The Frog and the Pussycat
| "'The Frog and the Pussycat'" | |
|---|---|
| Rock & Chips episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 3 |
| Directed by | Dewi Humphries |
| Written by | John Sullivan |
| Original air date | 28 April 2011 |
The Frog and the Pussycat is the third and final episode of the Rock & Chips trilogy. It was first screened on April 28, 2011, five days after the death of writer John Sullivan.
Picking up some time after "Five Gold Rings" on February 1962, as Del Boy and his friends (Boycie, Trigger, Jumbo, Albie, and Denzil) are having a smoke outside Sir Walter Raleigh Tower, his mother Joan reads her baby son, Rodney, a bedtime story, and regretfully talks about how Del ruined their future happiness. The door suddenly slams and Joan jumps.
Going back seven months earlier to July 1961, life is still more or less the same for the Trotter family. Del continues to pursue countless girls with his glass rings, Reg is still unemployed, and Joan works for Freddie "The Frog" Robdal as his "charlady", although they really use their time together for sexual pleasure (unknown to the rest of the Trotters, Robdal is the father of Rodney). Robdal, for his part, keeps his own eyes on the Trotter family, going as far as to assault Joan's lecherous employer, Mr. Raynor, by breaking his fingers and threatening him into silence after learning of his perverted behaviour towards her through gossip in the Nag's Head.
Del crosses paths with an old flame of his, Barbara Bird, and they go for a coffee together, where they agree to continue seeing each other but only after Barbara returns from an upcoming trip. Around the same time, Robdal gives Joan a ring as a gift, which she notices is from Margate. She asks Robdal if he stole this ring from the jewellery store in Margate while on the 1960 Jolly Boys' Outing with Del, but he denies it. Robdal and his friend, Gerald "Jelly" Kelly, are approached once again by the corrupt DI Thomas and DC Stanton, who now claim to have a one-eyed war hero eyewitness, Eric Poulton, to the Margate robbery, and later on, Thomas arrests them both when Poulton goes missing. However, Robdal comes triumphant once again when it is revealed that Poulton is actually a policeman who lost his eye in a street fight and served as the desk sergeant when DI Thomas first started as a policeman. It turns out Poulton was living in Margate opposite the jewellers, and Thomas asked him to tell a few "white lies" in return for a share of the reward money, but Robdal and Kelly paid him a visit and told him their side of the story, treating him to a holiday in Spain. All but defeated, Thomas begrudgingly drops the case, but once Kelly is gone, Thomas plays his trump card: he has acquired the ring which Robdal gave to Joan, which she recently pawned in order to buy Del a lambretta. Despite furiously threatening Joan over the phone, Robdal chooses to protect Joan and Del (and get Thomas off his back once and for all). Robdal subsequently takes the full blame and is imprisoned on an alternate charge for a few months while Kelly goes free.
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