A Comedy On This Day: Shelley - Come Fly With Me (4 August 1992)

 Shelley and Ted's flight to Greece is diverted, and they are stuck in Dubrovnik Airport. That exposes the 1990 recording date! It would be hard to derive much comedy out of a visit to Dubrovnik in 1992...

 If you can disregard that unfortunate detail, though, having this episode set in a transitional limbo space and time does the comedy a world of good, and gives Shelley something genuinely sympathetic to complain about. The entire first act is again just one scene and the long duration works to the story's benefit, accurately reflecting the tedium and discomfort of such situations.

 Andy Hamilton's script is very neatly patterned, with situations and exchanges in the first part then mirrored and reversed much later in the second, such as Ted's Act One beatific responses to Shelley's temper becoming Shelley's beatific responses to Ted's temper in Act Two.

 The best of these reversals is the presentation of the airline stewardess on reception. When Shelley complains in part one, she only offers a fixed smile and pat responses. But when Ted then remonstrates with her in part two, the cut glass accent and poise remain, but her response is unexpectedly beligerent: "Don't ask me, Sir. I don't service the bloody planes, do I? (...) The smile is there to stop me screaming. (...) Now, if you'll excuse me I'm going to the toilet to slash my wrists with a rusty razor blade."

 The effect of this is really unexpected and funny, working like Eliza Doolittle's "Not bloody likely!" speech in Pygmalion. Indeed, the actress gets a round of applause from the studio audience for her performance in the scene (helped by having a clear exit line). The actress who plays her has an unfamiliar credit, Deborah Barrymore... But she's better known as Deborah Moore, daughter of Roger! That makes sense. Judging by this performance, she definitely inherited something of her father's sense of playfulness and enjoyment.