions, an auction is held in order to ‘launder’ the money.
After not selling a car for several weeks, Arthur decides to rent them out instead. This ploy is successful and soon all but one have been rented – including Arthur’s own car. One punter is late in returning and Ray and his friend Winston are forced to repossess it. This leads to accusations of theft, especially when the one car left on the lot is found to have been stolen. Arthur’s car is tracked by police as it’s driven around the country, but finally returned to the car lot.
A private detective, Bill McCabe, arrives from Australia to investigate a claim that Arthur is heir to a fortune left by an distant relative who’s died intestate. Ray and Arthur carry out some genealogical research at the Family Records Centre (then located at St. Catherine’s House and now merged with the National Archives), and also search parish records. They finally locate what appears to be clinching evidence of Arthur’s claim to be the last surviving descendant of the deceased’s family. But the Will requires the inheritor to be ‘of good character’, and Arthur has just been charged with unauthorised use of parking infringement notices (which are also forged).
Expecting a massive windfall from his unknown Australian relative, Arthur prepares to fly to Sydney with Ray. On arrival, they are met by Bill McCabe and booked into an expensive hotel. At the lawyers office, they discover that there are several claimants to the estate of great-uncle Joshua Daley. Arthur and Ray visit the Daley estate; Paradise Springs; a largely derelict homestead on several thousand acres of outback land - land that’s potentially valuable for grazing and possibly mineral rights.
Marooned in Sydney and unable to pay their hotel bills or airfares home, Ray and Arthur move into a cheap backpackers hostel. Ray gets some bar work and Arthur falls in with Collins, a small-time street dealer and receiver of stolen goods whose methods he is very familiar with. He starts street trading and makes some money, but the police soon catch up with him. Glad to see the back of him, they give him forty-eight hours to leave Australia. Then businessman Reid mistakes Arthur for a big-time drug smuggler, and gives him twenty-four hours to get out of town.
